"He has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president"

December 2, 2016 9:37 AM

The interval between the 2016 US election and inauguration of POTUS #45 continues. Donald likes an avid reader, but claims many bogus votes were cast and others believe it. Romney (previous, post title, transcript) emerges full of chocolate cake and glowing praise. The "swamp" continues to be filled, and despite 'leaving business' there are conflicts (multiple, many) of interest. There's recount news in Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin. Amongst voter suppression news (more, more, again), recent tactics arguably worked (more), Michigan is trying to pass tougher ID laws, legal issues continue in North Carolina, and the fight will be a hard and an unavoidable one.

Housekeeping. Please...
- Don't go after each other, don't poke known sore points.
- Take it to Chat for context-free, exclamations and other existential reactions.
- Check before submitting a link whether it's already been done in this thread.
- Don't paste huge swathes of text from somewhere you're linking to anyway.
- If needed there are self-care recommendations from the mods, or try writing or commenting on a non-political post on MetaFilter, good nutrition, sleep or company, or walk away from screens and enjoy nature for a while.

For legacy content see the many posts tagged with election2016. The election reference wiki explains some of the terminology used in comments on these threads. There's also...

MetaTalk
* MeFi in the time of Trump - managing news.
* What are YOU doing?
* MeFites offering refuge for the holidays.

(And if you've been adding heaps of comments over the last many threads/months - or even if you haven't - then there's MetaFilter/mods who have been keeping content shipshape and live)

In other news, Lindsey Graham readies legislation, the electoral college vote looms, Adam Kokesh has declared to run in 2020, and retweeted "science" "news" does not impress Bernie.

Forthcoming US political events
* December 10th: Louisiana State run-off.
* December 19th: Electoral College vote.
* January 20th, 2017: Inauguration of POTUS #45.
* November 6th, 2018: Midterm elections.
* November 3rd, 2020: US Presidential and other elections.
* 7.6 billion A.D. (probably a tuesday): Earth destroyed by expanding sun.

posted by Wordshore (2314 comments total)

* 7.6 billion A.D. (probably a tuesday): Earth destroyed by expanding sun.

Nice. Thanks Wordshore!
posted by petebest at 9:41 AM on December 2, 2016 [46 favorites]

What kind of protests and demonstrations are planned for Inauguration Day, in Washington DC? Things could get really lively if enough angry people get together to make their voices heard.
posted by Midnight Skulker at 9:43 AM on December 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

Also recount news in Pennsylvania.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 9:44 AM on December 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

Military Frantically Googling Defense Secretary Presidential Order Succession after appointment of General Mattis as SecDef leaks at a Thursday rally. [satire]
posted by corb at 9:45 AM on December 2, 2016 [10 favorites]

Trump voter lost her home to new Treasury secretary: OneWest, a bank formerly owned by a group of investors headed by Mnuchin, had foreclosed on her Los Angeles-area home in the aftermath of the Great Recession, stripping her of the two units she rented as a primary source of income.

"I just wish that I had not voted," said Colebrook, 59. "I have no faith in our government anymore at all. They all promise you the world at the end of a stick and take it away once they get in."
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:45 AM on December 2, 2016 [21 favorites]

Oh wait, when I saw recount news I thought it was about the blocks. There are blocks of the recount being attempted in all three recount states. Michigan and Wisconsin.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 9:46 AM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

Kokesh has called for a "new American revolution" and has announced plans to run for President in 2020 on the platform of an "orderly dissolution of the federal government"

Hahahaha good luck finding one in 2020
posted by beerperson at 9:46 AM on December 2, 2016 [11 favorites]

What kind of protests and demonstrations are planned for Inauguration Day, in Washington DC? Things could get really lively if enough angry people get together to make their voices heard.

Heard by whom? To what effect? I'm not against protest, but should there be a desired result? I guess I just worry that a massive protest will not change the opinions of anyone and be used to demonstrate how 'unhinged' the left is.

I'm pretty impressed at the protests (even though they are under covered) in regards to the pipeline, and I think the BLM protests have had great impact on raising attention to real problems... But a protest against the new president before he is being sworn in... Will this change how the legislature votes, or the actions of the incoming president?
posted by el io at 9:48 AM on December 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

So it doesn't get lost in the bottom of the previous thread, I thought the Tyndall Report on Big Three TV news coverage of issues in the past eight presidential election seasons was really telling:

year (mins) Total ABC CBS NBC
1988 117 36 40 42
1992 210 112 38 60
1996 98 29 53 17
2000 130 45 39 46
2004 203 40 119 44
2008 220 41 119 66
2012 114 13 70 32
2016 (YTD) 32 8 16 8
posted by rabbitrabbit at 9:49 AM on December 2, 2016 [9 favorites]

So now that his modus operandi is known, tweeting insane/inflammatory/factual incorrect things during times of crisis for his personal brand and as a diversion technique, it's going to be fascinating to see what else he comes up with, and how long it takes the public to become aware of this deft slieght of hand.
posted by Keith Talent at 9:49 AM on December 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

Rabbi Shmuley has been spotted back at Trump Tower. Even the religious leaders he talks to are TV talking head cranks.
posted by zachlipton at 9:51 AM on December 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

What kind of protests and demonstrations are planned for Inauguration Day, in Washington DC? Things could get really lively if enough angry people get together to make their voices heard.

The day after inauguration is the Women's March on Washington.
posted by chris24 at 9:51 AM on December 2, 2016 [18 favorites]

Would you believe that Trump aide Steve Bannon was part of IGE, the virtual gold-farming company founded by a James Bond villain-ish Internet video visionary and child molester?
posted by johngoren at 9:58 AM on December 2, 2016 [13 favorites]

Protesting on Inauguration Day is a bad idea. The whole Mall will be on lockdown with security and at the same time crawling with Neonazis doing a Victory Goosestep in absurd red hats, frothing with hate, ready for a fight.

And just to think 8 years ago it was crawling with a diverse group of happy people looking forward to a bright future of peace and tolerance.

I really still can't believe this is happening.
posted by dis_integration at 9:59 AM on December 2, 2016 [91 favorites]

But a protest against the new president before he is being sworn in... Will this change how the legislature votes, or the actions of the incoming president?

That's already happening no matter how reasonable our objections are. The point of the protests is to show our fellow Americans, and indeed the world, that this man may assume the presidency, but he does not represent what this country stands for.
posted by monospace at 10:00 AM on December 2, 2016 [44 favorites]

I have already bought a seat on the bus from Knoxville to the Women's March on Washington. I am undecided on what my protest sign will say... right now I'm leaning toward "My rights are not negotiable."
posted by workerant at 10:03 AM on December 2, 2016 [29 favorites]

Good article on protesting Trump from one of the previous threads.

Why Some Protests Succeed While Others Fail
posted by Golden Eternity at 10:05 AM on December 2, 2016 [15 favorites]

I was at the market, I asked the deli server what he thought about the election. He said everyone is hating on Trump. I asked him if he reads a variety of news sources. He said they are all just hating on Trump. So, somewhere there is a go to source that says, "Don't bother reading the news, they just hate on Trump." People like this person, regard this as the truth.
posted by Oyéah at 10:07 AM on December 2, 2016 [10 favorites]

Why Some Protests Succeed While Others Fail

Decent article, but FYI there's a hell of a TL;DR at the end.
posted by Mooski at 10:08 AM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

This just in: I need a Chrome extension to block people from telling me I need a Chrome extension that will measure my "political bubble" for me.
posted by soren_lorensen at 10:11 AM on December 2, 2016 [11 favorites]

@BetseyStevenson
Unemployment by education:
Less than high school 7.9%
High school 4.9%
Some college 3.9%
College 2.3%
posted by chris24 at 10:11 AM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

Donald Trump’s Tie Is Held Together by Scotch Tape

Ladies and gentlemen, the owner of his own tie company, Mr. Donald Trump.
posted by Capt. Renault at 10:11 AM on December 2, 2016 [15 favorites]

So Obama was required to give up his Blackberry when he became president. Will Trump have to give up his phone or will he be tweeting from the oval office.
posted by octothorpe at 10:11 AM on December 2, 2016

You know, I don't feel bad for her at all. I too wish she had not voted.

You know, I consider the only bright point on this election cycle to be that Trump's voters will get exactly the government they deserve. The downside is, of course, everyone else will also get the government Trump's voters deserve, which is hardly fair.
posted by Mitrovarr at 10:12 AM on December 2, 2016 [86 favorites]

Trump Sealed Carrier Deal With Mix of Threat and Incentive

“I don’t want them moving out of the country without consequences,” Mr. Trump said, even if that means angering the free-market-oriented Republicans he beat in the primaries but will have to work with on Capitol Hill.

“The free market has been sorting it out and America’s been losing,” Mr. Pence added, as Mr. Trump interjected, “Every time, every time.”

If Obama talked like this, Twitter would already be full of hammer and sickle photoshop jobs.
posted by zachlipton at 10:14 AM on December 2, 2016 [46 favorites]

Puttin' the "socialism" in "national socialism"!
posted by soren_lorensen at 10:15 AM on December 2, 2016 [44 favorites]

I've been frankly just kind of avoiding the subject since the election, and continue to be completely dispirited. And I'm in Canada.

This is what has me stuck: way back when, Colbert famously said that "reality has a liberal bias."

Which was cute, and funny, and true.

What nobody was expecting was for a huge chunk of the population to metaphorically say "oh, if reality has a liberal bias, then fuck reality."

There's is, as far as I can tell, not only a "post-truth" feeling to Trump and his followers, but an avid dislike of truth.

If they don't believe that the media tells the truth, and they don't believe in science, and they only believe in their own prejudices, fake Facebook news and email forwards, what hope is there?

How can you recover a democracy when almost half of the electorate have proudly declared that they don't have even the slightest regard for facts and logic?

It freaks me out to the point of shutdown. This isn't an American thing, it freaks me out up here as well. "Focus on school boards, try to fix things so kids develop some logic and fact-checking skills, and hang on and pray that we can survive another generation" is not a strategy that really sits well.
posted by Shepherd at 10:15 AM on December 2, 2016 [203 favorites]

Instead of a protest of the new president, why not instead send off Obama with a cheering crowd? (I wonder if he'll fly somewhere for time out or just go straight to the new house in D.C.?)
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:15 AM on December 2, 2016

Not a Trump supporter but I thought the move to keep Carrier from relocating its entire factory to Mexico was pretty good. 1000 jobs remain at a cost of $7,000,000 so roughly $7,000 per job "saved". I think that pays for itself pretty quickly.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 10:16 AM on December 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

Hypothetically: if something were to happen that caused a president elect to withdraw/resign/other before the Electoral College vote took place, would the VP automatically move to the top of the ticket? And if that were to occur, would that be considered a reasonable justification for electors to switch their votes, especially if the opposing candidate had won the popular vote?
posted by Atom Eyes at 10:17 AM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

Not a Trump supporter but I thought the move to keep Carrier from relocating its entire factory to Mexico was pretty good. 1000 jobs remain at a cost of $7,000,000 so roughly $7,000 per job "saved"

Carrier keeping 800 jobs but still shipping 1,300 jobs to Mexico, while receiving $7mil Indiana taxpayer dollars.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:18 AM on December 2, 2016 [43 favorites]

I have neither the patience nor the sense of humor to endure this presidency.
posted by narancia at 10:20 AM on December 2, 2016 [34 favorites]

Hypothetically: if something were to happen that caused a president elect to withdraw/resign/other before the Electoral College vote took place, would the VP automatically move to the top of the ticket? And if that were to occur, would that be considered a reasonable justification for electors to switch their votes, especially if the opposing candidate had won the popular vote?

I would think that the party would decide internally, then issue instructions to the electors.
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:20 AM on December 2, 2016

Isn't that why protesting is a good idea?

It depends whether or not you can safely do so.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:22 AM on December 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

I had a dream last night; weird one. I dreamed it was January 21, and I was telling my wife we needed to pack our shit and get north of Virginia as fast as humanly possible, and she asked me why and I turned on the TV to Fox News where they were providing ongoing coverage of the Constitutional Crisis that was Obama declaring he would not turn over the Presidency to Trump who had neither won the Electoral College or the popular vote and was furthermore unqualified for the job. They were also noting the population of the United States were making unprecedented moves to the north or south of the fabled Mason-Dixon line, based on which side of the argument they supported.

It's fairly disturbing to me that I awakened exhilarated at the prospect until my head cleared.
posted by Mooski at 10:23 AM on December 2, 2016 [62 favorites]

Trump talks to the public through Twitter. Here's what happens when your next president blocks you

In which Trump blocks random people who criticized (or insulted) him on Twitter:

“If not, it’s just as much an honor to be blocked by the 45th president of the United States,” said Del Otero, a member of his high school class council.

posted by zachlipton at 10:24 AM on December 2, 2016 [9 favorites]

"I just wish that I had not voted," said Colebrook, 59. "I have no faith in our government anymore at all. They all promise you the world at the end of a stick and take it away once they get in."

Oh for Pete's sake. This reminds me of people who voted for Brexit expressing surprise over what they voted for.
posted by BibiRose at 10:25 AM on December 2, 2016 [56 favorites]

* October 2018: The reign of President Pence begins.

Seriously, Trump will be impeached within 2 years. His is the kind of presidency that can only happen as a "Change" candidate, which means he is useless to the right in 4 or even 2 years, as it becomes clear to his "movement" how full of shit his populist rhetoric was.

Now that he has swept in the far right conservatives and handed them everything they've ever wanted, they will turn on him as soon after the inauguration and confirmation hearings as possible, digging up (or manufacturing) some kind of massive legal or ethics violation excuse (I'm guessing they already have all the evidence they'd really need stashed away somewhere, because come on: "I'm hearing" such evidence exists).

And then they will be able to push him out and replace him with their own guy, all while grandstanding about how responsible they're all being for holding "their" president accountable (it's how they'll be able to distance themselves from the fact that they were the ones who put him there in the first place). Make no mistake about it - this is a Pence presidency we're talking about here. They all hate him, and they are not just holding their noses for power and profit. They are also counting the hours to sweet revenge. Once they have consolidated their power, the far right will gut Donald Trump like an oversized carp and flush the entrails directly into the public water supply (all sewage filtration and treatment plants having been shut down as emblematic of government overregulation).
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 10:25 AM on December 2, 2016 [40 favorites]

I think there's a very good chance that the Republicans will simply have the electoral college refuse to elect Trump. It'll go to the house, and that's how we'll get President Pence. Or maybe Rubio, or something.
posted by Mitrovarr at 10:27 AM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

So it turns out that Republicans were trying to prop Trump up during the primaries too, in the belief they could take him down. That time Ted Cruz helped Donald Trump win New Hampshire

So why would Cruz help the man he’d just narrowly beaten in Iowa?

Well, that’s part of the complex, multi-dimensional chess match that was the Republican primary, a contest which still featured a dozen GOP candidates at that time. Cruz’s campaign always firmly believed they could beat Trump in a head-to-head matchup. Knocking out Kasich and, more significantly, Sen. Marco Rubio, in New Hampshire could have seemed the quickest path to do that.

“The larger the field the better for us,” as Lewandowski had said at Harvard.

posted by zachlipton at 10:28 AM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

I think there's a very good chance that the Republicans will simply have the electoral college refuse to elect Trump.

We also didn't think the Republicans would let him get the nomination in the first place. Pull your head out of the sand. The party doesn't have nearly as much power as you think.
posted by potrzebie at 10:29 AM on December 2, 2016 [34 favorites]

I think there's a very good chance that the Republicans will simply have the electoral college refuse to elect Trump

For what reason? They are getting everything they want out of him so far.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:29 AM on December 2, 2016 [38 favorites]

I'm shopping for some art prints as a gift for my husband and I have found an outstanding and haunting representation of our future. Unfairly optimistic, though, unless the astronaut is actually a robot.
posted by lydhre at 10:30 AM on December 2, 2016 [19 favorites]

Rabbi Shmuley has been spotted

Gosh, what would a shameless publicity-seeker with a curious way of managing charities on both sides of the Atlantic be doing there?
posted by holgate at 10:31 AM on December 2, 2016

Kobach was a source of Trump’s unfounded voter fraud allegation, Conway says

posted by Golden Eternity at 10:31 AM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

We also didn't think the Republicans would let him get the nomination in the first place. Pull your head out of the sand. The party doesn't have nearly as much power as you think.

All they have to control to keep him from getting the electoral college vote is a few Republican electors. Not the same as controlling a bunch of regular voters.
posted by Mitrovarr at 10:31 AM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

I just wish that I had not voted," said Colebrook, 59. "I have no faith in our government anymore at all.

When I was a child, I once intentionally touched the glowing orange burner of a hot stove and burned the shit out of my finger. And yet, somehow I still believe in cooking.
posted by Atom Eyes at 10:31 AM on December 2, 2016 [57 favorites]

Yeah, maybe it was wrong to help lift billions in Asia out of substinence-level poverty and no real hope for future to let white people, who ransacked multiple continents and raped entire peoples, to I dunno, slowly maybe learn to compete on equal footing.

Curious that the burden falls on the American working class to lift poor Chinese out of poverty by giving up their jobs while the American 1% gets richer from globalization. That is class warfare in its essence.
posted by JackFlash at 10:32 AM on December 2, 2016 [62 favorites]

For what reason? They are getting everything they want out of him so far.

I think he's doing that precisely so they don't turn on him. He'll flip on the party once they don't have anything to hold over him, and start doing his own agenda... whatever that is.
posted by Mitrovarr at 10:32 AM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

KidRuki and I will be going to the Women's March, and we'll be wearing pussyhats.
posted by Ruki at 10:33 AM on December 2, 2016 [13 favorites]

Jamie Raskin [incoming Democratic Representative of Maryland's 8th congressional district] Has a Fierce, Funny Message for Dispirited Democrats
posted by Doktor Zed at 10:35 AM on December 2, 2016 [15 favorites]

Looking over Wikipedia's List of U.S. Recessions, I noticed that with the exception of Gerald Ford (president for 2 years 6 months, the first nine months of which were a recession), a recession has begun under every Republican president since Garfield, 1881 (president for six months). I'm sure Trump will honor this streak.

If Obama holds out another month and a half, then there would have been exactly one recession start during any of the last five Democratic presidencies (Carter, the exception).

While looking this up, I also ran across this fact (unknown to me). Lincoln ran for reelection under the name of The National Union Party. He wasn't officially a Republican president upon reelection.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 10:35 AM on December 2, 2016 [27 favorites]

The day after inauguration is the Women's March on Washington.

My mom is going which fills me with pride.
posted by Joey Michaels at 10:37 AM on December 2, 2016 [9 favorites]

Trump and Clinton campaign officials spend two hours yelling at each other at Harvard
posted by sammyo at 10:37 AM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

City Attorney Spraying Anti-Trump Graffiti While Drinking Wine Is All We Have Left

For the liberal elites, it’s come to this. We’ve been reduced to this. We are all Duncan Lloyd, an assistant city solicitor in Philadelphia. Lloyd was busted by surveillance cameras videoing a buddy spraying “Fuck Trump” on the side of a newly opened Fresh Grocer. Lloyd is pictured below in his civil disobedience uniform.

Yes. That’s a man, wearing an ascot, holding a glass of wine, who tagged an upscale supermarket.

This is our life now, hyper-educated coastal elites. We’re not going to stock up on guns and insta-waffles. We’re not going to hop in a Prius and ethanol-roll motorists we disagree with. We’re not going to burn an American flag, because we don’t own an American flag, because what kind of jingoistic prick can find space for a freaking flag in a one-bedroom apartment?

posted by zachlipton at 10:38 AM on December 2, 2016 [43 favorites]

Very thoughtful blog post about Mattis as Secretary of Defense that apparently will be discussed on Marketplace today.
posted by anastasiav at 10:39 AM on December 2, 2016 [9 favorites]

Why would the GOP want to impeach Trump, as long as he keeps signing their bills? His bombastic nature is a useful screen to distract the left-leaning public (ie, the media), which allows many of the right's more controversial measures to get passed unexamined. The GOP knows their policies are unpopular with a lot of the country - if white-bread Pence is the president, ALL the focus is on policy.

Seriously, get used to the possibility of a 2-term Trump presidency.
posted by smokysunday at 10:39 AM on December 2, 2016 [19 favorites]

I'd be tempted to try and organize with a few others to spell out "FUUUUUUUUUCK" with several signs.

Please ... This is a family community blog.

So from now on use "F*UUUUUUUUCK."
posted by ZenMasterThis at 10:41 AM on December 2, 2016 [25 favorites]

And with just a small constitutional amendment Melania 2024
posted by sammyo at 10:42 AM on December 2, 2016

I'm not against protest, but should there be a desired result? I guess I just worry that a massive protest will not change the opinions of anyone and be used to demonstrate how 'unhinged' the left is.

It makes a statement that, as a population, as a county, that we did not consent to this man; that the hateful and kleptocratic policies he campaigned on are not ours as Americans; and that there are large numbers of people who will fight this administration and everything it stands for. There's a misonception (with some truth to it) that big protests are isolated street theater and drama being put on by disorganized leftists who don't have any kind of policy plans, but I don't think that's true in general or of the planned protests against Trump's inauguration. Protests like this don't have a single discrete policy goal, or the protest as a be-all end-all-- the point is that the people who are showing out in numbers are people who intend to engage in practical political activism in the future. They're there to show solidarity and as a show of numbers, to remind the administration that Trump is a minority president, and to show the groups of people who this regime has promised to harm that large numbers of people in this country will not let them be taken without going through their neighbors. The point of large scale political protests like this are to say: not with my consent, not in my name, and not without a fight.
posted by moonlight on vermont at 10:45 AM on December 2, 2016 [40 favorites]

What are the odds Dr. Oz will get Surgeon General?
posted by fuse theorem at 10:46 AM on December 2, 2016 [9 favorites]

'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.
posted by octothorpe at 10:47 AM on December 2, 2016 [142 favorites]

This is a really good piece.

Paul Manafort Is Back
posted by Golden Eternity at 10:52 AM on December 2, 2016 [6 favorites]

All they have to control to keep him from getting the electoral college vote is a few Republican electors.

Trump won the election. Clinton won the popular vote. No one else in either party was on the ballot.

Trump is going to be president. We have to stop bargaining here.

What's left is to organize and re-learning the exact same lessons we learned under Bush -- that the population doesn't care about facts, that the left eternally sabotages itself, and that we will be playing defense for the next four years.

The electoral college will not save you. The recounts will not save you. In fact, you will not be saved.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 10:52 AM on December 2, 2016 [62 favorites]

Well, on the bright-side, at least you yanks didn't elect a moderate-centrist-democrat with extensive experience in government and global affairs.

Could you imagine what a disaster that would have been?
posted by blue_beetle at 10:54 AM on December 2, 2016 [74 favorites]

Could you imagine what a disaster that would have been?

She might've sent some emails!
posted by dis_integration at 10:58 AM on December 2, 2016 [33 favorites]

Margaret Sullivan has her piece up on the various ways in which Trumpers have directly said that facts don't matter over the past few days.
posted by zachlipton at 11:01 AM on December 2, 2016 [7 favorites]

I'm in for car repairs right now, and they're auto playing the inexactly named History channel, which is currently on a "UFOs, and the government conspiracies to hide them" kick. It made me wonder how many people get their news from cable "news/truth" channels and just don't question that there is actually news or truth pouring out.
posted by corb at 11:02 AM on December 2, 2016 [8 favorites]

Beyond all the previous reasons why the electors aren't going to go with anyone other than Trump, he just demolished the Republican Party as much as the Democratic Party and USA, and he did it by running against the establishment. They screw him and their base turns on them even more and they get killed in 2018 and 2020. Trump would be tweeting constantly and holding rallies going after Republicans and Ryan. This is also why they won't impeach him unless they absolutely have to.
posted by chris24 at 11:03 AM on December 2, 2016 [9 favorites]

Curious that the burden falls on the American working class to lift poor Chinese out of poverty by giving up their jobs while the American 1% gets richer from globalization. That is class warfare in its essence.

Which is why I support free trade AND an activist government that's willing to use the fiscal and monetary tools to keep unemployment low and assist in creating good jobs.

I mean, the US only has the equivalent of a Black Card in it's ability to borrow money.
posted by FJT at 11:06 AM on December 2, 2016 [6 favorites]

It made me wonder how many people get their news from cable "news/truth" channels and just don't question that there is actually news or truth pouring out.

46%, give or take a few thousand.
posted by Mooski at 11:06 AM on December 2, 2016 [8 favorites]

In fact, you will not be saved.

Yeah, and furthermore the tip of the disaster iceberg was Trump's victory but the bigger problem is that the presidency was the last safeguard against Republican dominance of all three branches of the federal government government. We festishize the presidency to our peril every four years.

We have a remote chance to fuck up the Republican agenda in 2018 but we have to get our feet on the ground now. We can't wait for 2020. Even if 2018 is the wash that we all think it will be, if we can increase off-year dem turn-out significantly and get at least some more progressive (or even centrist) D's to replace the R-is-for-Reactionaries in control now, we can maybe get some momentum going for 2020.

Yes, they're going to pass laws that try to limit who votes. We need to do everything we can to get around those laws. Voter IDs? Organize to raise money to get people their IDs (which might mean driving people around and actually paying for their IDs). Stripping people from the voter roles? Organize to make the people whose names are stripped aware that their names have been stripped and start working to get them reinstated.

And, of course, we need to find candidates. Not superhuman perfect candidates but candidates who have some intelligence and charisma and are willing to run. The "willing to run" part seems to be the hardest thing to do.

Its going to be hard, hard work and we're going to be fought every step of the way by people with more money and more experiencing at ratfucking, but the DNC can't be counted on to make this happen and we can't wait. Ugh. It seems like a mountain and I don't know that there's anyone trying to climb it. Do we need to start a national group that is like the ACLU but focused exclusively on voting rights? Does a group like that exist?
posted by Joey Michaels at 11:06 AM on December 2, 2016 [66 favorites]

Why Trump supporters stand by debunked claim (of illegal voters)
posted by P.o.B. at 11:07 AM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

NYT: Trump Backers Go to Court to Block Vote Recounts in 3 States

Bill Schuette, the attorney general of Michigan, said that the recount, initiated by Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, put Michigan voters at risk of “paying millions and potentially losing their voice in the Electoral College in the process.”

Instead, of course, we should just be content with the majority of Americans losing their actual voice in the popular vote.

(I don't think the recounts will change the outcome, I'm just sick of hearing the argument that overweighting the rural vote is necessary so that a minority of people have an outsize influence. Because god forbid if we got rid of the electoral college, the parties would actually have to to try to appeal to a majority of Americans to win, instead of just winning because they put their foot on the scale).
posted by triggerfinger at 11:07 AM on December 2, 2016 [14 favorites]

Do we need to start a national group that is like the ACLU but focused exclusively on voting rights? Does a group like that exist?

NAACP has been doing a lot of work on voting rights.
posted by zutalors! at 11:08 AM on December 2, 2016 [8 favorites]

What are the odds Dr. Oz will get Surgeon General?

I'd make a joke about him explaining which kinds of poop the other appointees are. But this is too klassy a place.

[Also NSFW/ the weak-stomached.]
posted by NorthernLite at 11:09 AM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

Agree that more folks should register but really wouldn't just getting the folks that are already register to show up make a significant difference?
posted by sammyo at 11:14 AM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

Curious that the burden falls on the American working class to lift poor Chinese out of poverty by giving up their jobs while the American 1% gets richer from globalization. That is class warfare in its essence.

The American working class voted in the people who oversaw the wholesale gutting of the labor union while presiding over stagnant wages. The deal was that manufacturing would head out and we'd all transition to service economies. This has been possible and the transition has been successful in multiple western economies.

Globalization isn't the problem. It's the businesses owners capitalizing on market instability to slash wages. There was no way to stop globalization. There was a way to make sure people can live a comfortable and dignified life throughout the transition. The Republican governments did NOTHING to ameliorate the situation. Now we blame something that was inevitable instead of the crooks that looted the country over the past four decades.
posted by Talez at 11:14 AM on December 2, 2016 [59 favorites]

What kind of protests and demonstrations are planned for Inauguration Day, in Washington DC? Things could get really lively if enough angry people get together to make their voices heard.

Vuvuzelas, y'all.
posted by ocschwar at 11:16 AM on December 2, 2016 [30 favorites]

tl;dr: Trump steals 11 cookies out of the dozen, points at the Chinese guy and says "watch out he's after your cookie".
posted by Talez at 11:16 AM on December 2, 2016 [25 favorites]

Do we need to start a national group that is like the ACLU but focused exclusively on voting rights? Does a group like that exist?

Project Vote
posted by sunset in snow country at 11:19 AM on December 2, 2016 [8 favorites]

Seriously, get used to the possibility of a 2-term Trump presidency.

Or a lifetime President. He's never going to go away, and we'll never have another fair election after 4 more years of expanding the North Carolina and Wisconsin models of voter suppression to Michigan, Pennslyvania and Ohio, or nationally with Sessions killing what's left of the VRA. Uday and Qusay Trump Jr. and Eric will be there when Trump becomes to senile to be trotted out on stage.

It's not really possible to be too pessimistic about the future of American democracy. I'm firmly of the opinion that it's already over, and we're entering into what comes next, autocracy.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:20 AM on December 2, 2016 [24 favorites]

I think a real autocracy would result in either a civil war (unlikely as it would probably result in the death of all due to nuclear weapons) or the country fragmenting with the two coastlines probably becoming individual countries, and the middle another, possibly several.
posted by Mitrovarr at 11:22 AM on December 2, 2016 [10 favorites]

There is no rural advantage in the Electoral College. There is a closely-divided state advantage, which is entirely transitory as among the specific states. For example, Virginia, Colorado and California (yes!) have gone from state Republican Presidential states, to swing states, to safe Democratic states, in a single generation. There is a small population state advantage, which includes both relatively densely populated small states and un-densely populated rural states.

"Rural" was interesting in this election because a swing in the rural vote seemed to have had an impact. In general rural political interests are overrun by urban / suburban ones. Rural America would be (legally and politically) very different if it state lines were redrawn to permit rural self-determination -- imagine a new "rural" state consisting of Pennsylvania east of Pittsburgh and west of Philly and New York east of Buffalo and north of Westchester, or a one consisting of all of California and Oregon excluding the coastal counties of California and the I-5 corridor of Oregon.
posted by MattD at 11:22 AM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

We have a remote chance to fuck up the Republican agenda in 2018 but we have to get our feet on the ground now

2017 for some state offices.
posted by ocschwar at 11:22 AM on December 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

Does anyone else keep waking up and for a few brief heartbeats hope this is all a nightmare?
posted by INFJ at 11:25 AM on December 2, 2016 [62 favorites]

2017 for some state offices.

Virginia and New Jersey governor races are 2017, as well as the entire North Carolina legislature after the court ruling on gerrymandered districts 2 days ago.

And don't forget Foster Campbell in LA Senate runoff in 8 days!
posted by chris24 at 11:26 AM on December 2, 2016 [17 favorites]

Thanks to Bobby Jindal, we know how disastrous Trump’s education policies could be
posted by Golden Eternity at 11:28 AM on December 2, 2016 [6 favorites]

Interest, Conflict of: Donald Trump profited from investment in Carrier's parent company

It seems like a small stake, and he apparently no longer owns that stock ("but it's unclear from the documents whether he still has an interest in the company"), but this is precisely the problem. Read on to see that he owns stock in many of the other companies he's criticized too, including Ford, Nabisco, Disney, and Apple.

For more on the subject, we turn to Before Donald Trump Rescued Carrier, He Sued Them. A hotel employee broke the air conditioner unit, and Trump sued Carrier because he claimed they disabled the switch that's intended to keep the unit from freezing up. The judge was none other than "Shira Scheindlin ― whom Trump maligned in the first presidential debate as a “very anti-police judge” for halting New York City’s stop-and-frisk policy."
posted by zachlipton at 11:28 AM on December 2, 2016 [5 favorites]

Does anyone else keep waking up and for a few brief heartbeats hope this is all a nightmare?


The first two nights.

Now I have to get on with it. Got a wife and two kids to continue supporting, possibly a Slavic language to learn if I want to obtain a jus sanguinis option, things to do.
posted by ocschwar at 11:30 AM on December 2, 2016 [10 favorites]

Do we need to start a national group that is like the ACLU but focused exclusively on voting rights? Does a group like that exist?

Yes! The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law works on exactly this issue. As do other organizations such as the NAACP, as someone rightly noted.
posted by prefpara at 11:34 AM on December 2, 2016 [9 favorites]

I found this really compelling (I'm still thinking it through, which I think is a good sign?): The New Jewish Question
posted by Mchelly at 11:35 AM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

I would just like NAACP to get more credit for its work on voting rights, to legitimize how that work helps everyone and NAACP isn't the niche special interest group people seem to think it is. No reason to not also contribute to the other organizations.
posted by zutalors! at 11:35 AM on December 2, 2016 [18 favorites]

Quite right, and if you look at who the plaintiffs are in many important voting rights cases, you will see the NAACP is right there. Is there an app that sends a dollar to the NAACP every time my heartrate goes over some stress threshhold? I would find that useful.
posted by prefpara at 11:38 AM on December 2, 2016 [7 favorites]

Thanks for the push. I just set up a recurring donation to the NAACP. Getting out the vote, and making sure everyone that is legally allowed to vote can do so, is a top priority in every election from here on out.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 11:44 AM on December 2, 2016 [7 favorites]

Scott Lemieux, Lawyers, Guns, and Money: The Mainstream Media Is Guilty of Grotesque Malpractice

This is remarkable, and severely damning: [...]

This really should be the death of glib, sublimely confident arguments that changes in MESSAGING could have easily put Clinton over the top. Trump completely dominated press coverage. Some of this was negative, but especially on tv a lot of this was just stuff like unedited coverage of his rallies. Clinton was not, to put it mildly, given the same kind of opportunity to get her message out. Clinton didn’t get significantly more coverage than Trump during the Democratic National Convention. There’s no effective way of getting a message out in that kind of environment; the net effects of advertising just aren’t that powerful. And there were two cases in which Trump didn’t dominate coverage: EMAILS! and HILLARY CLINTON IS ON HER DEATHBED! If you want an explanation for why Trump, an unprecedentedly dishonest and corrupt candidate, was viewed by the public is being more honest than Hillary Clinton (who, if anything, is more honest than the typical politician), there you go. The idea that the media deserves a pass for putting an elephant on the scale because Hillary Clinton is a FLAWED CANDIDATE is beyond absurd.

posted by tonycpsu at 11:46 AM on December 2, 2016 [111 favorites]

Does anyone else keep waking up and for a few brief heartbeats hope this is all a nightmare?

This morning I woke up remembering that the guy who said not paying federal income taxes makes him "smart" on live television will soon be US president.

And that he's surrounded by actual Nazis, fascists and bigots.

With a near absolute Republican deathgrip on every branch of government.

Honestly, I'd have preferred to stay in my actual nightmare.
posted by byanyothername at 11:49 AM on December 2, 2016 [20 favorites]

There is no rural advantage in the Electoral College.

There's a few different ways you might slice this.

1. If you take the states whose percent-rural-population is above the median, they have just 166 electoral votes.
2.If you look at the correlation between electors-per-person and percent rural population. r = 0.32, which at a=0.05 is significant, p = 0.011.
3. If you order the rural states from most to least and keep taking states until you get to 270 electoral votes, you've accrued 46% of the population.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 11:49 AM on December 2, 2016 [11 favorites]

Scott Lemieux, Lawyers, Guns, and Money: The Mainstream Media Is Guilty of Grotesque Malpractice

It's beyond argument now that the media wanted Trump to win. He was better for ratings, he's better for their corporate owners bottom lines. The orders came down to build up Trump and tear down Clinton, and they did. Now they'll get down to the real business of groveling and fellating until it's time to tear down Trump's 2020 challenger.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:51 AM on December 2, 2016 [11 favorites]

For example, Virginia, Colorado and California (yes!) have gone from state Republican Presidential states, to swing states, to safe Democratic states, in a single generation.

One of the few signs of encouragement I got from the election here in California is that for the first time since the Great Depression, Orange County went for the democrat in the presidential election.

As unlikely as it is that any state or region could successfully secede from the US, if it were possible, this would probably be the time.
posted by Huck500 at 11:52 AM on December 2, 2016 [7 favorites]

(Which means that if you took the ruralmost states until you got half of the population, they'd have more than 270 EVs: 282, to be precise)
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 11:52 AM on December 2, 2016 [5 favorites]

Does anyone have a handy clip of the president-elect saying "You knew I was a snake when you took me in" for, e.g., sending to the people complaining on Twitter about his obvious lack of swamp-draining?
posted by NMcCoy at 11:55 AM on December 2, 2016 [10 favorites]

Or a lifetime President.

People said the same about GWB. Remember the confident predictions of machine-gunning protesters?

Trump is gonna be terrible. He's not going to make himself Dictator For Life. The fears about voter suppression resulting in other Republican victories in the future are well founded but that's different than Trump staying in. We need to have a realistic picture of the country we are living in if we want to have a hope of playing defense. Paranoid fantasies about Trump becoming a permanent president are just that.
posted by Justinian at 11:57 AM on December 2, 2016 [47 favorites]

I think there's a natural temptation to look for grand lessons in a loss like this, and I'm not going to discount the idea that they exist, but I wonder how much of this situation is less an issue of strategy or tactics and more about the unforeseen events which transpired. In sports this is the "any given Sunday" mentality or the situation where a back of the pack car ends up winning a race on the last lap when the leaders crash into each other and create an opening. If you buy into the idea that part of the reason Trump won is that a lot of crazy, unpredictable shit happened in just such a way that it created the right opening for him to leap through, then you also have to take with it the idea that his flailing and general managerial incompetence as displayed during the campaign didn't really matter. I think it's hard to argue this outcome and very easy to argue its reason. What it makes me wonder about is what happens when, as it must at this level of responsibility, this managerial competence does actually matter. We're in a dreamland with the Trump administration because it hasn't really started, but what happens if/when we wake up? Everything seems unpredictable, unstable, and surreal.
posted by feloniousmonk at 11:58 AM on December 2, 2016 [5 favorites]

> There is no rural advantage in the Electoral College.

As American as Apple Pie? The Rural Vote’s Disproportionate Slice of Power

Rural America, even as it laments its economic weakness, retains vastly disproportionate electoral strength. Rural voters were able to nudge Donald J. Trump to power despite Hillary Clinton’s large margins in cities like New York. In a House of Representatives that structurally disadvantages Democrats because of their tight urban clustering, rural voters helped Republicans hold their cushion. In the Senate, the least populous states are now more overrepresented than ever before. And the growing unity of rural Americans as a voting bloc has converted the rural bias in national politics into a potent Republican advantage.

“If you’re talking about a political system that skews rural, that’s not as important if there isn’t a major cleavage between rural and urban voting behavior,” said Frances Lee, a professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland. “But urban and rural voting behavior is so starkly different now so that this has major political consequences for who has power.

“And it’s not just in terms of policy outcomes,” she continued. “This pervasively advantages Republicans in maintaining control of the U.S. national government.”

posted by tonycpsu at 11:59 AM on December 2, 2016 [14 favorites]

Look at how strategic each FBI letter is.

– Give GOP momentum pre RNC
– Kneecap HRC momentum post DNC
– Finish her off after debate wins
posted by T.D. Strange at 12:00 PM on December 2, 2016 [38 favorites]

As American as Apple Pie? The Rural Vote’s Disproportionate Slice of Power

Right; the idea that the electoral college doesn't give a massive advantage to rural states is absurd. Hell, that's the reason it was designed in the first place. To protect the interest of agrarian slaveholders.
posted by Justinian at 12:01 PM on December 2, 2016 [15 favorites]

And now J Street is weighing in on Ellison: CONTINUING ATTACKS ON CONGRESSMAN ELLISON SEEK TO SILENCE LEGITIMATE POSITIONS ON ISRAEL

This is increasingly ugly for everyone, in a way that frightens me.
posted by zachlipton at 12:03 PM on December 2, 2016 [8 favorites]

Just received this by email:

University of California releases principles in support of UC community members

The University of California today announced that it will vigorously protect the privacy and civil rights of the undocumented members of the UC community and will direct its police departments not to undertake joint efforts with any government agencies to enforce federal immigration law.

“While we still do not know what policies and practices the incoming federal administration may adopt, given the many public pronouncements made during the presidential campaign and its aftermath, we felt it necessary to reaffirm that UC will act upon its deeply held conviction that all members of our community have the right to work, study, and live safely and without fear at all UC locations,” said UC President Janet Napolitano.

posted by mudpuppie at 12:04 PM on December 2, 2016 [38 favorites]

Carrier keeping 800 jobs but still shipping 1,300 jobs to Mexico, while receiving $7mil Indiana taxpayer dollars.

Anyone who thinks this is an impressive deal when it amounts to the government paying $8,750 per job on behalf of the specific people retaining them is never, ever allowed to complain about government handouts again.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 12:05 PM on December 2, 2016 [82 favorites]

Honestly, I'd have preferred to stay in my actual nightmare.


I just watched an episode of Black Mirror and didn't experience debilitating existential dread right as the credits flowed.
posted by ocschwar at 12:06 PM on December 2, 2016 [10 favorites]

As unlikely as it is that any state or region could successfully secede from the US, if it were possible, this would probably be the time.

I don't actually want Calexit yet (ask me again in 2020) but I am 100% in favor of stirring shit up about it now and getting the idea of it out into public discourse and using our silly ballot proposition system to pass as many "we will not comply with the unconstitutional orders of the illegitimate non-president Donald Fuckface Trump" and electing our own ridiculous celebrity governor (WE HAVE DONE THIS BEFORE) who runs on a platform of "Fuck Donald Trump" and "no more of CA's money is going to the Feds until there aren't any more god damned Neo-Nazis employed in the executive branch" and generally throwing a giant California-sized tantrum until this fucking human punchline is out of the White House.
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:07 PM on December 2, 2016 [75 favorites]

There is a small population state advantage, which includes both relatively densely populated small states and un-densely populated rural states.

Of course, there are considerably fewer "relatively densely populated small states" than "un-densely populated rural states".

In general rural political interests are overrun by urban / suburban ones.

In general this is untrue, either on the state level or the national one. It is untrue when you look at the range of subsidies and inducements now taken for granted in order to prop up rural infrastructure; it is untrue when you look at the deliberate splintering of urban centres on districting maps; it is untrue whenever the US Senate casts a vote.
posted by holgate at 12:11 PM on December 2, 2016 [11 favorites]

Also, this drives me crazy:

"I just wish that I had not voted," said Colebrook, 59. "I have no faith in our government anymore at all. They all promise you the world at the end of a stick and take it away once they get in."

They DON'T all promise you the world! Some politicians say "I will work to make your lives better but they won't be perfect" and then you feel disappointed by that so you go with the asshole who promises you the world. Maybe instead of not having faith in government you should stop having faith in the assholes who are using it for their own benefit. I get it, I get that you feel betrayed and disappointed, I totally understand that, but this destroying your faith in the government is the kind of thing that prevents government from getting better and helps the con men by making you believe it's not worth caring enough to vote for someone who is actually going to try to help. This shouldn't destroy your faith in the government, it should destroy your faith in Donald Trump and, in a better world, make you think "if I was wrong about him, about what else might I be mistaken? What sources led me astray? Who did I ignore who maybe could have helped? What should I do differently next time?" If you just become nihilistic about the whole thing it's never going to get better. Self-reflection is hard but it would be so, so nice if Ms. Colebrook could learn more from this experience than "government is bad".
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 12:12 PM on December 2, 2016 [84 favorites]

Little did we realize that It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia predicted the president-elect's economic plan eight years ago. Strap on that job helmet, midwestern steel workers! We're firing this sumbitch off.
posted by Mayor West at 12:12 PM on December 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

There's still a chance Obama will just say fuck it and toss trump, Pence, and Ryan off the balcony just before the swearing in.

What's the Secret Service protocol if a sitting president throws down against a president elect on the inaugural stage, I wonder?
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:15 PM on December 2, 2016 [29 favorites]

Trump is gonna be terrible. He's not going to make himself Dictator For Life.

He runs Trumpists against Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, gets 60 Republican seats in the Senate in 2018 with any dissenters terrified to oppose him, deploys the FBI and NSA against all Democratic candidates releasing their emails and phone calls through Wikileaks and allied Russian media, launches FBI investigations of every Democratic candidate, throws some of them in jail, none of these things are paranoid. The apocalyptic downside scenarios are all in play. The model here is not the historical norms of the US anymore. It's Turkey and Egypt.
posted by T.D. Strange at 12:16 PM on December 2, 2016 [34 favorites]

@RVAwonk: #Trump tells Cincinnati rally that violent crime is at a 45-year high. It's actually at a 51-year low, according to latest FBI data. (jpeg)
posted by Golden Eternity at 12:17 PM on December 2, 2016 [40 favorites]

Speaking of disproportionate rural power, there are efforts in many states to stop prison gerrymandering (which artificially boosts the power of rural districts at the state level). More info from: Prisoners of the Census and the NAACP LDF. The ACLU won a prison gerrymandering cases in federal court in Florida and Rhode Island earlier this year.

This is a state/local issue that needs work even in solid blue states.
posted by melissasaurus at 12:20 PM on December 2, 2016 [10 favorites]

Yesterday, I told my 101-year-old grandmother that some people call our new president-elect a butternut turd. And now she repeats the phrase at every opportunity, relishing the sheer poetry of it. Butternut turd. Butternut turd. Butternut tuuuuuuuurd.

It's been my silver lining.
posted by mochapickle at 12:20 PM on December 2, 2016 [102 favorites]

He runs Trumpists against Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, gets 60 Republican seats in the Senate in 2018 with any dissenters terrified to oppose him, deploys the FBI and NSA against all Democratic candidates releasing their emails and phone calls through Wikileaks and allied Russian media, launches FBI investigations of every Democratic candidate, throws some of them in jail, none of these things are paranoid.

All of it is paranoid.
posted by Justinian at 12:23 PM on December 2, 2016 [12 favorites]

Destroying faith in government is the Republican strategy working as intended, y'all.
posted by soren_lorensen at 12:24 PM on December 2, 2016 [27 favorites]

I guess I just worry that a massive protest will not change the opinions of anyone and be used to demonstrate how 'unhinged' the left is.

You won't be able to placate these people or stay safe by doing nothing or playing nice - may as well rise up swinging.
posted by ryanshepard at 12:26 PM on December 2, 2016 [23 favorites]

Yeah, I think a constitutional convention is far more likely than an impeachment. I expect systematic voter suppression and redistricting in every place they can get away with. Trump will fill the pipeline with publicity stunts like Carrier to keep his popularity up. He will do whatever he can to hold onto middle America.

The good news is he may stay away from guting medicare and wars and things that could do him major damage but it depends on what he can get away with with his propaganda which is extremely effective.

What if our first woman President is Ivanka Trump?
posted by Golden Eternity at 12:26 PM on December 2, 2016

4 years ago the idea of the FBI director or the FSB intentionally influencing an election would've been called paranoid, and yet here we are.
posted by T.D. Strange at 12:26 PM on December 2, 2016 [56 favorites]

The suspect then asked Adem to take him to another location. When the driver told him it would cost him more money, police say the suspect punched Adem in the head and face while repeatedly yelling, “Trump.”
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 12:29 PM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

No, no, if there's a fistfight the Secret Service follows hockey rules. Let them get it out of their systems, step in when there's blood, etc.
posted by Slackermagee at 12:29 PM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

As far as paranoia, I'm going to gently suggest that we all remain very very vigilant but also remember that many of these people (in the new Trumpist power structure) are both a) old and b) not real bright.

I've been getting concerned for my husband's mental health because he thinks there's legit going to be a race war, started by the white supremacists (who, to be fair, have been itching for it for decades and are pissed as hell that people of color steadfastly refuse to start one). He's slipping down into depression and anxiety and I'm trying hard to help him. Mainly what I've got is that most of these folks are very stupid, and very bad at cooperating with one another. When you're all sitting in your seekrit clubhouses with no power, it's easy to fantasize about getting together and cracking some skulls. It's a lot harder when you have to agree on who your leaders are and have some discipline in following orders.

(I've also got my own dual citizenship in my back pocket, which makes me feel like an asshole, but it does keep me warm at night.)
posted by soren_lorensen at 12:30 PM on December 2, 2016 [24 favorites]

this totally making me think of the ending of Gladiator
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:32 PM on December 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

Trump is gonna be terrible. He's not going to make himself Dictator For Life.

i get the impression that he is going to be bored stiff of having to negotiate with people he can't strong-arm due to a gross power differential in about 4-6 months. once the afterglow of the election wears off he is going to be fussing like a petulant teenager.

which is not to understate the amount of damage his appointees and handlers can wreak in the meantime
posted by murphy slaw at 12:32 PM on December 2, 2016 [23 favorites]

What's the Secret Service protocol if a sitting president throws down against a president elect on the inaugural stage, I wonder?

My sole remaining sliver of hope is that Trump, as he approaches to take the oath, is suddenly interrupted by the loudspeakers blaring "Hail Columbia" as "Diamond" Joe Biden rushes the podium and hits him with a folding chair, thus pre-empting four years of national misery.
posted by Mayor West at 12:34 PM on December 2, 2016 [25 favorites]

Inaugural protest: I want to get the word out that no matter where you are that day, you should be wearing black, all black. I'm even considering wearing a black arm band for a suitable mourning period though that may be for four years. Please spread the word.
posted by njohnson23 at 12:34 PM on December 2, 2016 [22 favorites]

you should be wearing black, all black

As I did on Nov. 9. As I also did on Nov. 3, 2004.
posted by soren_lorensen at 12:36 PM on December 2, 2016 [8 favorites]

When the driver told him it would cost him more money, police say the suspect punched Adem in the head and face while repeatedly yelling, “Trump.”

In court Thursday, Holtzlander’s attorney said his client has been enrolled in a substance abuse assessment program to get help for his alcohol problem.

Alcohol is to blame for many of society's problems, but Trumpism sure as shit ain't one of them.
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:37 PM on December 2, 2016 [10 favorites]

I've been getting concerned for my husband's mental health because he thinks there's legit going to be a race war

I'm surprised by this because I thought this only lived in the minds of the white supremacists themselves. Also "white" and "people of color" are not two neatly divided sides.

(btw not saying anything against your husband and I truly sympathize with his distress).
posted by zutalors! at 12:37 PM on December 2, 2016

I'm even considering wearing a black arm band for a suitable mourning period though that may be for four years

I recall a bunch of Republican assholes in my office doing this back in 1992, after Bill Clinton was elected.
posted by briank at 12:38 PM on December 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

Eternal vigilence is the price of liberty.

Not that it will change anything, but Change.org 's petition to the electoral college is closing in on 5M toward its goal of 6M.
posted by yoga at 12:40 PM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

Well, maybe race war was too much of a loaded term for what he thinks is going to happen: organized white supremacist agitators en masse entering black and brown neighborhoods and fucking shit up with the complicity of law enforcement until the residents are forced to fight back themselves.
posted by soren_lorensen at 12:40 PM on December 2, 2016 [7 favorites]

ah, gotcha.
posted by zutalors! at 12:41 PM on December 2, 2016

Not that it will change anything, but Change.org 's petition to the electoral college is closing in on 5M toward its goal of 6M.

Serious question - has one of these petitions ever had a substantive, meaningful outcome?
posted by ryanshepard at 12:41 PM on December 2, 2016 [7 favorites]

I recall a bunch of Republican assholes in my office doing this back in 1992, after Bill Clinton was elected.

Freedom of expression is one of our cherished first amendment rights, even if the president elect and ~24% of the population don't believe in the constitution that they claim to venerate. Making a non-violent, non-intimidating statement is something that people should feel free to do, even if we might think that they're wrong.
posted by Candleman at 12:42 PM on December 2, 2016 [5 favorites]

Huh. Mic is reporting that Obama is considering post-presidential digital media career.

President Barack Obama has been discussing a post-presidential career in digital media and is considering launching his own media company, according to multiple sources who spoke on background because they were not authorized to speak for the president.

Obama considers media to be a central focus of his next chapter, these sources say, though exactly what form that will take — a show streaming on Netflix, a web series on a comedy site or something else — remains unclear. Obama has gone so far as to discuss launching his own media company, according to one source with knowledge of the matter, although he has reportedly cooled on the idea of late.

posted by DynamiteToast at 12:43 PM on December 2, 2016 [11 favorites]

Serious question - has one of these petitions ever had a substantive, meaningful outcome?

I hope the end of the Obama administration also marks the end of Change.org, too many people think signing an internet petition is the appropriate way to interact with their government.
posted by T.D. Strange at 12:44 PM on December 2, 2016 [25 favorites]

Worked out so well when Al Gore did it. We got Current, in exchange for losing Newsworld International. I do not want to, once again, lose "real" news to a bunch of YouTube-style short form crap with the occasional two minutes of actual information.
posted by wierdo at 12:46 PM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

. @POTUS is interested in the changing ways people consume info, but he has no plans to get into the media business after he leaves office.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:48 PM on December 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

Well that de-escalated quickly.
posted by soren_lorensen at 12:51 PM on December 2, 2016 [12 favorites]

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in the New Yorker:

Hazy visions of “healing” and “not becoming the hate we hate” sound dangerously like appeasement. The responsibility to forge unity belongs not to the denigrated but to the denigrators. The premise for empathy has to be equal humanity; it is an injustice to demand that the maligned identify with those who question their humanity...

Identity politics is not the sole preserve of minority voters. This election is a reminder that identity politics in America is a white invention: it was the basis of segregation. The denial of civil rights to black Americans had at its core the idea that a black American should not be allowed to vote because that black American was not white. The endless questioning, before the election of Obama, about America’s “readiness” for a black President was a reaction to white identity politics. Yet “identity politics” has come to be associated with minorities, and often with a patronizing undercurrent, as though to refer to nonwhite people motivated by an irrational herd instinct.
posted by sunset in snow country at 12:51 PM on December 2, 2016 [54 favorites]

All of it is paranoid.

Didn't you also predict Stein wouldn't follow through with the recount after collecting money for it? How many of your other 2016 election season predictions have been wrong?
posted by krinklyfig at 12:52 PM on December 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

Konstantin Kilibarda and Daria Roithmayr in Slate: The Myth of the Rust Belt Revolt
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 12:55 PM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

Nearly all of them. I should be a TV pundit.
posted by T.D. Strange at 12:56 PM on December 2, 2016 [13 favorites]

I want to get the word out that no matter where you are that day, you should be wearing black, all black.

I don't know if this will accomplish anything, but as a sign to other mourners? I'm in. Full-on Victorian style mourning will barely even begin to express how sad I am for the country my friends died for right now.
posted by corb at 12:56 PM on December 2, 2016 [43 favorites]

So now that his modus operandi is known, tweeting insane/inflammatory/factual incorrect things during times of crisis for his personal brand and as a diversion technique, it's going to be fascinating to see what else he comes up with, and how long it takes the public to become aware of this deft slieght of hand.

If by the public you mean his minions, the answer is forever. Or NEVER.
posted by notreally at 12:58 PM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

Hazy visions of “healing” and “not becoming the hate we hate” sound dangerously like appeasement.

That's because that's what they are.

I reserve the right to hate racists and homophobes and misogynists and transphobes and sometimes the only thing that keeps me from grabbing a bat and going to town is the knowledge that there are ways of making them irrelevant that won't get me sent to prison.
posted by Mooski at 12:59 PM on December 2, 2016 [12 favorites]

Didn't you also predict Stein wouldn't follow through with the recount after collecting money for it? How many of your other 2016 election season predictions have been wrong?

Hah you sure got me!! I was really mostly just snarking at Jill Stein, given that she helped put Trump in the White House. But yeah good job!!!

I will note that I was pretty much the least confident person in a Clinton victory in most of these threads. Like... I expected her to win but I was not nearly as sanguine about it as almost everybody else.
posted by Justinian at 1:00 PM on December 2, 2016 [11 favorites]

Black armbands for January 20th? Sounds good to me.
posted by ocschwar at 1:00 PM on December 2, 2016

Yea I don't get this weird picking on Justinian thing. I don't think it's a bad idea to point out that the President For Life stuff is hyperbolic (and just plain unhelpful, really).
posted by zutalors! at 1:01 PM on December 2, 2016 [11 favorites]

Democrats Suspect Trump Influence in Stalled Russia Sanctions

Tit for tat.
posted by Golden Eternity at 1:02 PM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

Also it doesn't take a super genius to recognize paranoid fantasies about Dictators For Life. Frankly, Trump is probably gonna hate the next four years. He doesn't like to actually, you know, work at stuff.
posted by Justinian at 1:02 PM on December 2, 2016 [12 favorites]

Holy Conflict of Interest! The Firm Holding Much of Trump's Debt May Be Up for Sale.

On Friday, Reuters reported that his second-biggest lender, a small Wall Street firm called Ladder Capital Strategies, may be putting itself up for sale to the highest bidder. Public records show Trump owes the firm at least $282 million, on four lines of credit. This means that other big money players—Wall Street firms, American banks, overseas banks, financial institutions partly owned by foreign governments—could move to buy up the debts of a US president and create a host of conflicts of interest.

Clara Jeffery suggests a Bloomberg or Bezos should buy it, especially to avoid the debt falling into foreign hands.
posted by zachlipton at 1:02 PM on December 2, 2016 [24 favorites]

Carrier keeping 800 jobs but still shipping 1,300 jobs to Mexico, while receiving $7mil Indiana taxpayer dollars.

Anyone who thinks this is an impressive deal when it amounts to the government paying $8,750 per job on behalf of the specific people retaining them is never, ever allowed to complain about government handouts again.

What exactly is the alternative here? Let's say Carrier moves those 800 jobs to Mexico. The State saves $7 million in taxes up front. But are these laid off workers going to find equivalent employment or end up becoming something like a Walmart greeter or Amazon warehouse worker? That sounds like a net loss in revenue over time to me.

As far as I'm concerned the question to ask is if there was a better way for Indiana to spend the money. Like if Indiana gave each of the laid off workers the $9,000 to do what they want, or if it spent it on retraining them would they be better off? I'm OK with governments doing this here in Ontario, just as long as there are controls in place to prevent the company from shipping the jobs the second they receive the incentive.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:04 PM on December 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

Trump is going to hate being the most powerful man in the world, having ways to enrich himself and his friends and family in ways beyond his wildest dreams? Yeah, okay. I will take that bet. No impeachment. No retirement.

Trump will be like eighty years old after two terms. Far more likely Ivanka or Kushner go into politics, imo. Until they are ready they'll try to find someone else who protects their interests.
posted by Golden Eternity at 1:06 PM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

What exactly is the alternative here? Let's say Carrier moves those 800 jobs to Mexico. The State saves $7 million in taxes up front. But are these laid off workers going to find equivalent employment or end up becoming something like a Walmart greeter or Amazon warehouse worker? That sounds like a net loss in revenue over time to me.

I didn't get the memo. Was the 35% tax thing supposed to be one of the things we weren't supposed to take literally?
posted by Talez at 1:07 PM on December 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

Hah you sure got me!! I was really mostly just snarking at Jill Stein, given that she helped put Trump in the White House. But yeah good job!!!

I'm not trying to be snarky. Given everything that has come to pass since this started, I'd much rather be vigilant than dismissive about Trump becoming an autocrat. He's already acting like a tinpot dictator, and he hasn't even taken the oath of office. A significant number of people who have first hand experience with dictatorships are ringing the alarm bells for everyone to stay as vigilant as possible about Trump. Dismissing these concerns as paranoia sounds to me like whistling past the graveyard.
posted by krinklyfig at 1:07 PM on December 2, 2016 [29 favorites]

I agree. I think people are in denial about how bad this is. We really don't know what Trump and the GOP will do, it is completely up to them. That is what's so scary. Fear is good.
posted by Golden Eternity at 1:09 PM on December 2, 2016 [17 favorites]

i have this vision of a couple million people at the inauguration blowing vuvuzelas and canned-air boat horns.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 1:10 PM on December 2, 2016 [14 favorites]

i have this vision of a couple million people at the inauguration blowing vuvuzelas and canned-air boat horns.

...yeah but that'll be the supporters.
posted by Mooski at 1:11 PM on December 2, 2016 [8 favorites]

Suspected Russian interference in elections around the world is spreading
posted by T.D. Strange at 1:11 PM on December 2, 2016 [6 favorites]

i have this vision of a couple million people at the inauguration blowing vuvuzelas and canned-air boat horns.

I have this vision of a couple million people at the inauguration doing something else, but we now live in a world where I'm afraid to put it on the Internet because I could be thrown in prison for voicing an opinion online.
posted by chonus at 1:12 PM on December 2, 2016 [9 favorites]

Now I only spent dozens of hours watching those klan rallies out of sheer terror and I do recall that we were explicitly promised that companies wouldn't leave and even if they did leave we'd tax them so hard we'd be swimming in cash. Was I just hallucinating that part? Or did Trump say "we'll handsomely reward companies that only move 3/5 of their workers to Mexico"?
posted by Talez at 1:12 PM on December 2, 2016 [14 favorites]

why can't we be vigilant about totally normally dismal economic and social policy? I don't think it's denial or whistling or anything else. I think for the most part a lot of the most hyperbolic stuff will be scaled back, but pretty horrific shit will happen quietly, and people will get complacent because they feel like they won something.

That's the danger I see with the hyperbole. We're not going to have public Muslim registries that white people can also sign up for, but we'll have reintroduction of NSEERS and no one will notice except those affected.
posted by zutalors! at 1:13 PM on December 2, 2016 [22 favorites]

What exactly is the alternative here? Let's say Carrier moves those 800 jobs to Mexico.

Trump specifically said he would punish companies that move jobs out of the US. Instead he folded like a house of soggy cards and made Pence give them a $7 million tax break. They called Trump's bluff and now every other corporation will hold their workers hostage in exchange for tax breaks.

Apple currently has like 30 gajillion dollars stashed overseas they won't bring into the US because it will be taxed. Trump said he wants to force Apple to make the iPhones in the US. I wouldn't be surprised if they start producing a token amount in a small factory in the USA and suddenly receive a tax holiday on their foreign earnings.
posted by PenDevil at 1:14 PM on December 2, 2016 [19 favorites]

I mean, the really striking thing about dictatorships is that everyone says very similar things in the run-up: basically, it will never happen; "it can't happen here." Until it does. Then everyone finds out it's too late to stop it.
posted by krinklyfig at 1:14 PM on December 2, 2016 [21 favorites]

I mean, the really striking thing about dictatorships is that everyone says very similar things in the run-up: basically, it will never happen; "it can't happen here." Until it does. Then everyone finds out it's too late to stop it.

It's ok! Other liberals have told me it's illegal to become a dictator! We're safe on that account!
posted by Talez at 1:16 PM on December 2, 2016 [6 favorites]

Paul Krugman ‏@paulkrugman
If Trump did a Carrier-style deal every week for the next 4 years, he could bring back 4% of the manufacturing jobs lost since 2000.

Paul Krugman ‏@paulkrugman
Another metric: Trump would have to do one Carrier-sized deal a week for 30 years to save as many jobs as Obama's auto bailout
posted by Talez at 1:18 PM on December 2, 2016 [83 favorites]

I don't think hyperbolic fear is unassailably good. Someone in another thread was trying to assert that "all Latinx looking people will be deported" and thought that was a completely viable claim. It's not. It's ridiculously unwieldy. It does serve to take attention away from more real, immediate risk.
posted by zutalors! at 1:20 PM on December 2, 2016 [7 favorites]

Even if Trump & Co. suppressed votes and secured power for an unreasonable amount of time, it's not like it has to be forever. I mean, Gambia just pulled this off and did not re-elect their Dictator for Life.

On the other hand, Erdogan has imprisoned IIRC 15K+ journalists, professors, military, and other dissidents since the failed "coup."

Anyway, I'm currently violating the terms of a silent meditation retreat I'm attending, which I need to get back to for now. For my own sanity...
posted by krinklyfig at 1:20 PM on December 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

he folded like a house of soggy cards

I am curious how House Of Cards is going to play out now that Underwood, a bright, capable, politically experienced, albeit sociopathic and vengeful murderer seems like a pretty decent choice for President, all things considered.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 1:20 PM on December 2, 2016 [18 favorites]

Sorry Dean fans: JUST IN: @GovHowardDean tells the crowd in Denver, via video, he is NOT running for the DNC chairmanship.
posted by zachlipton at 1:24 PM on December 2, 2016

The Intercept contacted nine of the most prominent such firms, from Facebook to Booz Allen Hamilton, to ask if they would sell their services to help create a national Muslim registry, an idea recently resurfaced by Donald Trump’s transition team. Only Twitter said no
posted by adamvasco at 1:24 PM on December 2, 2016 [30 favorites]

I am curious how House Of Cards is going to play out now

I feel like Veep is likewise going to feel very different. Its brand of banal "inside the DC sausage factory" humor doesn't really work when the real president is a fascist who brags about committing sexual assault.
posted by jedicus at 1:26 PM on December 2, 2016 [9 favorites]

JUST IN: @GovHowardDean tells the crowd in Denver, via video, he is NOT running for the DNC chairmanship.

Argh, dammit!
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 1:27 PM on December 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

The Intercept contacted nine of the most prominent such firms, from Facebook to Booz Allen Hamilton, to ask if they would sell their services to help create a national Muslim registry, an idea recently resurfaced by Donald Trump’s transition team. Only Twitter said no.

Mefi's own Maciej Cegłowski via Twitter:

Facebook already *is* a Muslim registry. They can’t exactly refuse to build one.
posted by ryanshepard at 1:29 PM on December 2, 2016 [11 favorites]

Men Screaming 'Donald Trump' Attacked Woman Wearing Hijab On The Subway [NYC]

Is "Donald Trump" the new "Allahu Akbar?"

--@michaelianblack
posted by zachlipton at 1:30 PM on December 2, 2016 [24 favorites]

Rural America, even as it laments its economic weakness, retains vastly disproportionate electoral strength.

I ran some numbers of my own (teaching apportionment this semester, so I already had 2010 census data and House representation in a spreadsheet). I added on some urbanization data and tried to figure out what EV share urban voters have by multiplying the urban population percentage in each state by the number of electoral votes in that state (arguably, since most states are winner-take-all this is an unreasonable proxy, but each voter at least theoretically has an equal opportunity to impact their state's electoral votes). My result was that the urban share of the EV total is 427.8. That's 79.5% of the total electoral vote. The US population is 80.7% urbanized.

Another way of putting this: in urban areas, there's one elector per 582,000 people. In rural areas, one per 540,000. That's a disadvantage, but not wholly an absurd one. The system privileges lightly-populated states, but that includes Rhode Island, DC, Delaware, and Hawaii, all of which are significantly urbanized.
posted by jackbishop at 1:30 PM on December 2, 2016 [7 favorites]

Meanwhile, Congress is hard at work with Rep. Gohmert ranting about his fight [video] to cook ribs at the Capitol for his fellow members: "it's probably the only time here on Capitol Hill where I actually leave a good taste in people's mouth instead of a bitter taste."
posted by zachlipton at 1:32 PM on December 2, 2016

Inefficiency and incompetence are the best outcomes left to us at this point though.
posted by T.D. Strange at 1:34 PM on December 2, 2016 [6 favorites]

Donald Trump risks China rift with Taiwan call; First contact from a US president-elect since diplomatic relations were cut in 1979
posted by anastasiav at 1:35 PM on December 2, 2016 [24 favorites]

Or, to put it another way, Trump's work (to the degree it was his work)

that's the craziest thing - for what else except political press did Pence just not do this himself ?
posted by zutalors! at 1:36 PM on December 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

If you're worried about all the ways your incoming president will ruin the country I'd think that having him spend all his time negotiating small deals would be a great way to keep him busy.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:36 PM on December 2, 2016 [9 favorites]

Donald Trump risks China rift with Taiwan call; First contact from a US president-elect since diplomatic relations were cut in 1979

*facepalm*
posted by PenDevil at 1:38 PM on December 2, 2016 [13 favorites]

There is but one thing I can be sure of in the next presidential election: Jill Stein will run again as third party candidate.
posted by Postroad at 1:38 PM on December 2, 2016 [6 favorites]

Donald Trump risks China rift with Taiwan call; First contact from a US president-elect since diplomatic relations were cut in 1979

OH MY GAWWWWWD. Is there, like, no one who can just take his damn phone away? They did it during the campaign for a couple weeks at a time.
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:41 PM on December 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

Now that you mention it, I think I will start that race war
posted by Vibrissa at 1:41 PM on December 2, 2016 [49 favorites]

I see a lot of truth in the analysis of why Trump won (even though he didn't actually 'win', but he sure got a lot of votes either way):

Yes, racism - backlash and deeply held white American values coming to the surface.
Yes, economics - we have been stagnant and income inequality is bigger than ever.
Yes, a poorly educated electorate who is used to reality TV style popularity contests - Trump was built to succeed with an audience that lacks a strong educational background and watches online bullies succeed
Yes, a broken electoral democracy system - gerrymandering is at it's most extreme and voter disenfranchisement is at it's highest since the Voting Rights Act
Yes, The Internet and fake news - surely there is an impact of very poor quality reporting, a hobbled news media, and the rise of garbage, for profit news, fake and "real" in the form of bullshit propagandizing
Yes, anti-government sentiment - whipped up by the Republicans and cemented by government's coddling of corporate America while most of us have an ever-worsening quality of life
And....

It seems like there are other factors going on here that I want to understand.

How come Western Europe, where there is a robust (if weakened) welfare state and quality education, is also seeing a rise in racist and fascist politics?
Isn't this in a way an extension of anti-governmentism that started showing it's head during California's Taxpayer Revolt era? So why now?

I'd be interested in reading some big picture analysis of this that tries to look at this from some angles I may not have thought of.
posted by latkes at 1:41 PM on December 2, 2016 [22 favorites]

the country fragmenting with the two coastlines probably becoming individual countries, and the middle another, possibly several.

I am literally okay with this. We can have our democracies and the neo-confederates can have their fascist, theocratic paradise. We clearly all hate each other, let's just do the divorce and move on.
posted by LastOfHisKind at 1:44 PM on December 2, 2016 [19 favorites]

So, he's been fulsome in praise to Pakistan, pissing off India, and he's acknowledged Taiwan's government, pissing off China... Christ, any more long-simmering feuds he can put America in a sticky position on? Is he right now trying to figure out the most troublesome thing he can say to Palestine? State Department operatives must be going nuts over this.
posted by jackbishop at 1:44 PM on December 2, 2016 [8 favorites]

In nearly every swing state, voters preferred Hillary Clinton on the economy

In nearly every state, Clinton did better (and Trump worse) with voters worried about the economy than with the overall pool of voters. (Notice how the blue slices in the smaller circles extend further than the blue slices in the larger ones.)

How can that be? How can she win a majority of the majority and still lose? Because she lost with other groups worse.
...
...across the country, the story told by the exit polls seems clear: Trump didn't win because people were worried about the economy. He won thanks to people who were worried about the subjects of immigration and terrorism that he started hammering on from the very first day of his campaign.

posted by kirkaracha at 1:46 PM on December 2, 2016 [46 favorites]

Donald Trump risks China rift with Taiwan call; First contact from a US president-elect since diplomatic relations were cut in 1979

Between this and the Pakistan call I think other countries are rapidly going to realize that, no, he really is just that stupid and easily manipulated. They may make a public show of indignance, either as part of a political strategy or to play to their own population, but I think that privately they will start thinking very differently about the US and its leadership than they have historically.
posted by jedicus at 1:47 PM on December 2, 2016 [35 favorites]

Yeah, given how he's doing with the heads of state, I retract my previous complaint about his involvement in the Carrier deal. If he wants to micromanage a series of plant closings across the US for the next four years, that would be great. Considering the realistic alternatives.
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 1:48 PM on December 2, 2016 [20 favorites]

So, he's been fulsome in praise to Pakistan, pissing off India, and he's acknowledged Taiwan's government, pissing off China... Christ, any more long-simmering feuds he can put America in a sticky position on? Is he right now trying to figure out the most troublesome thing he can say to Palestine? State Department operatives must be going nuts over this.

"You know what, Mahmoud? I know Bibi and he's a nice guy and we'll see about getting your land back and ending the blockade."
posted by Talez at 1:48 PM on December 2, 2016 [8 favorites]

> Destroying faith in government is the Republican strategy working as intended, y'all.

Exactly. With respect to people like prize bull octorok who believe that a "states' rights, but not that kind of states' rights" approach can meaningfully improve their lives and the lives of those around them, I think it's a losing strategy for liberals in the medium to long term. I don't necessarily blame anyone for doing what they need to do to stop the Trump jackboot from stepping on their neck, but advancing a secessionist narrative, even if the intent isn't actually to secede but to merely use it as leverage, is just going to play into the hands of the people who would be quite happy to have the nation torn asunder.
posted by tonycpsu at 1:49 PM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

Trump didn't win because people were worried about the economy. He won thanks to people who were worried about the subjects of immigration and terrorism that he started hammering on from the very first day of his campaign.

In other words, it wasn't economic anxiety. it was racism.
posted by chris24 at 1:49 PM on December 2, 2016 [69 favorites]

I am literally okay with this. We can have our democracies and the neo-confederates can have their fascist, theocratic paradise. We clearly all hate each other, let's just do the divorce and move on.

Except for the people who can't afford to/shouldn't have to move and would be trapped in the modern metaphorical East Germany.
posted by Talez at 1:50 PM on December 2, 2016 [35 favorites]

I am literally okay with this. We can have our democracies and the neo-confederates can have their fascist, theocratic paradise. We clearly all hate each other, let's just do the divorce and move on.

Google Partition of India
posted by zutalors! at 1:51 PM on December 2, 2016 [28 favorites]

People seem almost religiously devoted to ignoring how badly Trump is going to fuck up literally everything.

I have quite literally reached the point where I am considering quitting my job and homeschooling my child so I will at least be with my son when the bombs start to fall. I'm not kidding.
posted by anastasiav at 1:51 PM on December 2, 2016 [21 favorites]

"Economic anxiety" is this year's "ethics in games journalism"
posted by jason_steakums at 1:53 PM on December 2, 2016 [80 favorites]

I am literally okay with this. We can have our democracies and the neo-confederates can have their fascist, theocratic paradise. We clearly all hate each other, let's just do the divorce and move on.

The ironic problem would be how would NYCaliforniastan deal with White-Christian-ISIS out of the former red states and the massive influx of refugees from Trumpland.
posted by T.D. Strange at 1:56 PM on December 2, 2016 [14 favorites]

When the US and China talk to each other formerly, the US officials have to recite several paragraphs worth of boilerplate about how there's only one China and blah blah blah. This stuff is a delicate dance for a reason: hundreds of nuclear weapons are involved.

The best-case scenario from this is that Chinese officials see it as Trump being an idiot who doesn't have a clue what he's doing. If Clinton did this, they'd see it as a super-deliberate snub we'd have to spend years recovering from, but Trump has the plausible deniability of not knowing anything. So yeah, best-case scenario is that China thinks our President is the kind of fool you pat on the head and go "there, there" because he knows not what he has done.
posted by zachlipton at 1:59 PM on December 2, 2016 [23 favorites]

things gonna get hella impractical in a lot of ways over the next 4 years tho
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:59 PM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

The reason Pennsylvania is called Pennsyltucky is that it's got hugely blue Philly and Pittsburgh (and a little bit blue Harrisburg) and nothin' but red in between. Is PA a blue state or a red state? Are we CoastalEliteLand or Trumpistan?
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:59 PM on December 2, 2016 [7 favorites]

We would only separate into different countries as a result of civil war or a devastating foreign war on our soil that made the federal government too poor to hold power.
posted by zutalors! at 1:59 PM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

The reason Pennsylvania is called Pennsyltucky is that it's got hugely blue Philly and Pittsburgh (and a little bit blue Harrisburg) and nothin' but red in between. Is PA a blue state or a red state? Are we CoastalEliteLand or Trumpistan?

Solution: Send all the people in blue cities to Bel Air. First class and drinking orange juice out of a champagne glass.
posted by Talez at 2:01 PM on December 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

We're stuck with the country we have, for better or for worse; secession or separation is not a practical answer.

It may not be practical, but I am wondering if it is now inevitable. No country will last forever - the US has been destabilizing steadily for some time.
posted by latkes at 2:02 PM on December 2, 2016 [8 favorites]

I can turn off the nuance centers of my brain and be like well why the hell CAN'T the president-elect just call up Taiwan and say 'yo, you guys are legit' and cut through all the diplomatic bullshit that necessitates ritual affirmations of the one-China policy and just like, be real, and in that moment I come as close as I can to Understanding The Trump Voter
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:03 PM on December 2, 2016 [14 favorites]

I can turn off the nuance centers of my brain and be like well why the hell CAN'T the president-elect just call up Taiwan and say 'yo, you guys are legit' and cut through all the diplomatic bullshit that necessitates ritual affirmations of the one-China policy and just like, be real, and in that moment I come as close as I can to Understanding The Trump Voter

China has nukes.
posted by Talez at 2:04 PM on December 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

China has nukes.

China also owns a lot of US debt.

But yeah, nukes. And a very large population of males of fighting age (who may become an 'inconvenience' sometime in the near future).
posted by porpoise at 2:05 PM on December 2, 2016 [5 favorites]

Exactly. It's almost brilliant in a "only Nixon could go to China" sort of way: only Trump can throw out every foreign policy rule in the book because nobody expects him to have a clue what he's doing.
posted by zachlipton at 2:06 PM on December 2, 2016 [14 favorites]

massive influx of refugees from Trumpland

Yes. If the coasts stopped being part of the United States, even if you take out the cishet white middle-class liberals, there are going to be a lot of people in the midwest like me who're primarily safe living in these places because of the moderating influences of more liberal states. It is going to be actively dangerous for me to live in Nebraska under those circumstances. Okay, I'm employable in California. Is every other queer, trans, and/or nonwhite person in the entire rest of the country? Is everybody on disability benefits which would then disappear going to be someone the coastal economies can absorb to keep them safe?

I recognize that the separatist idea is appealing. It appeals to me, too. But it only works if you all leave the rest of us behind here. To quite possibly literally die, especially the most vulnerable communities like those with significant disabilities.
posted by Sequence at 2:06 PM on December 2, 2016 [25 favorites]

There is so much money based around our relationship with China that I can only think that if he really had a chance to meaningfully screw it up, the powers that be (the main republican party, a rich businessman, etc.) would step in and stop him. He's not emperor, he can still be stopped (by the Republican party if not by anyone else).
posted by Mitrovarr at 2:07 PM on December 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

And they're serious about the whole One-China thing. All that boilerplate is there to convince and reassure the PRC that no, you're the legitimate government, see, everyone agrees you are! So they don't decide to invade Taiwan.
posted by T.D. Strange at 2:08 PM on December 2, 2016 [7 favorites]

Here's what I'm picturing: 1 year in to Trump: war rhetoric is ramping up between the US and a country or two, a set of draconian, racist laws threaten immigrants who are part of the economic elite, then a massive earthquake strikes LA, and FEMA repeats their performance in Katrina. A lot of economically powerful people are fucking pissed, there is chaos and death in the street, can you not picture secession?
posted by latkes at 2:08 PM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

I recognize that the separatist idea is appealing. It appeals to me, too. But it only works if you all leave the rest of us behind here. To quite possibly literally die, especially the most vulnerable communities like those with significant disabilities.

Also many millions of people would die trying to get to their new subcountry of choice.
posted by zutalors! at 2:09 PM on December 2, 2016 [6 favorites]

FUCKING THANK YOU.

I'm not sure why you're thanking me for being completely terrified, but, uh.... you're welcome?
posted by anastasiav at 2:13 PM on December 2, 2016 [7 favorites]

Also many millions of people would die trying to get to their new subcountry of choice.

I dunno, I kind of figured there would be a 'sorting period' where people moved freely from one to the other. The truth is, neither section wants the people who want to be in the other. So there isn't much reason not to let them go.
posted by Mitrovarr at 2:13 PM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

I wouldn't be surprised if [Apple] start producing a token amount in a small factory in the USA and suddenly receive a tax holiday on their foreign earnings.

CNBC: Wall Street Likes' Trump's Repatriation Holiday Idea

So this is looking more and more like a thing. Of course, the money will come back to corporations which will then buy back stock and boost their price (and thus employee/executive comp) instead of investing in domestic capital.

So how can an individual profit from this? Is someone building a fund or ETF of corporations that have massive overseas cash?

Here's the top 50 according to Oxfam.
posted by JoeZydeco at 2:15 PM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

Can a divided America come together under Trump? Historians weigh in.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 2:15 PM on December 2, 2016

Y'all realize you're basically talking about ethnic cleansing, except under the guise of political preference? I mean, that's kind of wack.
posted by rikschell at 2:15 PM on December 2, 2016 [27 favorites]

I don't really think it'll come to that, I think Trump will be a breathtakingly shitty president for four years and we'll have another recession and some glassy-eyed troglodyte will be appointed to the supreme court and it will profoundly suck, but we'll more or less survive it and elect somebody with actual qualifications in 2020. But! I am not good at predicting! I thought Clinton would win many more electoral votes than she did! So if shit gets really, really bad, and things like Muslim registries and mass deportations and wars with nuclear powers are on the table, then I hope to god that every state that has the political will to say this is not us, we want no part of this, this is not the America we belong to, we will go our own way and not participate in this travesty does so, and puts their money where their mouth is.
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:18 PM on December 2, 2016 [14 favorites]

Also many millions of people would die trying to get to their new subcountry of choice.

I dunno, I kind of figured there would be a 'sorting period' where people moved freely from one to the other. The truth is, neither section wants the people who want to be in the other. So there isn't much reason not to let them go.

Yeah no seriously Google Partition of India.
posted by zutalors! at 2:18 PM on December 2, 2016 [53 favorites]

I sincerely wish that people would stop talking about California or Pacifica secession as if it were anything but fictional. Three of the five largest commercial ports in the US are in CA. The US's main carrier base is in San Diego. If you believe that the US government is going to watch a majority of its trade and military power walk out without a really serious, violent fight, you are crazy.
posted by TypographicalError at 2:19 PM on December 2, 2016 [42 favorites]

I really, really would love to know how much behind-the-scenes stuff Obama (and John Kerry, etc.) are doing right now to try to insulate, as best they can, the country from a Trump presidency. I know that the administration has been working overtime to push new rules and regs through, but what else can they (and would they) do? Can they preemptively try reassure our allies in any way? Can they put up any effective hurdles to help prevent Trump from starting WW3? I have no idea, but I imagine (and hope) that Obama is working around the clock to do anything within his power to try to prevent some of the worst disasters from happening.
posted by triggerfinger at 2:22 PM on December 2, 2016 [6 favorites]

Yeah no seriously Google Partition of India.

The Simpsons with the tl;dr.
posted by Talez at 2:23 PM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

Can a divided America come together under Trump? Historians weigh in.

I wish we could stop with this coming together crap. I don't want to come together with white supremacy and neofascism, I want it to be ground into dust.
posted by Justinian at 2:24 PM on December 2, 2016 [107 favorites]

And they didn't want to come together with a centrist to Republican leaning president who bent over backwards to accommodate them because he was black and had a D next to his funny sounding name. We don't owe them any attempt to come together.
posted by T.D. Strange at 2:28 PM on December 2, 2016 [37 favorites]

I dunno, I kind of figured there would be a 'sorting period' where people moved freely from one to the other.

Even in a fantasy of this happening without a war, "moving freely" is a thing that is not going to exist until we live in a post-scarcity society. I can't even afford right now to move most of my stuff from Ohio to Nebraska, so I'm living here at the moment in an apartment with no furniture except a bed on a metal frame while I pay the bill on a storage unit. And I make more than the US median income. Housing isn't free. Jobs don't grow on trees. Even just in terms of moving people to the coasts under the existing single country to get members of marginalized groups to safe places, it's already prohibitively expensive. We can't just all show up in NY or CA tomorrow and be in states that're willing to protect us. Until we can, we have to be working to make it safe to be queer and in Nebraska. Or black, or Ohio, or trans, or Alabama, or... you get the idea.
posted by Sequence at 2:28 PM on December 2, 2016 [25 favorites]

I remember a Great National Retcon in 07-08 when it was clear to everybody that Katrina was handled terribly and the Iraq War was a completely unnecessary catastrophe and suddenly all the people who were super-smug Bush supporters were like "yeah, that guy's an idiot! we never liked him!" and while I would prefer a mind-shattering revelation of how tragically wrong they were accompanied by uncontrollably sobbing in shame and remorse, I'd accept the former from Trump voters and in such a way a country can come back together
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:30 PM on December 2, 2016 [21 favorites]

We can't just all show up in NY or CA tomorrow and be in states that're willing to protect us. Until we can, we have to be working to make it safe to be queer and in Nebraska. Or black, or Ohio, or trans, or Alabama, or... you get the idea.

Obviously that would be better but it looks like it might come down to abandoning some areas so that we can make other areas safe, or not being able to make any places safe.
posted by Mitrovarr at 2:32 PM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

I think that privately they will start thinking very differently about the US and its leadership than they have historically.

The Chinese leadership thinks at least one decade at a time, arguably two decades, and it will want to get past this, even as it becomes a way to point at democratic elections and say "really?"

But oh, [ ] wants to build a hotel in Taiwan, so there's that.

I'd be interested in reading some big picture analysis of this that tries to look at this from some angles I may not have thought of.

There's some heft to the "WW2 moving out of living memory" argument, but also the sense that the political reins in western Europe and the US are held by [white] people who gloss over their earlier life having fewer creature comforts and a smaller scope of potential and aspiration towards the world, while their own later years are different from their parents' -- smaller and more dispersed families, greater health and care burdens, longer lifespans offset by chronic debilitating conditions (especially ones like Alzheimer's). That feels a bit too much like "Four Yorkshiremen", but I don't think it's that far off.
posted by holgate at 2:34 PM on December 2, 2016 [6 favorites]

>>> Donald Trump risks China rift with Taiwan call; First contact from a US president-elect since diplomatic relations were cut in 1979

>> Between this and the Pakistan call I think other countries are rapidly going to realize that, no, he really is just that stupid and easily manipulated.

> It's almost brilliant in a "only Nixon could go to China" sort of way: only Trump can throw out every foreign policy rule in the book because nobody expects him to have a clue what he's doing.

Don't mind me, I'm just quietly gibbering under my desk in terror and frustration. This - this racist orange talking yam - is throwing away decades worth of carefully cultivated international relationships because he doesn't even understand what they stand for, even at an undergrad pol sci major level. And everyone else is getting the message loud and clear that there are no grown-ups minding the store come Jan 21st.
posted by RedOrGreen at 2:35 PM on December 2, 2016 [76 favorites]

I don't believe that Blue State Attorney Generals fighting back has been discussed yet. It all comes down to how the Supreme Court goes, of course, but it references how much of Obama's goals have been hindered by the Texan Attorney General:

"I go into the office in the morning, I sue Barack Obama, and then I go home.”

If the Supreme Court can be held, the economically strong and solidly blue states may be able to do much the same, tie down as many bad bills as possible in a mire of lawsuits. Perhaps overly optimistically I hope that this election might tip Kennedy towards the liberal side. And I'm praying Roberts is aghast as well - I disagree with him on many things but I think deep down he is an honorable man in a way that Scalia wasn't, and maybe not wanting to be the Chief Justice that rubber stamped the downfall of the country will be enough to keep him on the side of good on some of the key decisions.
posted by Candleman at 2:36 PM on December 2, 2016 [14 favorites]

while I would prefer a mind-shattering revelation of how tragically wrong they were accompanied by uncontrollably sobbing in shame and remorse, I'd accept the former from Trump voters and in such a way a country can come back together

It is a lot easier for folks to change their minds if they can save face and pretend they never changed their minds at all!
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 2:36 PM on December 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

You know, maybe when the apostle John spoke of Gog and Magog he was actually seeing GOP and MAGA.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 2:46 PM on December 2, 2016 [37 favorites]

How scary is the China thing? What will they do now to ensure no loss of face?
posted by prefpara at 2:48 PM on December 2, 2016

John: *writes Revelations* Lord, the End is signaled by trumpets?
God: No, Trump/Pence
John: Right. Trumpets.
God: Fine. They'll know.

posted by Justinian at 2:48 PM on December 2, 2016 [112 favorites]

How scary is the China thing? What will they do now to ensure no loss of face?

8 CNY to the USD.
posted by Talez at 2:49 PM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

And with a name like Justinian your Bible interpretations have authority.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 2:51 PM on December 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

I stole it from the internet.
posted by Justinian at 2:51 PM on December 2, 2016 [9 favorites]

Seriously, I don't think people are following zutalors' very good advice to google Partition of India before talking left-secessionism
posted by tivalasvegas at 2:53 PM on December 2, 2016 [17 favorites]

lol Sarah Palin: Trump's Carrier deal is 'crony capitalism'

But touting the value of free markets, Palin signaled her disapproval if it was a case of “political intrusion using a stick or carrot to bribe or force one individual business to do what politicians insist.”

“When government steps in arbitrarily with individual subsidies, favoring one business over others, it sets inconsistent, unfair, illogical precedent,” she asserted.

And in an apparent jab at Trump, whom she famously endorsed in a rambling speech earlier this year, she asked: “Republicans oppose this, remember? Instead, we support competition on a level playing field, remember? Because we know special interest crony capitalism is one big fail.”

posted by zachlipton at 2:57 PM on December 2, 2016 [23 favorites]

I don't even know what to do anymore when I find myself on Sarah Palin's side.
posted by triggerfinger at 3:01 PM on December 2, 2016 [72 favorites]

Google Partition of India

took me a couple of seconds to realize that google was being used as a verb and not as the named party responsible for a new corporate sponsored partition.

i mean if anything it'd be facebook
posted by poffin boffin at 3:01 PM on December 2, 2016 [22 favorites]

The Chinese leadership thinks at least one decade at a time, arguably two decades, and it will want to get past this, even as it becomes a way to point at democratic elections and say "really?"

I guarantee they're already considering the effects of hacking, information disclosure, and propaganda on the election and how to play the same game in the future. Russia may be first class on all three of those but the Chinese are not far behind and already have a lot of dirt on many people in government.

How come Western Europe, where there is a robust (if weakened) welfare state and quality education, is also seeing a rise in racist and fascist politics? ... I'd be interested in reading some big picture analysis of this that tries to look at this from some angles I may not have thought of.

The destabilization of the middle east leading to a resurgence of Islamic extremism that targets Western targets.
The previous generation of Islamic immigrants not integrating into Western culture in the way they have in the United States with a few of their children becoming terrorists that carried out horrific attacks.
A new influx of refuges, generating fear of additional terrorism/flooded social support systems and racism.
Globalization continuing to eat away at non-skilled labor and high unemployment rates for the young and non-skilled.
The economic crash and lack of accountability for the international financial system.
The financial crisis in Greece and its effects on the Greek populace and the strong economies that helped keep the boat afloat.
Dislike of unelected technocrats from other countries having control over one's own country.
Dynamic and bombastic leaders on the right, not unlike Trump, and boring but sane leaders on the left.
The rise of social media and decreased quality of media literacy and consumption.
posted by Candleman at 3:02 PM on December 2, 2016 [22 favorites]

The Michael Slager case was just adjourned for the weekend in South Carolina. Apparently they can't come to a consensus.

T.J. Holmes ‏@tjholmes
Judge says he has received THREE notes from the jury. Reading first one now. #SlagerTrial

1st note is in the form of a letter from a juror: "I can not in good conscience vote for a guilty verdict." #SlagerTrial #walterscott

2nd note from foreperson says: "It's just one juror that has the issues." #SlagerTrial #WalterScott

3rd note, and I quote: "That juror needs to leave. He is having issues."#SlagerTrial #WalterScott

Sigh. Welcome to America. Where you can be literally shot in the back retreating from a policeman and someone will still not think it's murder because a cop did it.
posted by Talez at 3:14 PM on December 2, 2016 [23 favorites]

Bush ignored intelligence briefing that warned of 9/11. Fucking Trump doesn't even read them. Look for another bloodbath on Uhmerkin soil.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 3:19 PM on December 2, 2016 [8 favorites]

Josh Marshall has some thoughts on Ellison

I think this is profoundly unfortunate because truly the last thing the Democratic Party needs right now is a toxic internecine fight over Israel. And equally important, we are in an era when real anti-Semitism has been rearing its head in the United States in a way it has not done in 80s. That makes the ADL more important than it has been in a very long time. (Since the election, I've been reminding myself that I want to send checks to the SPLC and the ADL.) So it pains me in a very deep way to see a misfire like this.
...
I will put this another way. I like the ADL. I like Ellison. I like the Democratic party. From this point of view, this is F'd up in every direction.

I'm agnostic on who should be Chairman of the DNC.

This is largely where I come down too. No good comes of this, and I really don't want the fight over the head of the DNC to be wrapped up in Judaism and Israel, because that will be awful for everyone for no particular productive purpose. It's sad and it's scary and it takes away attention from people drawing swastikas on the damn subway.
posted by zachlipton at 3:22 PM on December 2, 2016 [10 favorites]

How come Western Europe, where there is a robust (if weakened) welfare state and quality education, is also seeing a rise in racist and fascist politics?
It's the racism. Populists have successfully described welfare as a zero-sum game, where middle-class pensioners will loose if immigrants/refugees are allowed in. Infuriatingly, the established parties have not provided a substantial answer to this, even though that answer is extremely simple: because of demographics, there are already now not enough tax-payers and service workers and doctors and engineers to provide the care needed for the populist voters. In Europe, we desperately need immigrants now. And the capitalists know it and are not shy about it. I really wonder why this isn't articulated clearly within politics, and the only meaningful reason is: it's the racism. And not only in a manipulative sense. I suspect that a number of European politicians are petit bourgeois ignorants and personally are insecure around Muslims and Africans. No actually, I don't suspect that, I know it from talking with several politicians on the left and right. Goddam idiots.

This is why I have zero tolerance for leftists who claim to be colorblind and insist that this is all about the economy. Nope, nope, and nope.

To elaborate a bit, and I have no idea wether this is relevant in US politics, the established parties are loosing members and activists at an alarming scale. As a consequence, the passage to power for political talents is becoming very short: many politicians have no experience outside the equivalent of a BA in something relevant and an internship with the party. Ministers have 15-30 years of experience imagining how life might be outside the bubble. In the context, the populists (left and right) have a platform. And the mainstream politicians who sense there is something there, run after the populist sentiment without really knowing what is about.

Yesterday, as we walked home from a restaurant, my daughter told me about two of her classmates we met on the street who had (predictably) entered the low life. One was no doubt a pusher, another on the edge. It reminded me of one day I was listening to a debate on the radio between a social democrat and a conservative, about what to do with those kids "in the ghetto". Apart from being angry about my neighborhood being called a ghetto, I was incensed that the socialist agreed to the basic premise that some whole areas were somehow destined to fail. She had all the rights to be telling that conservative ignorant that the kids were lost on his watch. But she didn't. Because she too saw my daughter's classmates as others. Back then, I wrote her a mail and she replied graciously. But she hasn't changed at all.
In our photo albums, we have pictures of these two young men when they were kids, bouncy, bright eyed and trusting. There was always another way. To be very specific, that other way would have entailed a lot of engagement on both sides. Khaled's dad had made a career of "bridging" between Muslims and local authorities, and was doing almost exactly the opposite. You would need to be able to call him out without being racist. Difficult, but not impossible. And also setting some boundaries. Ahmed's parents were struggling with almost every trauma imaginable, and not really able to raise children. But back then, relief and foster parents weren't available for Muslim families. I couldn't have helped more than I did - I was on the brink every single day myself back then. But I got like 500% more help than they did.

tl/dr: its the racism
posted by mumimor at 3:24 PM on December 2, 2016 [37 favorites]

Do you want Trump reading a 9/11 memo? He's just tweet "looks like there'll cheap land in Manhattan soon again!"
posted by mrzarquon at 3:24 PM on December 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

So, somewhere there is a go to source that says, "Don't bother reading the news, they just hate on Trump."

It's Trump

Also, how is "Calexit" not the epitome of "fuck you, got mine"?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:27 PM on December 2, 2016 [13 favorites]

Black armbands for January 20th? Sounds good to me.

Sigh. Back in my antichoice days we work black armbands on Jan. 22, for the "March for Life," to honor all the little murdered babeez. So if you get one, be sure and take it off before the 22nd.

I have quite literally reached the point where I am considering quitting my job and homeschooling my child so I will at least be with my son when the bombs start to fall. I'm not kidding

Ever since the 9th when I see an obituary of a famous person who had a good life and died peacefully, I think "Lucky bastard."

I wish we could stop with this coming together crap. I don't want to come together with white supremacy and neofascism, I want it to be ground into dust.

I think of it as a sort of force-field; you can come over to where I am, but only if you leave your hatefulness at the gate. Otherwise, you don't get though, sorry.
posted by emjaybee at 3:28 PM on December 2, 2016 [8 favorites]

Ruth Bader Ginsburg Debating Whether To Cancel Winter Vacation Climbing K2

“Maybe it’s wiser not to go, since the weather is supposed to be pretty bad up there this time of the year—although I have always wanted to summit K2 without any supplemental oxygen, and these upcoming weeks seem like the perfect occasion,” said the liberal-leaning 23-year veteran of the nation’s highest court, who later added that she might just take a slightly less strenuous route than the notoriously difficult South Face for her ascent of the 28,251-foot peak instead.

posted by Rhaomi at 3:28 PM on December 2, 2016 [12 favorites]

I think the General Mattis pick for Secretary of Defense is actually a pretty good one, and I'm very curious to see who gets tapped for State and the rest of the cabinet. I get the feeling that Trump will be relying on the "other people in the room" much more than the "average" President, so I'm really hoping he chooses some capable folks.
posted by Man Bites Dog at 3:30 PM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

The Intercept contacted nine of the most prominent such firms, from Facebook to Booz Allen Hamilton, to ask if they would sell their services to help create a national Muslim registry, an idea recently resurfaced by Donald Trump’s transition team. Only Twitter said no

Man, you know Booz Allen Hamilton has already been working on one for years just for fun
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:33 PM on December 2, 2016 [7 favorites]

I think the General Mattis pick for Secretary of Defense is actually a pretty good one, and I'm very curious to see who gets tapped for State and the rest of the cabinet. I get the feeling that Trump will be relying on the "other people in the room" much more than the "average" President, so I'm really hoping he chooses some capable folks.

Our standards are set so low that "It’s fun to shoot some people." is the more sane choice than a paranoid conspiracy lunatic.
posted by Talez at 3:34 PM on December 2, 2016 [11 favorites]

Clara Jeffery suggests a Bloomberg or Bezos should buy it, especially to avoid the debt falling into foreign hands.


Mark Cuban, please come to the white courtesy phone...
posted by ocschwar at 3:36 PM on December 2, 2016 [9 favorites]

how is "Calexit" not the epitome of "fuck you, got mine"?

I don't think it's every going to happen for reasons that have been expressed above, but I can sympathize with the interest in the idea. If the Supreme Court becomes a majority Republican tool with no chance of reversing it for decades and rampant disenfranchisement/gerrymandering ensures continued control of the Senate and House, what else is there to do if there's a party that's set on redistributing your state's income to their constituents while stomping on your attempts to do things like regulate the environment and support liberal social causes?

At a certain point there's the desire to circle the wagons around what you can control and try to protect it.
posted by Candleman at 3:40 PM on December 2, 2016 [16 favorites]

Wilbur Ross and Steve Mnuchin—Profiteers of the Great Foreclosure Machine—Go to Washington: Mnuchin and Ross led companies that committed fraud to foreclose on millions of homeowners. Now they will be in charge of the entire US economy. What could go wrong?

Democracy Now: Bankers Behind "Great Foreclosure Machine" Join Trump's Cabinet as Treasury & Commerce Secretaries
posted by homunculus at 3:42 PM on December 2, 2016 [7 favorites]

Google Partition of India

took me a couple of seconds to realize that google was being used as a verb and not as the named party responsible for a new corporate sponsored partition.


i mean if anything it'd be facebook

lolz!!!

Since no one could be bothered:
About 11.2 million ( 77.4% of the displaced persons) were in the west, with the Punjab accounting for most of it: 6.5 million Muslims moved from India to West Pakistan, and 4.7 million Hindus and Sikhs moved from West Pakistan to India; thus the net migration in the west from India to West Pakistan (now Pakistan) was 1.8 million.
A crowd of Muslims at the Old Fort (Purana Qila) in Delhi, which had been converted into a vast camp for Muslim refugees waiting to be transported to Pakistan. Manchester Guardian, 27 September 1947.

The remaining 3.3 million (22.6% of the displaced persons) were in the east: 2.6 million moved from East Pakistan to India and 0.7 million moved from India to East Pakistan (now Bangladesh); thus net migration in the east was 1.9 million into India. The newly formed governments were completely unequipped to deal with migrations of such staggering magnitude, and massive violence and slaughter occurred on both sides of the border. Estimates of the number of deaths vary, with low estimates at 200,000 and high estimates at 2,000,000.

That's your sorting period.
posted by zutalors! at 3:43 PM on December 2, 2016 [36 favorites]

they're auto playing the inexactly named History channel, which is currently on a 'UFOs, and the government conspiracies to hide them' kick

I guarantee you if the government is hiding UFOs we'll find out right after Trump goes.
posted by kirkaracha at 3:45 PM on December 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

It's not really possible to be too pessimistic about the future of American democracy. I'm firmly of the opinion that it's already over, and we're entering into what comes next, autocracy.

Maybe it won't be so bad.
posted by y2karl at 3:46 PM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

At a certain point there's the desire to circle the wagons around what you can control and try to protect it.

Those CNN clips of Trump supporters saying they believe that millions of people voted illegally in California? That doesn't mean they think millions of undocumented immigrants voted. That means they are beginning to have a heightened awareness of California as a majority-minority state and are angry that all those Latinos have voting rights, because they think it should be illegal for people like that to be able to vote in US elections. I don't want a Calexit and think it's mostly tech bro foolishness, but the urge to protect your community from a country that thinks it should be "illegal" is a little more complex than "fuck you, I got mine"
posted by moonlight on vermont at 3:46 PM on December 2, 2016 [52 favorites]

I keep thinking of that Emma Goldman quote, "if voting actually changed anything, they would make it illegal." Well, they're trying.

I think that we have to adapt our strategies as well. If more states pass requirements to have IDs, we might need to start initiatives to fund paying for low-income folks to get IDs. If states try to make that illegal, we might have to make those initiatives informal and difficult to trace.

At a certain point (and maybe we're already there), we need to start talking about how voter suppression delegitimizes the authority of the government.
posted by overglow at 3:47 PM on December 2, 2016 [13 favorites]

That's your sorting period.

Southern Baptist Pakistan
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:47 PM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

Our standards are set so low that "It’s fun to shoot some people." is the more sane choice than a paranoid conspiracy lunatic.

Yeah that particular quote gets a lot of heat and perhaps rightfully so, although I think there's some context there.

But this is also the same General who did this...

As his division prepared to ship out, Mattis called in experts in Arab culture to lead cultural sensitivity classes. He constantly toured the battlefield to tell stories of Marines who were able to show discretion and cultural sensitivity in moments of high pressure.
posted by Man Bites Dog at 3:49 PM on December 2, 2016 [15 favorites]

Yeah that particular quote gets a lot of heat and perhaps rightfully so, although I think there's some context there.

There is. He likes to apply extrajudicial justice to people who aren't nice and disagrees with quite strongly.

This is why people who like to shoot people shouldn't be Secretary of Defense. But if I have to choose between regular catshit and the massive stinker of a turd my maine coon just laid I'll take regular catshit.
posted by Talez at 3:51 PM on December 2, 2016

Didn't Mattis also want to decrease our military footprint?

I'm torn, because he seems least awful, and yet I want Democrats to stick to RULES RULES RULES and oppose the waiver.
posted by zutalors! at 3:52 PM on December 2, 2016 [5 favorites]

how is "Calexit" not the epitome of "fuck you, got mine"?

By that logic, so is the American war of independence. The legitimacy of government derives from the consent of the governed, and it's OK to form a new governmental system.
posted by jaduncan at 3:53 PM on December 2, 2016 [21 favorites]

Too much talk about the Carrier thing everywhere... It's a stunt, and BTW the Obama administration did very similar things early on. Not much wrong with it, just not news. I heard someone (Dan Pfeiffer?) quoting a study saying he'd need to do this every day for 30 years to save the same number of manufacturing jobs as the auto bail-out (which ended up making money for tax payers).

Here's hoping that empty gestures are going to be the centerpiece of the Trump administration.
posted by kleinsteradikaleminderheit at 3:53 PM on December 2, 2016

If you believe that the US government is going to watch a majority of its trade and military power walk out without a really serious, violent fight, you are crazy.
I previously noted a 2003 Popular Science article I read (in a hospital where the reading choices were limited) about a speculative California Secession attempt that is squashed in 72 hours because there are so many Federal Military bases, especially air bases, in the state. Google Books copy. The Popular Science fiction piece is set in 2043, with some technological speculation, but it makes a good argument for "don't try it; it'll never work".
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:57 PM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

I think the Orange County win for Clinton got people excited. I've been there several times, and people just say the most breathtakingly racist shit, seriously the most anywhere, except not *about* me because I guess I'm one of the good ones or alternately right there.
posted by zutalors! at 4:01 PM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm torn, because he seems least awful, and yet I want Democrats to stick to RULES RULES RULES and oppose the waiver.

It's just sad that #1 qualification for a Secretary of Defense that is vaguely acceptable is "applicant is not Michael Flynn".
posted by Talez at 4:01 PM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

How Much The Polls Missed By In Every State

There’s been so much talk since Nov. 8 about what the polls got wrong. The national polls are ultimately going to be off by only about 2 percentage points, which is not out of the ordinary historically speaking. State polls however, missed by wider margins. In 41 of the 50 states, the average of the polls underestimated Donald Trump’s margin of victory.
posted by futz at 4:04 PM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

There is. He likes to apply extrajudicial justice to people who aren't nice and disagrees with quite strongly.

This is why people who like to shoot people shouldn't be Secretary of Defense.

Yeah I understand what you're saying, although to be fair he said that in 2005 about the Taliban, with whom we had been fighting for several years at that point. Not exactly extrajudicial justice if you're talking about shooting enemy combatants on the battlefield, in my opinion.

But I guess my point here is that with enough "pretty good" (my opinion) or at least "better than a Maine coon massive turd" (your opinion) people around him like Mattis, perhaps there is room for at least a little bit of optimism. Perhaps.
posted by Man Bites Dog at 4:04 PM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

Yeah I understand what you're saying, although to be fair he said that in 2005 about the Taliban, with whom we had been fighting for several years at that point. Not exactly extrajudicial justice if you're talking about shooting enemy combatants on the battlefield, in my opinion.

Except we invaded them. The Taliban were terrible people there's no doubt. But we walked in, started smashing up the place, and forced them into the role of enemy combatant.
posted by Talez at 4:07 PM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

People seem almost religiously devoted to ignoring how badly Trump is going to fuck up literally everything.

Earlier today I had the revelation that this election feels like the time my dad drove me around Chicago when his neuropathy in his feet meant he couldn't tell if he had his foot on the accelerator or the brake. Only I didn't know that was happening at the time, I just knew my dad was braking every hundred feet or so on Lake Shore Drive while my mother looked a little peeved. The next day my mother explained and then concluded with "I just hate the way he drives these days", like he was going ten miles over the speed limit instead of nearly killing us all.

Yeah. So that's what this feels like. But I still have obligations and other people I care about, so I'm keeping on keeping on.
posted by dinty_moore at 4:10 PM on December 2, 2016 [14 favorites]

Transition team says that the president-elect’s endorsement of the controversial Dakota Access pipeline ‘has nothing to do with his personal investments’
posted by adamvasco at 4:13 PM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

Trump's education pick says reform can 'advance God's Kingdom'

The billionaire philanthropist whom Donald Trump has tapped to lead the Education Department once compared her work in education reform to a Biblical battleground where she wants to "advance God's Kingdom"
...
In the interview, an audio recording of which was obtained by POLITICO, the couple is candid about how their Christian faith drives their efforts to reform American education.

School choice, they say, leads to “greater Kingdom gain.” The two also lament that public schools have “displaced” the church as the center of communities, and they cite school choice as a way to reverse that troubling trend.
...
“Our desire is to be in that Shephelah, and to confront the culture in which we all live today in ways that will continue to help advance God’s kingdom, but not to stay in our own faith territory,” Betsy Devos said.

The comments come from 2001 at "The Gathering" conference. I at least thought we were beating back some of this Dominionist shit when Cruz lost.
posted by zachlipton at 4:16 PM on December 2, 2016 [11 favorites]

Okay, this is a bit of a derail, but can anyone here give me some articles or pointers about what exactly Paul Manafort's endgame or guiding political philosophy might be? Every time he shows up in the news I'm disgusted and horrified but also just, ????? His CV is almost a punchline-- a semi-respectable history of employment with conservative US administrations and then, what the hell happened? This bizarre downward spiral into indefensible dictators-- Marcos, Mobutu, the Angolan warlord, then a step back towards Western World evil with the Yanukovych scam... what possesses a person to seek out a string of employers like that other than malicious sociopathy and a desire to wreck societies? Surely there are less high-stakes ways to make that kind of money; is he just doing it for the evulz? I can understand someone banking their life and fortune on ONE dictator, but five in a row?
posted by moonlight on vermont at 4:17 PM on December 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

"My interests are less in conflict than anyone you've ever met, trust me."[fake]
posted by contraption at 4:17 PM on December 2, 2016

That means they are beginning to have a heightened awareness of California as a majority-minority state and are angry that all those Latinos have voting rights, because they think it should be illegal for people like that to be able to vote in US elections.

I feel impressively dumb. Until now, I hadn't quite realised that all the 'only if you count California' is also a coded way to dismiss PoC votes when discussing the popular vote total. Sometimes life makes me sad.
posted by jaduncan at 4:18 PM on December 2, 2016 [22 favorites]

People seem almost religiously devoted to ignoring how badly Trump is going to fuck up literally everything.

But I still have obligations and other people I care about, so I'm keeping on keeping on.

Not sure if it's so much the people who need to keep on keeping on, more so the "time to accept that he's president and unify" types who are acting like we elected Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush or some other grown adult who might suck a lot but at least still knows how to drive the ship.

It's like a toddler is waving a loaded gun around the room at a dinner party and his stubborn parents are like "don't criticize him, he needs a supportive environment!"
posted by windbox at 4:18 PM on December 2, 2016 [28 favorites]

This is why people who like to shoot people shouldn't be Secretary of Defense. But if I have to choose between regular catshit and the massive stinker of a turd my maine coon just laid I'll take regular catshit.

"When I was a young officer in 1979, I toured what was known as "The Killing Fields" in Cambodia. This is the area where the Khmer Rouge killed off nearly a quarter of the Cambodian population, something like 1.9 million people in just a few years. My guide told me that they started by rounding up all of the teachers. They wanted to extinguish free thought, and the spark of questioning and dissent. Because, to a Totalitarian dictator, an open and inquisitive mind is more dangerous even than a Marine with a rifle."
--General James Mattis

None of the widely touted new technologies and weapons systems "would have helped me in the last three years [in Iraq and Afghanistan]. But I could have used cultural training [and] language training. I could have used more products from American universities [who] understood the world does not revolve around America and [who] embrace coalitions and allies for all of the strengths that they bring us."
Speaking at a professional conference on military transformation, urging the Pentagon to invest in efforts that would "diminish the conditions that drive people to sign up for these kinds of insurgencies." Breaking the Warrior Code (February 2005)


In this age, I don’t care how tactically or operationally brilliant you are, if you cannot create harmony—even vicious harmony—on the battlefield based on trust across service lines, across coalition and national lines, and across civilian/military lines, you need to go home, because your leadership is obsolete. We have got to have officers who can create harmony across all those lines.
At the May 2010 JFCOM Conference Ares blog, Aviation Week (June 2010)


PowerPoint makes us stupid.
Referring to the ubiquitous presentation software at a brief in North Carolina in April 2010, as quoted in We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint (2010) by Elisabeth Bumiller, The New York Times

Mattis is more than his battlefield imagine.
posted by ridgerunner at 4:19 PM on December 2, 2016 [44 favorites]

Also, how is "Calexit" not the epitome of "fuck you, got mine"?

"Fuck you, I've got mine rights and freedoms and I very much want to live in a country where the leadership doesn't threaten to take them away from me because of their religion or -phobia or -ism."

*I'm originally from Texas and I understand the future of this and other secessionist movements, but let's at least be honest about one of the motivations in this particular case.
posted by mudpuppie at 4:28 PM on December 2, 2016 [12 favorites]

Hands up for how many of us are secretly happy about Mattis because he raises the hope that if things get too crazy, we can at least hope for a military coup.
posted by frumiousb at 4:30 PM on December 2, 2016 [31 favorites]

(that was humor, kind of)
posted by frumiousb at 4:31 PM on December 2, 2016 [8 favorites]

Wonkette on General Mattis :

Another thing we like about Mattis: He takes laws and regulations against torture seriously, and was one of the commanding officers who reviewed the misconduct charges against then-Lt. Col. Allen West, who was accused of firing a gun next to the head of a blindfolded Iraqi prisoner during an interrogation. Mattis wrote of West’s behavior, “this shows a commander who has lost his moral balance or watched too many Hollywood movies.”

posted by corb at 4:31 PM on December 2, 2016 [35 favorites]

Looks like Sarah Palin's been passed over, as she's now call Trump's policies Crony Capitalism.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 4:39 PM on December 2, 2016 [9 favorites]

Another thing we like about Mattis: He takes laws and regulations against torture seriously

I thank God every day that we didn't elect someone who might (gasp!) put someone who works on Wall Street anywhere in her staff.

Mattis doesn't sound awful, but I wish that we were discussing the viability of a $15 per hour minimum wage.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 4:43 PM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

And we have a tweet: "The President of Taiwan CALLED ME today to wish me congratulations on winning the Presidency. Thank you!"

Apparently he's watching cable news. Also he's comically missing the point that this isn't about who places the damn phone call.
posted by zachlipton at 4:48 PM on December 2, 2016 [13 favorites]

I mean does he not have caller id or something?
posted by zachlipton at 4:49 PM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

Apple currently has like 30 gajillion dollars stashed overseas they won't bring into the US because it will be taxed. Trump said he wants to force Apple to make the iPhones in the US. I wouldn't be surprised if they start producing a token amount in a small factory in the USA and suddenly receive a tax holiday on their foreign earnings.
posted by PenDevil at 4:14 PM on December 2

I doubt they would need to do anything to partake in the tax holiday proposed. Trump/Mnuchin just want American companies to bring their overseas cash back here so they have proposed forgiving all the back taxes or penalties.


I don't think hyperbolic fear is unassailably good. Someone in another thread was trying to assert that "all Latinx looking people will be deported" and thought that was a completely viable claim. It's not. It's ridiculously unwieldy. It does serve to take attention away from more real, immediate risk.
posted by zutalors! at 4:20 PM on December 2

I can see why you felt the need to push back so hard on me then if that is what you thought I meant. I never said all. I said, "In addition to deporting any Latinx-looking person they can land their hands on I am now worried that[...]" Now I can see how that might read as all Latinx living here but I meant anyone that got caught up in illegal immigration round ups. I lived in California and worked in the restaurant business in the early 80's. It was a very scary time. You never knew who was going to come to work that day and people who did come to work never knew if their relatives and friends were going to be OK. Plus you never knew if the immigration authorities were going to show up and demand to see everyone's papers.

The tricky thing then (and perhaps still) is many of the people who worked and lived in Southern California were born in CA but spent their childhood in Mexico with grandparents so that the parents could work in the USA. Many US citizens therefore dressed and spoke like people from Mexico-- it wasn't always clear if they were legal citizens, legal immigrants or people who came without papers. I knew a number of guys (waiters, kitchen help) who borrowed IDs so that they could get hired and were terrified of being caught.

It was a pretty terrible time and I hoped never to see its like.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:49 PM on December 2, 2016 [8 favorites]

Oh god I didn't even catch that. Official US policy is a multi-paragraph disclaimer before using any word starting with the letter "T" when discussing anything within several thousand miles of China.

And yes, some of that official policy is braindead stupid, but it's stupid in a way that allows everyone to maintain certain polite fictions about the world that are important to ensure people don't start killing each other, so we don't randomly throw it away without an enormous amount of consideration first, none of which Trump is remotely capable of performing.
posted by zachlipton at 4:53 PM on December 2, 2016 [17 favorites]

By that logic, so is the American war of independence. The legitimacy of government derives from the consent of the governed, and it's OK to form a new governmental system.

I heard there was another war, had something to do with the notion of secession.
posted by atoxyl at 4:54 PM on December 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

Awesome, a renegade president called a renegade province.

Nothing will go wrong.

(Is this the beginning of Taiexit? Taiwexit?)
posted by FJT at 4:55 PM on December 2, 2016

Is there a "Taiwan/US/China" 101 that I can read somewhere?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 4:56 PM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

Trump isn't even President yet and he's already destabilizing the world.
posted by Justinian at 4:56 PM on December 2, 2016 [10 favorites]

I can't wait to see what Xi Jinping tweets.
posted by Golden Eternity at 4:57 PM on December 2, 2016 [10 favorites]

I am honestly terrified: he doesn't even know what or how he's fucking up and apparently the idea that he might have minders was.... laughably optimistic. Someone handed him a fucking phone and said "Sir, it's the President of, uh, Taiwan?" and Donnie said "I bet they make good crab Rangoons, hand him over" and we're all going to die.
posted by lydhre at 4:59 PM on December 2, 2016 [32 favorites]

Trump isn't even President yet and he's already destabilizing the world.

About that. Jeet Heer has a theory. Starts here 1. I want you to consider the possibility that Donald Trump is upturning American foreign policy not by accident but by intent.

Ends here 31.An epic clusterfuck of confusion: Trump/Bannon will push bilateralism while State Dept (& Pentagon, likely) will resist.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:01 PM on December 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

oh lydhre, don't be so pessimistic. I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.
posted by Justinian at 5:02 PM on December 2, 2016 [15 favorites]

Hey, wow. We didn't even have to wait until he was in office before he made nuclear war more likely.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:03 PM on December 2, 2016 [8 favorites]

"Do not interfere when your adversary is making a disastrous blunder."

I bet Xi Jinping is too busy calling Japan, the Koreas, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia right now to actually respond to the Taiwan tweet. The opportunity is too good.
posted by ocschwar at 5:03 PM on December 2, 2016 [8 favorites]

Oh he knows exactly what he's doing when he says the 'President of Taiwan'
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 5:05 PM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

"Chiang Kai-shek was a wonderful guy, just tremendous, wanted to make China great again."

[fake Trump]
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:06 PM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

Oh cool I didn't even think of the terrifying possibility that he might piss off China enough that we'll have both Russia and China trying to hack and manipulate the US to different ends.
posted by jason_steakums at 5:06 PM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

Are there any informed adults in trumps Tower of Doom?
posted by futz at 5:08 PM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

Oh he knows exactly what he's doing when he says the 'President of Taiwan'

i mean? i don't think so? i don't think any of the clueless sycophants surrounding him have the slightest idea about the whole china/taiwan situation. i really don't. they thought the white house came fully staffed.
posted by poffin boffin at 5:11 PM on December 2, 2016 [90 favorites]

Somebody does. Somebody who spun Trump up and set him down aimed at the One China policy.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:13 PM on December 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

he probably thinks the nuclear football is a real football, he's gonna ask tom brady to sign it.
posted by poffin boffin at 5:15 PM on December 2, 2016 [11 favorites]

I think there's a small but fairly tiny chance he said "President of Taiwan" in full knowledge of what that means. I think there's a 0% chance he understands what he's doing when it comes to revamping the entire role of the US into the world in what Jeet Heer is calling a pre WWII mercantalist system according to some sort of ethnonationalist dream cooked up by Bannon.
posted by zachlipton at 5:17 PM on December 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

About that. Jeet Heer has a theory.

Haha great, we can relax. Trump does have a plan! Only, it's to undo the global economic order which has successfully prevented a war between the great powers representing one of, if not the longest periods of peace in history. So that he/we can "make better deals." I would honestly rather he have no plan.
posted by feloniousmonk at 5:17 PM on December 2, 2016 [16 favorites]

Oh he knows exactly what he's doing when he says the 'President of Taiwan'

Definitely. Obama Trump is playing 11-dimensional chess here and people think it looks dumb only because as mere mortals they cannot comprehend its genius.
posted by indubitable at 5:21 PM on December 2, 2016 [6 favorites]

1.) He has property in Taiwan he wants to develop, just like every other "random" country he's been in contact with in the past week, and

2.) Do we not remember how many times he kept yelling about GHINA during the campaign? It didn't really resonate with most Americans to the point of it sounding bizarre but I think DJT really does have some kind of simmering resentment against China and their global financial position. I would not expect this to be the last time he provokes them.
posted by moonlight on vermont at 5:25 PM on December 2, 2016 [16 favorites]

Somebody does. Somebody who spun Trump up and set him down aimed at the One China policy.

Honestly, I think it can be ever simpler than that. Go back to Trump's Razor. Trump's basic foreign policy position has been that he'll be tough, but he wants to be friends with everyone. If you have no clue what you're doing and just generally want to reset all foreign policy everywhere and be generally friendly in service of no particular goals other than hoping foreign leaders think you're a swell guy, you'd do exactly what he's doing now: talking to everyone, praising them effusively, inviting them to drop round for a visit if they're in the neighborhood, etc... Why would he think that he shouldn't he talk to the President of Taiwan? We want to be friendly with Taiwan, she's an important person, he wants to build a hotel there, so of course he'll pick up the phone. Why overcomplicate it and think there's anything more to it than that?

What he has no conception of is that a lot of countries being friendly with each other is based on various polite fictions we've all agreed to assume in the name of moving on with our lives and moving on to other issues. With those polite fictions, it's not possible to just be friendly with everyone. It's like inviting two spouses locked in a horrible divorce to your Christmas party; you may think that you're not taking sides and just being nice to everyone, but the reality is that you're messing with something far bigger than yourself. And of course, you've vowed to defend one spouse already and the other one has a massive army. It's madness.
posted by zachlipton at 5:27 PM on December 2, 2016 [58 favorites]

By that logic, so is the American war of independence. The legitimacy of government derives from the consent of the governed, and it's OK to form a new governmental system.

I heard there was another war, had something to do with the notion of secession.
posted by atoxyl at 0:54 on December 3 [+] [!]

I did consider this. Famously, the Confederacy did not really score very well on 'consent of the governed'.

I don't think there's a useful analogue between the Confederacy starting a war and (presumably) a referendum in California followed by pressure for the US to allow withdrawal. Much as, say, the UK once undertook the highland clearances but still allowed a Scottish referendum on independence.
posted by jaduncan at 5:28 PM on December 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

I think there's a small but fairly tiny chance he said "President of Taiwan" in full knowledge of what that means. I think there's a 0% chance he understands what he's doing when it comes to revamping the entire role of the US into the world in what Jeet Heer is calling a pre WWII mercantalist system according to some sort of ethnonationalist dream cooked up by Bannon.

I don't think they realize that trying to break the International capitalist system won't work like it would have back in the '30s. The US isn't the unquestioned center of manufacturing or even a dominant force of world GDP anymore. If the US decides it's going to retreat from the international stage I have a feeling either EU or China (EU is more equipped, China wants it more) will be more than happy to take the privileged position that you get from being the leading economy in the post-Bretton Woods world order.

The world's trade isn't going to fall into bilateralism and ethnocentrism because the US suddenly decides to aim a nuke at its economic foot as Bannon would believe. Worst case the world lands bilateral deals to deal with Trumpism and routes around the damage otherwise. There's way more people coming into the consumer class than ever before in China and India.
posted by Talez at 5:29 PM on December 2, 2016 [7 favorites]

Other difference: I suspect large numbers of the hardcore GOP leadership would quite like a situation where CA's electoral votes and worrying tendency to demand things like environmental regulation would no longer be their problem.

Not that I'm in favour of any of it, I can just totally see how it could be agreed to if it was something CA's electorate actually wanted to do.
posted by jaduncan at 5:31 PM on December 2, 2016

Surely Trump is not stupid enough to be unable to see the benefits we get from being at the apex of the global financial pyramid. If he is, FSM help us, because the Republican fulmination about the debt will suddenly have meaning in a way it hasn't previously.

The system benefits us in a way that far exceeds the cost. That would hold true for every one of us if the Republicans weren't such greedy pigs and were willing to let some of their table scraps go toward helping out the workers displaced by the offshoring of manufacturing. Their short-sighted treatment of said workers is largely responsible for the backlash against the very thing that gives us one of the highest standards of living in the world. The very thing that enables them to become so wealthy in the first place.

Not only is it good for us and our trading partners economically (for the most part), it also helps keep the peace. China isn't going to upset the apple cart as long as the economic order allows them to modernize their nation at the rate they have been. Take that away and they have no reason to let Taiwan be or maintain the two-system policy with regard to Hong Kong. Or even stay out of the resource-rich parts of eastern Russia that they have had their eye on for longer than we have been a nation.
posted by wierdo at 5:39 PM on December 2, 2016 [7 favorites]

I guess Trump himself becoming President For Life seems quite unlikely, but I think the parallels to Boris Yeltsin many people have made during the last year-plus still hold as a potential scenario: eight years of spectacular incompetence and health scares during which he dismantles and privatizes everything he can get his hands on at bargain-basement prices, by the end of which everyone is so desperate for stability that they accede to one of his more competent-looking toadies taking over and we get an American Putin.
posted by XMLicious at 5:40 PM on December 2, 2016 [23 favorites]

I don't think they realize that trying to break the International capitalist system won't work like it would have back in the '30s. The US isn't the unquestioned center of manufacturing or even a dominant force of world GDP anymore. If the US decides it's going to retreat from the international stage I have a feeling either EU or China (EU is more equipped, China wants it more) will be more than happy to take the privileged position that you get from being the leading economy in the post-Bretton Woods world order.

Well, yeah-- China is already doing that. I'm thinking the Taiwan thing might work out well for them in the end, though. Trump starts defending Taiwan (because who really cares about Taiwan), China blusters. Trump makes a deal-- leave Taiwan alone in return for trade concessions. In the meantime, they close their fist on the entire region. They can always deal with Taiwan later. Trump pulls back behind national borders, and China keeps investing in Africa and South America, and they get better at is as they go along. In the meantime, they decimate the wildlife population of Africa for Chinese medicine because nobody else cares, and they get access to the resources they need to eventually take on India. Anyone feel like brushing up on their Mandarin?
posted by frumiousb at 5:40 PM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

Surely Trump is not stupid enough to be unable to see the benefits we get from being at the apex of the global financial pyramid.

right, but he thinks the way to keep us there is to default on all international debt, which is what he would do if it was his own debt.
posted by poffin boffin at 5:41 PM on December 2, 2016 [5 favorites]

From Heer's tweets:

There are some shrewd foreign policy thinkers who are sympathetic to aspects of Trumpism (say Andrew Bacevich

Wha? Which aspects of Trumpism is Bacevich sympathetic to? I've only read a couple of his books and a handful of his articles, but he doesn't strike me as on board with Trumpism in the least (the opposite, if anything). Googling now to see what I can find... but what am I missing here?
posted by Rykey at 5:41 PM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

@passantino CNN reporting China has already contacted the White House over Trump’s call with Taiwan pres

Oh boy. Lucky Obama.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:43 PM on December 2, 2016 [46 favorites]

Well, yeah-- China is already doing that. I'm thinking the Taiwan thing might work out well for them in the end, though. Trump starts defending Taiwan (because who really cares about Taiwan), China blusters. Trump makes a deal-- leave Taiwan alone in return for trade concessions. In the meantime, they close their fist on the entire region. They can always deal with Taiwan later. Trump pulls back behind national borders, and China keeps investing in Africa and South America, and they get better at is as they go along. In the meantime, they decimate the wildlife population of Africa for Chinese medicine because nobody else cares, and they get access to the resources they need to eventually take on India. Anyone feel like brushing up on their Mandarin?

China is trying to do it their own way but their inability (unwillingness) to open up the yuan to full convertibility and their apprehension to letting their currency appreciate with demand (or print the living shit out of it to satisfy that demand) is what still holds them back from becoming the great financial power they want to be. They may be able to start a yuan bloc in Africa and possibly South America but if I had to look a decade post-Trump I'd put more money on the Euro supplanting USD instead of CNY.
posted by Talez at 5:44 PM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

And now for some Domestic Policy...

Politico Trump's education pick says reform can 'advance God's Kingdom'

In the interview, an audio recording, which was obtained by POLITICO, the couple is candid about how their Christian faith drives their efforts to reform American education.

School choice, they say, leads to “greater Kingdom gain.” The two also lament that public schools have “displaced” the Church as the center of communities, and they cite school choice as a way to reverse that troubling trend.

posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:46 PM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

like i don't think his understanding of the world is much more advanced than a spoiled greedy toddler who just grabs whatever he wants and screams if it's taken away or if he's told it belongs to someone else, and will shrilly deny his involvement when he's caught.

see also: will smash a toy he's been told to share so no one else can use it

he's a dumb stupid dangerous manbaby who has no self control and no actual understanding of real world consequences for his actions, and instead of having people who could rein him and his greatest idiocies in, he's surrounded by venal enablers who would eat a mile of his shit just to gobble the hole it came from as long as it kept them in power themselves
posted by poffin boffin at 5:50 PM on December 2, 2016 [30 favorites]

The President of Taiwan CALLED ME today to wish me congratulations on winning the Presidency. Thank you!

He lied.

@kylegriffin1 Taiwanese media is reporting that the call was organized by Trump's staff
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:51 PM on December 2, 2016 [49 favorites]

What if Trump's plan is actually to dissolve the world into chaos so everyone has to start buying military supplies from the geographically isolated US?

I...just don't even know anymore.
posted by corb at 5:57 PM on December 2, 2016 [8 favorites]

The Taiwan News Trump wants to build luxury hotels in Taiwan’s Taoyuan: mayor

A woman working for the Trump Organization came to Taoyuan in September, declaring the company’s investment interest in Taiwan’s Taoyuan Aerotropolis, a large urban planning development project surrounding the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.[...]

Reports also said the meeting suggested that Eric Trump, the son of the President-elect, will come to Taiwan personally to see about the potential business opportunity by the end of the year.

Jesus Christ. He has met/spoken with how many heads of state and how many of them involved countries where he is building or planning to build? If we are lucky he will spend very little of time being Donald Trump, US President and most of his time being Donald Trump, CEO Trump Empire.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:01 PM on December 2, 2016 [9 favorites]

Oh boy. Lucky Obama

Someone linked to it here, maybe, but this article on presidential phone calls is fascinating and terrifying.

The relevant part: phone calls to the Chinese government, at least in the Bush era, require(d) the president to verbally recap our treaties with China before getting to business.

Clinton would have done it. Trump will mispronounce every leader's name.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 6:04 PM on December 2, 2016 [9 favorites]

Surprised to see CalExit going as far as it has here. Screw the military bases and other assets; CalExit goes nowhere unless they can also take the states they're getting their water from with them. Otherwise everyone in New Free California will get very thirsty, very quick.
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:04 PM on December 2, 2016 [24 favorites]

right, but he thinks the way to keep us there is to default on all international debt, which is what he would do if it was his own debt.

Doesn't Peter Thiel want to throw the nation into chaos to end democracy? And aren't he and the other Trumpist fellow travelers big fans of returning to the gold standard? I can see them pushing for a US sovereign default; it would probably push gold prices through the roof and pretty well fuck up the financial system.
posted by indubitable at 6:06 PM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

"We could run away and just go back up in the hills and live very safely and very comfortably — or are we going to exist in the Shephelah and try to impact the view of the community around us with the ideas we believe are more powerful ideas of a better way to live one’s life and a more meaningful and a more rewarding way to live one’s life as a Christian?" Dick DeVos says. "Our job is to figure out in the contemporary context — how do we get the pig bones out of our culture?"

How generous of them! They've got it all figured out, nothing to learn anything from anyone else, but will oh so graciously try to fix everyone else.

I do wonder what will happen when. They realize Christians aren't the only ones who can run religious schools.
posted by ghost phoneme at 6:06 PM on December 2, 2016 [6 favorites]

Jesus Christ. He has met/spoken with how many heads of state and how many of them involved countries where he is building or planning to build? If we are lucky he will spend very little of time being Donald Trump, US President and most of his time being Donald Trump, CEO Trump Empire.

Serious question: could building permits etc count as gifts for the purposes of the emoluments clause? If so, this seems like it's day 1 impeachable.
posted by jaduncan at 6:06 PM on December 2, 2016 [12 favorites]

Oh he knows exactly what he's doing when he says the 'President of Taiwan'

Trump's Razor wasn't a disposable. We didn't throw it away after the election ended.
posted by Slackermagee at 6:09 PM on December 2, 2016 [5 favorites]

powerpoint makes us stupid - mattis
Edward Tufte agrees (pdf)
posted by j_curiouser at 6:10 PM on December 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

If it makes anyone feel any better, I'll wager that parallels to this thread are going on inside every executive, central committee and cabinet around the world, right now.
posted by Devonian at 6:12 PM on December 2, 2016 [15 favorites]

This is just exasperating to read. I leave it here in case you want to do some some combination of eye rolling and muttering under your breath.

WaPo Many Trump supporters willing to let him pick and choose what promises to fulfill
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:13 PM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

LOL, Maddow's response to the "Interesting" tweet is to ask if Donald is actually interested.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:14 PM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

> Trump will be like eighty years old after two terms.

Flagged as offensive.

> but I think the parallels to Boris Yeltsin many people have made during the last year-plus still hold as a potential scenario: eight years of spectacular incompetence

What the shit, people?
posted by tonycpsu at 6:14 PM on December 2, 2016 [8 favorites]

Devonian, that does not make me feel any better. Hold on to your breeches, folks, we'll have to see if the world can ride out this epic confluence of power and stupidity.
posted by lydhre at 6:15 PM on December 2, 2016

Alcohol is to blame for many of society's problems, but Trumpism sure as shit ain't one of them.

Errrr . . I think it's a huge part of it at the core. Have you looked at the eyes of his inner circle? Between Bannon, Conway, Manafort, and Dr. Lebowski they're 80 years old in tree years. "Famously Alcoholic" trails just about every longtime Trump insider. They're not just ignorant racist fuck-ups, they're trying to be.

As soon as hearts start a-breakin' you can bet the punches, pistols, and police will be whipped up. The only reason they haven't been photographed waking up naked on the lawn yet is our news media are run by shit and our entertainment 'journalists' are too busy stalking . . . whoever's Britney these days.

It's gonna get cokey real quick, too. Tell me Corey "The Situation" Lewandowski isn't gonna angle for Peruvian ambassador.
*snf*
Believe me.
*snf*
Yuuuge.
posted by petebest at 6:36 PM on December 2, 2016 [5 favorites]

GOP lawmakers praise Trump for Taiwan call

Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.) applauded Trump for “making a strong statement” with the historic conversation.
"I commend [President-elect] Trump for reaching out to the democratically-elected President of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen,” Salmon said in a statement to The Hill.

Salmon chairs the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific. He is a former missionary in Taiwan, and attended the recent inauguration of the new Taiwanese president.

"America has always been a champion of democratic values and individual freedoms, and I applaud the President-elect for making a strong statement in support of those values around the world,” he added.

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a Trump loyalist who also serves on the Foreign Affairs panel, downplayed the phone call in a statement to The Hill.

"President-elect Trump recognizes that reaching out to every world leader is a critical component of an effective foreign policy," Meadows said. "It's not policy, it's a phone call."

In a statement released Friday night, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) said Trump's move "reaffirms our commitment to the only democracy on Chinese soil."

Also:

...House GOP Policy Committee Chairman Luke Messer (R-Ind.), a member of the leadership team, said he "loved" Trump's bold move.

...Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) took to Twitter to praise the president-elect.

"Plaudits to President-elect Trump for his historic phone call to Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen. Strong message to China. New day in Asia,” he wrote.

jesus christ and WTF.
posted by futz at 6:38 PM on December 2, 2016 [21 favorites]

@iamchrisscott: .@realDonaldTrump hey dude what's your phone number, since everyone on the fucking planet seems to already have it
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:43 PM on December 2, 2016 [23 favorites]

Is there a "Taiwan/US/China" 101 that I can read somewhere

Wikipedia has a write up here, but it is pretty long.

I'm going largely off my memory, and I'm not expert. But here goes.

Basically, the Chinese Civil War ended in 1949 and the Communists won. The Nationalists (which were the government) fled to Taiwan and established an autocratic regime there, intending to take back the Mainland someday. The US chose to recognize Taiwan's government, which is called the Republic of China (the name of the pre-Communist government), because Containment. So, the Republic of China (in Taiwan) had the UNSC seat and was recognized by the West as "China". Even all official maps of the ROC (in Taiwan) didn't only show Taiwan, they always included the parts they had no power of (which is the entirety of China). In the 70s Nixon saw an opportunity and "went to China". Recognition of the official "China" changed after that. Both the US and the PRC agreed there was one China, and the PRC was officially that China (though there's some disagreement about the legalese because the US translation uses the word "acknowledge", while the Chinese translation uses the stronger term, "recognize"). But the ROC still had relations with the US, and the US promised to defend it if it was under attack, and they both agreed that the decision whether or not to be integrated into China should be settled by peaceful dialogue by both sides. And that's the "status quo" for the last 40 or so years.

And in those 40 years, things changed. The island become a real democracy, with it's own identity. The pan-Blue political side, which includes the Nationalists, doesn't want take over Mainland China anymore and instead wants to establish some form of reunification with the PRC. So when they're in power, relations are usually good with the Mainland. The pan-Green, pro-Independence side would rather have full independence, but in reality they know that there's a lot missiles pointed at their head and they shouldn't provoke China, so they probably would be okay with the status quo until the sun blows up. The current president is part of the pan-Green side, so when they're in power usually things are a little more tense.

And Taiwan is not officially (de jure) recognized as a country by most of the world, except 20 small/minor/island countries, like some in the Caribbean or Pacific. But Taiwan still has it's own (de facto) money, borders, and military. The US has a non-embassy offices there that are staffed with retired or former State Dept. people that function pretty much as an embassy. Other big countries don't have embassies either, but "trade offices" that function a lot like embassies. So, it's kinda with this mental fiction of being a non-country that functions like a country that's the status quo. With all these steps taken so that officially Taiwan is not recognized, it is a big deal when the US president-elect talks directly to the president of the Republic of China (in Taiwan). I mean, it made the news earlier this year when even former VP Dan Quayle visited Taiwan.
posted by FJT at 6:49 PM on December 2, 2016 [43 favorites]

"Bold" and "strong" used to describe good coffee; now its a Republican euphemism for utterly batshit things PEOTUS does.
posted by gatorae at 6:52 PM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

GOP rep: Trump has 'extra-constitutional' view of presidency

Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) has repeatedly made the point that Trump hasn’t even been sworn in yet, even as he’s vowed to continue to probe whether Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton, mishandled classified information.

But Amash, who serves on the Oversight Committee, said the powerful panel should take a closer look at some of these issues.

“My job is to uphold the Constitution, follow the rule of law and represent all my constituents,” Amash said. “I think we should treat him the same way we treat any president. That means we need to make sure there are no conflicts of interest, just like we would do if Hillary Clinton had won.

“If we were going to look at the issues for Hillary Clinton, then we should also look at them for Donald Trump. I just think the same standard should apply.”
posted by futz at 7:00 PM on December 2, 2016 [22 favorites]

GOP lawmakers praise Trump for Taiwan call

Cool, he dumbasses his way into a situation and gets praise heaped upon him by sycophants, like when you give your dog a treat for his birthday and he's like, I don't know what I did but dang, I must be a good boy! Failing upwards, the American way.
posted by jason_steakums at 7:03 PM on December 2, 2016 [17 favorites]

It's good you did that, Donald! It's good you did that! Don't send me to the cornfield!
posted by Justinian at 7:04 PM on December 2, 2016 [34 favorites]

For the liberal elites, it’s come to this. We’ve been reduced to this.

I predit a HUUUUUGE run on popcorn for this season. *Stock up now* or experience facepalm angst!
posted by Twang at 7:04 PM on December 2, 2016

Apparently, we have pivoted from Taiwan back to jobs.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:09 PM on December 2, 2016

I'm torn, because he seems least awful, and yet I want Democrats to stick to RULES RULES RULES and oppose the waiver.

And we should stick to the rules regarding Mattis, no matter how much you like him. The law regarding civilian control of the new Department of Defense was written in 1947 after seeing how the military took over civilian roles in both Germany and Japan. Now that we have a neo-fascist entering the White House is precisely the wrong time to start bending the rules regarding civilian control of the military. History ... doomed ... repeat .. and all that.

As Trump said, Mattis is the closest thing to General Patton, a guy you need when you want to kill a lot of people and blow stuff up. That should scare you. Patton is not the guy you want for civilian control of the military.

But hey, for all you Mattis fans, the road to fascism is paved with small stepping stones.
posted by JackFlash at 7:12 PM on December 2, 2016 [30 favorites]

yes but what if he gives us the good kind of fascism where the right ppl are in charge
posted by poffin boffin at 7:15 PM on December 2, 2016 [8 favorites]

What if his second choice for the job is someone like Giuliani?
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 7:17 PM on December 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

Trump's PEOTUS run is so absurd and reality-breaking that it could not have been accepted as plausible - outside of comic books (and even then). Like, Judge Dredd and shit.

C'mon, we got a supervillain in Trump.

I guess I've hit the 'deal with it' stage:

Could we please, PLEASE!, have the superheroes who have been hiding from the MSM start showing up now and give us a hand?
posted by porpoise at 7:19 PM on December 2, 2016 [5 favorites]

Donald Trump's New Defense Secretary Will Keep Ties with Theranos
posted by bukvich at 7:20 PM on December 2, 2016

What if his second choice for the job is someone like Giuliani?

You make it sound like Democrats have only two choices. They can filibuster forever, as Republicans have demonstrated, until there is an acceptable candidate. Show a little backbone.
posted by JackFlash at 7:21 PM on December 2, 2016 [6 favorites]

We're up to, what, 3 generals either confirmed to be or under consideration to be in the Cabinet? That's way too many. This is not a military junta. They should oppose the waivers on those grounds alone regardless of who the alternative to Mattis is.
posted by Justinian at 7:21 PM on December 2, 2016 [29 favorites]

+1 JackFlash

block:
Mattis (rules)
Petraeous (criminally untrustworthy)
DeVos (1A issues w church-state)
Mrs McConnel l(nepotism)
Mnuchin (utter scumbag)
...
kos makes a distinction: we're past obstruction and into resistance. concur.
posted by j_curiouser at 7:24 PM on December 2, 2016 [12 favorites]

If anyone has a line on a bomb shelter I'm a good cook and even better company.
posted by dis_integration at 7:27 PM on December 2, 2016 [5 favorites]

They can filibuster forever, as Republicans have demonstrated

Well, if Republicans were willing to not confirm a justice, shut down the government, etc I'm not sure they won't be just as willing to get rid of the filibuster. Normally the argument would be they might pay some political price for this, but clearly they wont (see my previous sentence --- if the Supreme Court thing didn't cost them then I can't see how this would). The other argument against it would be the "well in the future when the Democrats are in charge again" but they don't appear to be taking the long view so much.

I mean, I guess it can't hurt if the alternative is to confirm anyway... but I don't think the Dems can actually block things, as I suspect the GOP is much more willing to throw away the filibuster than the Dems were.
posted by thefoxgod at 7:27 PM on December 2, 2016 [5 favorites]

The telephone call between Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen and U.S. president-elect Donald Trump was agreed to ahead of time, said presidential office spokesman Alex Huang on Saturday.

"Of course both sides agreed ahead of time before making contact," Huang told Reuters, when asked about Trump's Twitter message stating that it was Tsai who called him.

(that is the whole article)
posted by futz at 7:32 PM on December 2, 2016 [5 favorites]

What a silly archaic rule. What could a bunch of clowns all the way back in 1947 know about maintaining stability in an increasingly fanatical and authoritarian world
posted by theodolite at 7:40 PM on December 2, 2016 [17 favorites]

Never forget that the GOP can still stop this but they'd rather roll the dice on world war so long as they get to repeal Obamacare
posted by theodolite at 7:41 PM on December 2, 2016 [35 favorites]

Funny how back in the early postwar era even the hardcore conservatives managed to understand the social contract between labor and management and how being completely rapacious was bad for business and for the country. Oh how far we've fallen from this stuff.
posted by wierdo at 7:42 PM on December 2, 2016 [5 favorites]

Mrs McConnel l(nepotism)

If you can't call her by her name just go straight to OfMitch, it's cuter.

guess she can't do any real harm to the nation since she's just the little woman, though
posted by queenofbithynia at 7:47 PM on December 2, 2016 [13 favorites]

Donald Trump's New Defense Secretary Will Keep Ties with Theranos

I take back all of my hopes in Mattis - if he was an X-Com soldier, his Psi rating is effectively 0 and will be mind-controlled at will. Seriously? You fell for Theranos and advocated it getting Federal funding for deployment for soldiers? You're a fucking moron/susceptible to being conned and have zero sources of reality-based Science advice.

Seriously, Theranos? That particular Family must have a load of blackmail material on you, if you haven't backpedaled since day 1 of the downfall.
posted by porpoise at 7:49 PM on December 2, 2016 [11 favorites]

Do we need to be worried about faked Executive Tweets, or fake faked Executive Tweets? I was thinking, if China didn't already ban Twitter, they could insert fake ones whenever his Twitter page is viewed through their networks, even only for a limited period of time and it would appear it had been deleted. Or conversely, Trump could tweet something as a way of provoking a particular response, then delete it and claim that the NSA had gone rogue and faked it, or that Twitter, Inc. is collaborating with enemies of the state, or something like that.

In any case, I would think that the fact he can feasibly say anything at all, no matter how crazy or stupid, may create novel problems.
posted by XMLicious at 7:51 PM on December 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

Prior her Chao's nomination, I didn't know Mitch McConnell was married and always thought he was gay

She was married to him the whole time she was Secretary of Labor back in the Bush years, too. not, let's say, the best Secretary of Labor we've ever had. but I can take comfort, I guess, in the knowledge that in another decade nobody will remember a blessed thing about the Trump years either.
posted by queenofbithynia at 7:53 PM on December 2, 2016

WaPo Many Trump supporters willing to let him pick and choose what promises to fulfill

Terry said he has no problem with Trump’s pick for treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs executive and Hollywood producer who co-founded a bank during the financial crisis that foreclosed on thousands of homeowners.

“Let’s face it, he’s going to look out for corporations, to make things work for them, to bring jobs back home,” Terry said. “And as things trickle down — as they’re going to because it’s America — the little guy will get something, too.”

When have things ever trickled down? Are there any examples of that ever working?

His wife agreed, adding: “It was a debate. . . . He doesn’t always think. He’s not a politician. He just says it.”

Urge to kill...rising.

The deal didn’t happen quite that way. Carrier agreed not to shift about 800 manufacturing and management positions south of the border, in exchange for a $7 million incentive package from the state. About 1,300 jobs will still move to Mexico, however.

Meyer and other Trump supporters shrugged at these details, saying that’s just how business works.

“At least he put forth the effort,” she said. “And he might not be able to do that with everybody. . . . But I want us to start producing things again. I want to buy a clothes item that’s made in the good ol’ U.S.A. I want to buy a sweeper that comes from the U.S.A. We don’t produce, and that really bothers me.”

The Obama economy has now created 15 million jobs. I'm sure she gives Obama 18,750 times the credit for putting forth the effort.

Made in America: A buyer’s guide for Donald Trump: "over 100 examples of U.S. manufacturers and businesses ready and able to produce the same goods he makes overseas."
posted by kirkaracha at 7:56 PM on December 2, 2016 [33 favorites]

but I can take comfort, I guess, in the knowledge that in another decade nobody will remember a blessed thing about the Trump years either.

I on the other hand, believe that this "presidency" will have ramifications that will echo through the decades to come.
posted by futz at 7:57 PM on December 2, 2016 [9 favorites]

I can take comfort, I guess, in the knowledge that in another decade nobody will remember a blessed thing about the Trump years either.

Pro: that's true. Con: because we'll all be dead. Sad!
posted by kirkaracha at 7:58 PM on December 2, 2016 [15 favorites]

in the knowledge that in another decade nobody will remember a blessed thing about the Trump years either.

I should imagine we'll be looking forward, not back.
posted by jaduncan at 7:58 PM on December 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

> Mrs McConnell (nepotism)

Can we not? Elaine Chao was director of the Peace Corps and Deputy Secretary of Transportation before she ever married Mitch McConnell, and after that a member of George H.W. Bush's cabinet. Whom she married has nothing to do with her qualifications for office. This should be crystal clear to anyone who voted for a former First Lady for President.

If you want to block her appointment, find a real reason.
posted by mbrubeck at 8:05 PM on December 2, 2016 [56 favorites]

twitter: imho tweets are presidential records, illegal to delete or modify. dunno if archives is on the same page.

the more i think about it, the more i think dems should adopt the R approach to confirmation and legislation. they don't have the power to 'no meetings no hearings no votes'. but they can make the Rs fight hard for every inch of their agenda. fight. hard. even on marginally-not-destructive-legislation. don't legitimize any R idea, even mildly good ones.

every time a dem has a chance to talk about bannon, lead in with, "white supremecist Bannon..."

every time a dem has a chance to talk about medicare, lead in with, "the ryan-trump-mcconnell medicare betrayal..."

one minute interview on cnn? no matter the question, "carrier jobs are only kept in the US using indiana's trump-pence income tax on the white working class."

time for our side to exploit truthiness. right up to the libel threshold. i should probably drop this for now - i'm a little shouty and worked up.
posted by j_curiouser at 8:07 PM on December 2, 2016 [26 favorites]

Chao is a pretty bog-standard conservative hack but she has experience as an administrator and is totally qualified in the normal sense to be in the Cabinet. I think she has terrible ideas, but she knows what she's doing.

I wager that being married to McConnell is punishment enough on its own.
posted by dis_integration at 8:09 PM on December 2, 2016 [12 favorites]

Never forget that the GOP can still stop this but they'd rather roll the dice on world war so long as they get to repeal Obamacare

They actually don't give a shit about that except that they're pot committed at this point after 8 years of "it's sochulism!" rhetoric. All they've ever wanted is tax cuts for the rich. That's really, really it. And to destroy Medicare and Social Security of course. Preferably by redirecting all that money to the rich. But that's really a stretch goal after the tax cuts. And the second round of tax cuts. Maybe some more tax cuts for good measure. Then destroy the welfare state. And round it out with more tax cuts.

And the Laffer curve says it'll all pay for itself! 0% taxes = infinity revenue! Republican math never fails, it can only be failed!
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:10 PM on December 2, 2016 [8 favorites]

I wager that being married to McConnell is punishment enough on its own.

I'd lay any amount of money it's a marriage of convenience.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:11 PM on December 2, 2016

Can we not?
hmm...sorry you're offended by my statement. it's a false equivalency. mcconnell won't recuse himself from the confirmation vote. it's about him, not her.

and maybe also about her. haven't we been generally concurring with the effort to 'not normalize' this regime? i'm ok with a fraction of superficially distasteful activities.

so....no.
posted by j_curiouser at 8:15 PM on December 2, 2016

Ah, in Mattis, Trump finds his Doenitz and/or Rommel. Someone really good at being in the military and obviously a Nazi but not that bad as Nazis go. (Supposedly, of course).
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 8:17 PM on December 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

Can we not? Elaine Chao was director of the Peace Corps and Deputy Secretary of Transportation before she ever married Mitch McConnell, and after that a member of George H.W. Bush's cabinet. Whom she married has nothing to do with her qualifications for office. This should be crystal clear to anyone who voted for a former First Lady for President.

If you want to block her appointment, find a real reason.

Well, since you asked, she was Labor Secretary under Bush and failed to protect minimum wage employees from wage theft by employers who didn't pay required federal minimum wage or overtime pay. Contrary to her role as "labor" secretary, she invoked the Taft-Hartley Act for the first time in over 30 years to bust a longshoreman's union. She also cut back on coal mine inspections which resulted in the death of 15 miners.

Is that sufficient to disqualify her?
posted by JackFlash at 8:23 PM on December 2, 2016 [60 favorites]

Yes.
posted by mbrubeck at 8:26 PM on December 2, 2016 [21 favorites]

The chances that the cabinet will include both the owner of the Sago mine and the federal official who presided over the lax regulatory regime when the disaster took place are pretty high, so thanks for your votes, West Virginia.
posted by holgate at 8:31 PM on December 2, 2016 [27 favorites]

the president of the Republic of China (in Taiwan)

To add to this, it's important diplomatically to call Tsai "the president of the Republic of China (in Taiwan)" and not "the president of Taiwan", as Trump did, because the latter implies that Taiwan is an independent entity from China (it's why athletes from Taiwan compete under "Chinese Taipei" in the Olympics).
posted by airmail at 8:32 PM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

(As an aside, anti-nepotism laws seem highly likely to come into play for real in the Trump administration, so we might want to keep that knife sharp rather than wield it in a case where it doesn't really apply.)
posted by mbrubeck at 8:33 PM on December 2, 2016 [10 favorites]

To add to this, it's important diplomatically to call Tsai "the president of the Republic of China (in Taiwan)" and not "the president of Taiwan", as Trump did

No, it's totally cool when he bumbles about. He's not a politician, and just doesn't think. Which is a good thing. Because reasons. The best reasons. Yuge reasons.
posted by ghost phoneme at 8:41 PM on December 2, 2016

The Democrats are a coalition party. Don't expect the same sort of unilateral opposition we've come accustomed to seeing from the Republicans.
posted by schmod at 8:42 PM on December 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

I wonder if we can get liberal leaning businesses to have the occasional sale for people who have a valid voter ID for their state. People will do things in the name of a half price latte that they won't do in the name of civic virtue.
posted by quillbreaker at 8:46 PM on December 2, 2016 [15 favorites]

Trump just tweeted about another Indiana company that is sending 300 jobs tp Mexico. Trupm tweeted (paraphrasing) thet the employees were losing their jobs visciously and that "THIS MUST STOP". He apparently heard about this when a few of the 300 showed up at one of his post-Carrier speeches with signs etc.

It's all who ya know and how to poke them. trump loves being adored for the least effort on his part and it looks like another Indiana company is his easiest road to looking like a hero for the little man again. I noticed last night at the Ohio Afterglow Rally that one lone person in a moment of relative quiet "woo hoo'd" trump. And trumple basked in the moment. He stopped his "speech", pointed the person out, agreed with the woo hooer for woo hooing, and he kinda did a sideways Elvis pose and pointed again. So weird.

Ok, now I have to find video because my story sounds crazy. Did I dream that last paragraph?
posted by futz at 8:47 PM on December 2, 2016 [7 favorites]

He stopped his "speech", pointed the person out, agreed with the woo hooer for woo hooing, and he kinda did a sideways Elvis pose and pointed again.

OK, turns out it's the Daniel Pinkwater universe we're in now. Kind of a curveball there
posted by theodolite at 8:49 PM on December 2, 2016 [10 favorites]

They may be able to start a yuan bloc in Africa and possibly South America but if I had to look a decade post-Trump I'd put more money on the Euro supplanting USD instead of CNY.

The Euro? Maybe, but the current streak of far right take overs of governments isn't showing signs of abating and some of the next possible group, like Le Pen, aren't inspiring much confidence in the European Union's long term future. If things continue in this direction, I wouldn't be surprised to see Germany decide to pull back and put their own interests first instead of trying to steer a sinking ship. Add in Russia's interest in putting the "the" back in Ukraine and angling to diminish NATO and I wouldn't be putting a lot of money on the Euro being the dominant currency anytime soon.

I also have to wonder if the Taiwan call wasn't Flynn, Bannon, and the boys manipulating Trump into getting what they want without letting him know the full details of everything involved beyond Trump's own personal interests in real estate. That's going to mess with the India Pakistan relationship too, I imagine. Two more nuclear powers we can blunder around with acting tough and trying to protect Trump's property investments. If Eric is taking charge of Taiwan, maybe Donnie Jr can handle the properties in India. Ivanka, of course, has to stay in Washington to sit in on all the meetings with world leaders, so she can't go.
posted by gusottertrout at 8:52 PM on December 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

Ah, in Mattis, Trump finds his Doenitz and/or Rommel. Someone really good at being in the military and obviously a Nazi but not that bad as Nazis go. (Supposedly, of course).

I hope it’s better than that because 1) those guys were both pretty bad in their own right and 2) they didn’t have nuclear arms.
posted by Fongotskilernie at 9:02 PM on December 2, 2016

Oh god they're going to make President Obama stay up all night reciting boilerplate text about how "there is only one China and the United States of America recognizes..." over and over again.
posted by zachlipton at 9:06 PM on December 2, 2016 [7 favorites]

Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte says President-elect Trump told him he is conducting his deadly drug war "the right way" - AFP

Who knows what Trump actually told him; he's left himself open to utter nonsense like this.
posted by zachlipton at 9:08 PM on December 2, 2016 [18 favorites]

If you want to block her appointment, find a real reason.

We have. Nepotism.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 9:18 PM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

Which is to say that Mrs. Clinton was _not_ nepotism, seeing as Bill was no longer President when she ran.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 9:19 PM on December 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

[China] may be able to start a yuan bloc in Africa

No idea if this would be material to prospects for the yuan in Africa, but I recently stumbled across a fact I was unaware of: 14 countries in West and Central Africa, rather than maintaining their own currency, use West and Central versions of the CFA franc, which Wikipedia says is "guaranteed by the French treasury".
posted by XMLicious at 9:22 PM on December 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

Who knows what Trump actually told him; he's left himself open to utter nonsense like this.

since the Transition Team has taken the ah unusual step of not ever reporting its own diplomatic conversations, there's no reason why the president of Brutopia shouldn't just tell his people that America has sworn to help them defeat their ancient enemies one country over
posted by theodolite at 9:23 PM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

...“I hope I didn't call you too early,” Bush said.
“No, no. It's about a little past 8 a.m. here,” she replied.
“Oh, it's about past 7 in the evening here, so we're actually in different timelines," Bush said.

That's my Bush!
posted by thelonius at 9:24 PM on December 2, 2016 [9 favorites]

I'd lay any amount of money it's a marriage of convenience.

Could we not go here? The right said the exact same thing about the Clintons.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 9:29 PM on December 2, 2016 [13 favorites]

That's way too many. This is not a military junta.

let's not be hasty, comrade
posted by poffin boffin at 9:36 PM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

man they are never gonna let my pinko ass back into peru at this rate
posted by poffin boffin at 9:37 PM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

Imagine watching someone rise to power in your society. Someone who builds his following on the concept of Pureblood superiority. Someone who your political leaders tell you not to be afraid of, because their top priority is maintaining order. Someone who makes your half-blood friends and colleagues feel afraid. Someone who emboldens the Purebloods who’ve been waiting for an opportunity to defend what they think of as their dying heritage.

Can you imagine such a world?

That’s the world Molly Weasley found herself in.

posted by ChuraChura at 9:38 PM on December 2, 2016 [11 favorites]

Who knows what Trump actually told him; he's left himself open to utter nonsense like this.

I would ask which “he” has left himself open to utter nonsense like this, but I know that either works.
posted by Fongotskilernie at 9:38 PM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

Various folks are suggesting that Twitter replace "While you were away" with "Oh god, what did he do now?" or "hello, what fresh new horror is this?"

Because I was out to dinner tonight and that's honestly how I felt when I saw the last two tweets.
posted by zachlipton at 9:40 PM on December 2, 2016 [23 favorites]

man they are never gonna let my pinko ass back into peru at this rate

Now is when I wish identity documents were like Pokémon and I could just swap you Nicaragua for Peru.
posted by corb at 9:43 PM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

I took a nap, so: have the Chinese closed the strait of Taiwan yet
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:46 PM on December 2, 2016 [5 favorites]

honestly im looking at property right on costa rica's northeastern border so mistakes are already being made
posted by poffin boffin at 9:48 PM on December 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

The response from the Chinese foreign minister (parsed here by Eric Hundman) shows the difference between amateurs and professionals: point the finger at Taiwan, reassert the core principles of the US-China relationship in terms of state-to-state relations that transcend individuals or specific administrations, and strongly imply that Beijing expects some grown-ups to remain in charge of things come January.
posted by holgate at 9:55 PM on December 2, 2016 [13 favorites]

Ok, I found my video that I mentioned above. I embellished a tad. It starts here at approx 50:55. I don't blame anyone for not watching but his whole speech is a master class in idiocracy. The fool is dangerously insecure.
posted by futz at 10:00 PM on December 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

>> What kind of protests and demonstrations are planned for Inauguration Day, in Washington DC? Things could get really lively if enough angry people get together to make their voices heard.

> Vuvuzelas, y'all.

I think what the protesters need is a simple universal rallying chant. Something that will get under his thin skin. Not too lewd. Not too clever. Something Trump may have even come up with himself. I offer:

TRUMP IS A CLOWN.
TRUMP IS A CLOWN.
TRUMP IS A CLOWN.
posted by bunbury at 10:01 PM on December 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

"SHUT THE FUCK UP DONNY"
"SHUT THE FUCK UP DONNY"
"SHUT THE FUCK UP DONNY"
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 10:08 PM on December 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

"YOUR MONEY IS WORTHLESS"
"YOUR MONEY IS WORTHLESS"
"YOUR MONEY IS WORTHLESS"
posted by E. Whitehall at 10:10 PM on December 2, 2016

Jon Stewart Finally Went Long About The Election And Donald Trump

“Not everybody that voted for Trump is a racist,” he said at one point. “I don’t give a fuck what any of you say to me. You can yell it at me, you can tweet it at me. They’re not all racists. Or they’re not giving tacit support to a racist system ... We all give tacit support to exploitative systems as long as they don’t affect us that badly.”

He brought up a conversation with another person who argued that “by saying that [Trump supporters] are not all racists, they are giving tacit support to a man of racist language.” Stewart then pointed out that many of Americans are complicit in exploitative and damaging systems, asking the person to pull out his iPhone.

“I was like, ‘Guess how those are made, guess who makes them?’” Stewart said. “’Oh yeah, but that’s ... ‘ What, what is it? It’s not different, we all do that. All of our shit stinks and getting beyond that takes incredible work.”
posted by philip-random at 10:25 PM on December 2, 2016 [14 favorites]

Prejudice, "Political Correctness," and the Normalization of Donald Trump

To put it another way, “political correctness” is not an ideology, nor is it a specific set of behaviors. It is simply a slur that people utter when they want to dismiss an expression of social justice activism that they do not like. One person’s “political correctness” is another person’s common decency or righteous activism.

A much, much more nuanced and thoughtful essay on privilege, oppression, "political correctness" and growing lashings out at same in our current situation than the pull quote there would suggest. There is too much to smush down into a little snippet.
posted by byanyothername at 10:29 PM on December 2, 2016 [17 favorites]

Shorter John Stewart's career: "both sides, amirite?"
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:47 PM on December 2, 2016 [22 favorites]

they thought the white house came fully staffed.

Wait'll they find out it doesn't come furnished.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:55 PM on December 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

How long is the campaign? A year and a half? I assume [television media is] talking right now about who’s running in 2020. They don’t give a flying fuck about governance, they care about campaigns and that’s where the fun is for them. That’s devastating. And not only is it devastating news-wise, it’s devastating to all of us.

Stewart is better at skewering the media than most; oliver and wilmore and sam bee are implementing this "make funny out of the actual governance" better than the daily show did; but it's going to take a lot more work to take that funny and make democracy out of it
posted by eustatic at 11:08 PM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

Wait'll they find out it doesn't come furnished.

What, you mean Donald and Melania will be doing the decorating?

Oh, the humanity!
posted by JackFlash at 11:09 PM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

Election post mortems are natural and all but irrelevant now. The shit is hurtling towards the fan blades.

Worse, the USS Roomba is trundling towards an enormous pile of shit.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 11:11 PM on December 2, 2016 [27 favorites]

Wait'll they find out it doesn't come furnished.

It does though right? They could move in and not have to buy anything. Congress gives them an allotment but they can't just deck out the WH in whatever dictator decor du jour.
posted by futz at 11:11 PM on December 2, 2016

The fine print on decorating, from 2008. There's a committee.
posted by holgate at 11:27 PM on December 2, 2016

Someone might want to ask Mr. Stewart what would happen to his beloved first responders if they didn't try to help everyone in a burning building, regardless of race, and picked and chose those they would assist. It's kinda the nature of the job that, at least for the moment, you're supposed to help everyone or you'll end up facing discrimination lawsuits. Now that might change under Trump, but right now it's hardly any more laudable than any other person serving customers without prejudice.

That is, by the way, the whole point of objecting to a president who openly expressed racist and sexist views. His supporters don't get a pass because they are. allegedly, not "really" racist for opting for someone with no real qualifications for the office other than his expressed views, which again, were racist. And pointing out we're all complicit in systemic racism too is kinda the whole freaking point of the left's critique on the issue, which Trump and his supporters, and in this case his supporters supporter conveniently deny. So, yeah, maybe comedian pundits aren't exactly the best way forward and maybe it time for "hero" worship from Stewart and of Stewart to disappear.

(And that isn't even going into his faux equivalency about people on the left allegedly thinking Obama was perfect or his empty analogy around football uniforms, which might be a little more clear if one jersey had a KKK insignia and the other BLM, since that's what the R and D's are currently standing for.)
posted by gusottertrout at 11:37 PM on December 2, 2016 [17 favorites]

As Trump said, Mattis is the closest thing to General Patton,

And I should believe Trump because he based this on something other than Mattis' nickname and callsign? The British Gen. Slim in Burma is probably the best WWII general for comparison.

The seven year rule is a good argument to bypass him, but at the moment I'm liking having him in between Trump and SAC or the boomers sooner than later.

Other downsides to him could be, he seems weak on WESTPAC and South America. Maybe he's too focused on the Persian/Arab split. He disagrees with other Trump people about the Iran Nuke Treaty, saying it gained 5 to 10 times as much breathing room as a military action would have.
He was right about Iranian missile tests.

He convinced his Marines risking more casualties to improve relations with the Iraqi people was worth it, then just wrote off his drone attack on the wedding as the best call that could be made at the time, nailed an officer for abuse of prisoners, then cut some enlisted Marines a lot of slack right before they went to the brig.

There could be something totally disqualifying, most of this is just from talking to friends and their kids that served under him.

Anyway, I really object to comparing someone that put their ass on the line under Carter, Clinton and Obama to shit or Patton, because...reasons.

On preview: A Nazi. Wow, because reasons too, l assume.
posted by ridgerunner at 11:48 PM on December 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

And that isn't even going into his faux equivalency about people on the left allegedly thinking Obama was perfect or his empty analogy around football uniforms, which might be a little more clear if one jersey had a KKK insignia and the other BLM, since that's what the R and D's are currently standing for.

Black Lives Matter does not endorse the Democratic Party. David Duke does, however, endorse Donald Trump.
posted by atoxyl at 11:58 PM on December 2, 2016 [8 favorites]

No, but the Democrats stood up for the BLM during their convention, so it was a value they claimed. (No telling of course whether that will continue given the stupid "debate" over identity politics, and no claim that even during the convention the Democrats were the ideal partners for BLM, but the support for their cause was a part of what Clinton ran on.)
posted by gusottertrout at 12:10 AM on December 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

"Shorter John Stewart's career: "both sides, amirite?"

You know, the problem is we have to flip as many Trump supporters as possible. Alienating them now won't help. They didn't listen during the campaign, so as a practical matter, different tactics should be tried now.
posted by clockworkjoe at 12:29 AM on December 3, 2016 [4 favorites]

Uh... I don't think BLM is advocating lynch mobs and racial segregation - that is to say KKK = bad, BLM = good. So the D's associating themselves with BLM is smart! because they're good as anyone who ... Uh ... isn't... uh ... can see... sigh.

KKK are scum, please don't pretend they are equivalent to BLM, or vice versa... it's just... do we really have to explain all this? Sigh.

This is why we need schools that work and teach how to reason and argue.
posted by From Bklyn at 12:54 AM on December 3, 2016 [21 favorites]

> government paying $8,750 per job on behalf of the specific people retaining them

Hey! You start paying me $8,750 per job and I'll start creating all the jobs you want! Just let me know how many jobs you want, send over a check, and I'll get right on it!

NB: Aforementioned jobs will pay $8,000, or less. I can do this all day long--just keep those checks coming!

Am I doing it right? Is this how the new Trump Economy works?
posted by flug at 1:11 AM on December 3, 2016 [13 favorites]

This is why we need schools that work and teach how to reason and argue.

Ignoring the rest of the conversation and jumping off of this, I have to say how grateful I am for my education. I went to a private (Catholic) high school. My favorite teacher was my English teacher for Junior and Senior year AP English. The funny thing is EVERYONE hated her my Junior year, including me. We studied literature and she would just FUCK with us. Every time someone would say "Well I feel like..." she'd snipe back "I don't CARE how you FEEL. Tell me what is TRUE or don't open your mouth." She pushed us and pushed us to defend our positions with facts, quotes, stuff from the text. People thought she was the biggest bitch.

One day she got the whole class worked up by saying negative things about the movie Dead Poets Society. We were basically the target age market for that movie, and we were the AP English class, so it was pretty universally beloved. She had the class just yelling at her while she went on about what a sentimental piece of crap that movie was, how stupid it was to make a movie about a teacher that got kids to care about literature.

And that was when I finally knew...she was FUCKING WITH US. She could hardly keep a straight face that day. She knew exactly what she was doing, and she intentionally picked fights to get us to learn how to argue.

We had her again the next year, but she was totally different. She was chilled the hell out, and class was really like just hanging around talking about books (and writing papers that were graded REALLY harshly). She used to ask my opinion on books and movies and we'd chat after class. But I'd occasionally see the Junior class and she'd be mean as hell to them.

I studied literature and psychology and anthropology in college and never had a harder teacher, never had anyone I worked harder to impress and please. Kids need more teachers willing to piss them off and challenge them. Kids need to be told it doesn't matter how you feel if you can't prove you're right.
posted by threeturtles at 1:16 AM on December 3, 2016 [50 favorites]

I should note that basically all life on Earth will be destroyed in ONE billion years, as the sun is already very gradually heating up. The oceans will boil away in one billion years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future

Things will be far worse in 7 billion years, but life will have already ended.

Fortunately, one billion years is plenty enough time to figure out what to do about it.
posted by Sleeper at 1:22 AM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

KKK are scum, please don't pretend they are equivalent to BLM, or vice versa... it's just... do we really have to explain all this? Sigh.

I hope you don't think that was my point, rather it was my criticism of Stewart's analogy of Democrats and Republicans fighting being like fans of the Cowboys and Giants fighting, where the only difference is the logo on the shirt. I'm saying the would be logos in this case actually do matter since the two groups aren't the same at all.
posted by gusottertrout at 1:22 AM on December 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

Regarding the Laffer Curve, let's not pretend to be Republicans. Laffer himself acknowledged the limits to his idea. It was conceived in an era where the top marginal income tax rate was 70%+, and it did seem to be correct that lowering that rate to some degree did stimulate greater economic activity.

The problem the Republicans have is that we have not had a tax code like that in 40 years, and with rates where they are the Laffer Curve is total bullshit. They know this, but they lie out of their ass anyway because it makes them appear to have actual justification for their desired policy beyond the actual motivation of giving the whole farm to the rich.

In reality, I'm pretty convinced that one of the best possible things we could do to deal with the offshoring of jobs and improvements in productivity in what work remains here is to either jack the top marginal income tax rate back up somewhere near 100% or institute strict overtime for the sorts of workers that have high unemployment rates. Do that along with an increase in the minimum wage and it will force companies to hire more workers, much as many voluntarily cut hours rather than laying people off during the Depression.

There is zero need for any individual to work 40+ hours a week. The work needs to be spread around because there simply isn't enough work to be done to achieve full employment any more, and the problem is only getting worse. It is getting to the point where individual workers doing even 40 hours a week of work is a net negative to our economy..
posted by wierdo at 1:31 AM on December 3, 2016 [24 favorites]

I'm agreeing with you, gusottertrout - and reacting to this weird thing where these two totally not similar things, like apples and coal, are being conflated.
It's like the Tomi Lahren thing in that other post, this woman says words that approximate grammar but don't actually have any grammar to them... it's disorienting
posted by From Bklyn at 2:48 AM on December 3, 2016

An interesting and subtle take on the election from a German perspective:

Much has been written by now in attempt to explain the outcome of the recent US presidential election. Some recent interventions pitted the Democrats' "identity politics" against economic issues and have charged the Left with neglecting hard economic realities by focusing on supposedly marginal or imaginary problems. Such an opposition misses the point, however, that the relevant economic questions are inherently connected to problems of identity.

Katrin Trüstedt, Taking Offense, 3quarksdaily (28 November 2016).
posted by Sonny Jim at 3:28 AM on December 3, 2016 [10 favorites]

Things will be far worse in 7 billion years, but life will have already ended.

Fortunately, one billion years is plenty enough time to figure out what to do about it.

You are Gary Johnson and I claim my five pounds.
posted by kewb at 3:45 AM on December 3, 2016 [5 favorites]

There's also no need for Calexit because California will separate itself from the rest of North America on its own. Eventually.
posted by XMLicious at 3:50 AM on December 3, 2016 [4 favorites]

There's also no need for Calexit because California will separate itself from the rest of North America on its own. Eventually.

Maybe it always was separate! #teachthecontroversy
posted by kewb at 3:56 AM on December 3, 2016 [7 favorites]

We need to think beyond the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. After all, in a billion years' time, both those oceans will have boiled off into space. Vote: Deep Time Democrats, 2020.
posted by Sonny Jim at 4:03 AM on December 3, 2016 [4 favorites]

I should note that basically all life on Earth will be destroyed in ONE billion years, as the sun is already very gradually heating up.

And yet Chuck Grassley (one of the American politicians I've met, and definitely not one of my favorites) will still be a Senator for Iowa...
posted by Wordshore at 4:03 AM on December 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

Vote: Deep Time Democrats, 2020.

It looks like they've devolved into sycophantic prostration to the WWC, but in fact their coalition is bigger on the inside.
posted by XMLicious at 4:15 AM on December 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

Jill Stein reports that some of the voting machines in WI have been tampered with.
posted by pxe2000 at 4:33 AM on December 3, 2016 [29 favorites]

> but I can take comfort, I guess, in the knowledge that in another decade nobody will remember a blessed thing about the Trump years either.

Because everyone will be dead? I joke (sort of), but the other night I had the first nightmare about nuclear war I've had since I was a kid in the mid-'80s.
posted by The Card Cheat at 5:09 AM on December 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

> but I can take comfort, I guess, in the knowledge that in another decade nobody will remember a blessed thing about the Trump years either.

Nobody?

Surely, you jest.
posted by Mister Bijou at 5:40 AM on December 3, 2016

Jill Stein reports that some of the voting machines in WI have been tampered with.

Um, hey. That at seems kinda bad? Someone should look into that.

SOMEONE SHOULD LOOK INTO THAT.
posted by Mister Cheese at 5:42 AM on December 3, 2016 [20 favorites]

@GovHowardDean:
Wendy, St. Croix County irregularities in Wisconsin more serious than thought.
posted by Wordshore at 5:48 AM on December 3, 2016 [19 favorites]

Holy. Shit.

Yeah. I have a background in financial services/auditing and the only appropriate response this is a full on end-to-end audit of every piece of hardware, every piece of software, and every vote.
posted by mikelieman at 6:02 AM on December 3, 2016 [46 favorites]

Holy. Shit.

Reminder that 2016 still has about 28 days left. Buckle up, everyone, this year isn't done with us yet.
posted by C'est la D.C. at 6:08 AM on December 3, 2016 [19 favorites]

queenofbithynia: take comfort, I guess, in the knowledge that in another decade nobody will remember a blessed thing about the Trump years either.

In a decade we will, I think, be in Ivanka's second term. Think how much more reasonable she seems than him, then realize we're fucked. I pray for a colossal scandal or fuck up that will so taint the Trump name in the first four years that this isn't possible, but I don't know what that could be that doesn't involve a large number of dead people somewhere in the world.
posted by bluecore at 6:10 AM on December 3, 2016

I wonder if any of the following was said/ alluded to in China's call to the White House:

-- WTF
-- Barry you could just stay no I know but think about it.
-- WTF man
--- you have heard about our cultural revolution
-- does Trump know we have nukes
-- does Trump know what a nuke is
--- have you shown Trump the movie Threads
---WTF
posted by angrycat at 6:10 AM on December 3, 2016 [30 favorites]

It's most likely that some warranty work was done, and the tech didn't bother to replace the seal - those are seals put there by the company who builds/maintains them, not by an election authority.

Even so, it needs to be investigated, soonest, and a hand recount undertaken.

There's no precedent as to what to do if machines in precincts that do not have a paper trail are found to be tampered with...
posted by Slap*Happy at 6:12 AM on December 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

What do we do with the news of tampering in WI? Is there any action we can take?
posted by pxe2000 at 6:13 AM on December 3, 2016

but I can take comfort, I guess, in the knowledge that in another decade nobody will remember a blessed thing about the Trump years either.

Nobody?

Surely, you jest.

man if you'd told me last decade that everybody was going to forget George W. Bush's presidency, including but not limited to his Cabinet appointments and the great fun they had doing awful things, I'd have thought you were jesting too. but here we and "Mrs. McConnell" are, somehow.

Maybe everybody who would have remembered is dead? Maybe I am just out of ideas because I was not entirely mentally prepared for feeling like an Old for remembering a time before eight years ago.
posted by queenofbithynia at 6:16 AM on December 3, 2016 [13 favorites]

Regardless of whether or not the voting machines story leads to a recount, or whether it changes the electoral outcome (it won't for all sorts of reasons), or whether it is even actually tampering or not - this is one more step in an escalating crisis of legitimation, one that's been going on for decades now.

Republicans have spent a lot of time trying to delegitimate Democratic elected officials, and got to the point of simply refusing to hold perfectly ordinary hearings on a wide range of judicial nominees, up to and including a Supreme Court vacancy.

The Electoral College has now twice failed to reflect the popular vote, along with a more general sense among progressive voters that the flood of money into politics and the nature of gerrymandering has created an unreflective system.

One side believes that there's rampant voter fraud, the other side sees rampant voter suppression. One side sees elections being bought and sold and districts being shaped by incumbent parties at the state level, and the other sees the attempted marginalization of exurban and rural voters by urban voters. And third-party voters, as well as a lot of aggrieved primary voters, see the whole thing as rigged.

And a significant minority of voters have thrown their support to a candidate who consistently ran against most of the institutional norms that were tied to legitimacy. they felt underrepresented, neglected, forgotten, that their country had largely been stolen from them already.

Among many other things, Trump is a very visible symptom of something much deeper, and he and his crew will not be the totality of that transformation, which is overdetermined as such historical crises always are.
posted by kewb at 6:20 AM on December 3, 2016 [53 favorites]

What do we do with the news of tampering in WI? Is there any action we can take?

We can place bets now on Trump tweeting something ludicrous today that totally buries
this story.
posted by Rykey at 6:25 AM on December 3, 2016 [13 favorites]

Holy. Shit.

Yeah. I have a background in financial services/auditing and the only appropriate response this is a full on end-to-end audit of every piece of hardware, every piece of software, and every vote.

Are those paperless machines?
posted by ocschwar at 6:37 AM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

Well, if the tampering turns out to be nothing, I hope the Democratic leadership meets it with a vocal, honest, level-headed response - you know, the same way the Republican rank and file reacted to that birtherism thing.
posted by klarck at 6:38 AM on December 3, 2016 [7 favorites]

The possible tampering is interesting in light of the GOP's panicked attempts to prevent/stop the recounts.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:42 AM on December 3, 2016 [21 favorites]

The election was rigged! And under no circumstances must we find out how!

The correct thing to do is to hire the firebreathingest, kick-assingist bunch of lawyers you can and set them to force as deep an enquiry/audit as the law permits. The very correct thing to do would be for the GOP itself to set this in motion.

But correct action is antithetical to the current trajectory.
posted by Devonian at 6:44 AM on December 3, 2016 [11 favorites]

man if you'd told me last decade that everybody was going to forget George W. Bush's presidency,

Everybody?

Ask an Iraqi.
posted by Mister Bijou at 6:46 AM on December 3, 2016 [9 favorites]

We can place bets now on Trump tweeting something ludicrous today that totally buries
this story.

Remember back when people were all saying "I just don't see what Twitter is good for"?
posted by thelonius at 6:47 AM on December 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

Don't get me wrong: I damn well want to know what happened in Wisconsin. But I am under no illusions that the answer will be accepted widely no matter what it is, nor that this is not part of something bigger than this election.
posted by kewb at 6:48 AM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

Some of us are still saying that about Twitter.
posted by Too-Ticky at 6:48 AM on December 3, 2016 [6 favorites]

Are those paperless machines?

They are paper ballot scanners.

What Stein seems to be saying is that at some point, someone opened some of the machines they are using to rescan the ballots and thereby voided any warranty that might remain. I am not sure this is anything interesting given the ever present countertheory of "Jill Stein is a dingbat."
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:49 AM on December 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

Are those paperless machines?

There's still hardware serial numbers, component serial numbers, and software of the entire stack from firmware through applications to verify.

That said, the biggest and most egregious DDOS in voting is still a 3 hour wait in meatspace before you even get to the machine.
posted by mikelieman at 6:51 AM on December 3, 2016 [30 favorites]

Man, the Times is killing it with tough investigative journalism on Trump. A month late, but wouldn't have wanted to interfere with all those email stories.

Trump’s Tough Trade Talk Could Damage American Factories
posted by chris24 at 6:58 AM on December 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

Ha, at least seeing Trumpsters in despair makes the load a little easier to bear. This comes a day after his lamentations about Trump appointing Goldman execs rather than draining the swamp.

@WalshFreedom
Somebody please talk to President-Elect Trump and explain to him how the free market works. How capitalism works.
Please.
posted by chris24 at 7:03 AM on December 3, 2016 [4 favorites]

I should note that basically all life on Earth will be destroyed in ONE billion years

In fairness, life as we know it (which is to say, life more complex than mats of essentially single-celled organisms) has been around for considerably less than a billion years, with the most interesting stuff only going back 560 milliion years or so, so life on Earth has plenty more chances to do something interesting. Heck, it only took 65 million years for us to come about after the KT event did a far more effective job of killing nearly every living thing on the surface than we are ever likely to manage, even with Trump having the nuclear football.
posted by Bringer Tom at 7:03 AM on December 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

Well, let's not forget, Trump did tell us this election was going to be rigged.
posted by From Bklyn at 7:09 AM on December 3, 2016 [11 favorites]

The photo doesn't give any indication how breaking the seal is supposed to interfere with an accurate count. I would be in favor of just about any level of audit, and in favor going forward of smashing all the machines and just going back to paper ballots, but magical thinking isn't going to help Democrats figure out how to stop Trump in the short term or win some tough, upward-battle elections in 2018 and 2020.

At least a public bullhorn campaign begging the Electors to pick literally any other Republican -- my preferred magical-thinking last-minute miracle -- could actually happen, technically, institutionally. There is no way Stein's recount can prevent Trump's election, because there's no way a recount can reverse the outcome in Pennsylvania either legally (it's a total mess), pragmatically (most of the machines don't even have a paper trial), or probabilistically (it's a frankly huge margin to overturn).

This didn't happen to us because the machines were hacked, it happened because the Democrats blew the work of governance from 2008-2015 and then blew the work of politics triple-time in 2016. Making up a story where this isn't anyone's fault won't help us.
posted by gerryblog at 7:14 AM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

@WalshFreedom
Somebody please talk to President-Elect Trump and explain to him how the free market works. How capitalism works.
Please.

Wealthy people engineer the system in their own favor, and the rest of us kindly stay the fuck out of the way? Friend, that's exactly how free-market capitalism works.
posted by Rykey at 7:15 AM on December 3, 2016 [23 favorites]

it happened because the Democrats blew the work of governance from 2008-2015

What? or LOL Wut? if you prefer.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 7:22 AM on December 3, 2016 [17 favorites]

Wealthy people engineer the system in their own favor,

BTW, in case you haven't been keeping track, this will be the richest Cabinet in history. Just an accident, right? that DJT only knows billionaires who can do the job.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 7:24 AM on December 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

> Making up a story where this isn't anyone's fault won't help us.

Neither will comments that state your beliefs as to why Trump won as settled facts.
posted by tonycpsu at 7:26 AM on December 3, 2016 [4 favorites]

I saw the typo "POUTS" on another listserv yesterday. It seemed fitting.
posted by notsnot at 7:27 AM on December 3, 2016 [12 favorites]

it happened because the Democrats blew the work of governance from 2008-2015

What? or LOL Wut? if you prefer.

Democrats were swept into office in huge waves in 2006 and especially 2008, after which they had both houses of Congress (including, for a while, a supermajority in the Senate), and a popular two-term president. Since Obama's election -- despite his reelection and his ongoing personal popularity -- they have lost ground at a catastrophic clip at every level of government, culminating in an almost unthinkable shut-out of nearly every position of power in the country at the national level and in most states. That's "blowing the work of governance." The Obama years are a stunning case of party collapse, and Trump is only the worst part of it.

Neither will comments that state your beliefs as to why Trump won as settled facts.

Touche.
posted by gerryblog at 7:30 AM on December 3, 2016 [5 favorites]

it happened because the Democrats blew the work of governance from 2008-2015

What? or LOL Wut? if you prefer.

2008 Bush was president.

2008 Prior to Obama's inauguration, McConnell declares his intent to do anything to make Obama a one-term president and Republican leadership meets to decide to deny him anything, even if it's something they agree with him on.

2009-10 they had a filibuster proof majority only 4 of the months thanks to the Franken recount, Byrd's illness and Kennedy's death. They still managed to pass Obamacare, the stimulus and the auto bailout. So they saved the auto industry, the economy, and insured 20 million.

2011-16, Republicans controlled at least one of the houses of congresses.

But sure, they blew it.
posted by chris24 at 7:32 AM on December 3, 2016 [74 favorites]

Democrats were swept into office in huge waves in 2006 and especially 2008, after which they had both houses of Congress (including, for a while, a supermajority in the Senate), and a popular two-term president. Since Obama's election -- despite his reelection and his ongoing personal popularity -- they have lost ground at a catastrophic clip at every level of government, culminating in an almost unthinkable shut-out of nearly every position of power in the country at the national level and in most states. That's "blowing the work of governance." The Obama years are a stunning case of party collapse, and Trump is only the worst part of it.

Democrats at no point had a supermajority. They held 58 at best during six months of 2009 and two independents that would caucus when it was convenient held the two others. One of these independents held the ACA to ransom to stop the public option.

Once the 2010 election kicked in and Democrats solidly lost the house it was over for the rest of the two terms. Every other piece of progress was accomplished through either the courts or executive action.
posted by Talez at 7:34 AM on December 3, 2016 [5 favorites]

The machine seals probably mean nothing practically except incompetence. Usually the way election machines work is that if you have to service them and it involves breaking a seal like that , there's a procedure to validate the machine is ok and such seals are replaced. Odds are then that these machines had to get fixed and the local elections officials didn't go thru the right procedure. That doesn't mean tampering. Just incompetence. That's bad enough since, duh, those rules and procedures are part of ensuring trust in the system.
posted by R343L at 7:37 AM on December 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

But sure, they blew it.

Yes, they blew it: Trump is president and the GOP controls everything. It wasn't magic, it wasn't fate, it wasn't gremlins, we got beat. The only way forward now is to face up to it and figure out a gameplan to go forward. Contextless photos of broken seals on voting machines, conspiracy theories, and other modes of ego-preserving magical thinking aren't just a distraction from that, they actually prevent us from coming to terms with what happened by enabling our denial.
posted by gerryblog at 7:37 AM on December 3, 2016 [10 favorites]

... And they lost in 2010 because the economy was still shifty. FDR had the good luck to be elected at the bottom of the depression instead of at the beginning of the slump.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:38 AM on December 3, 2016

Oh though looking close at those stickers they say something about a warranty? Those probably aren't actually tamper-detection seals then that are part of elections procedure then. Sigh Dean. I mean maybe they are relevant and supposed to be there but it seems unlikely.
posted by R343L at 7:39 AM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

As someone who wants Democrats to win, I'm okay saying that they should have done better. What I'm not okay with is doing so without acknowledging the major structural advantages that Republicans have, many of which have been talked about at length in these threads. These are not excuses -- the Democrats still have an obligation to win even when faced with these strong headwinds -- but if you fail to account for those headwinds, then you will likely end up learning the wrong lessons about why they lost.
posted by tonycpsu at 7:40 AM on December 3, 2016 [36 favorites]

Warranty seals work on the same principle as tamper seals- that nobody who isn't authorized to do so (i.e. in possession of replacement stickers) should ever open the device, and to prove that that has happened. If the devices have been opened by such a person, that creates doubts as to the integrity of the machines, regardless of why they were opened or why the stickers were there in the first place.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:42 AM on December 3, 2016 [20 favorites]

Fwiw, I'm pretty strongly in the camp that finding actual evidence of a hack (where it matters) could destroy the "American experiment" as it's sometimes put. Voter suppression efforts, sadly, don't since there's a long history of doing that (esp to black people) and it's done out in the open.
posted by R343L at 7:42 AM on December 3, 2016

So. As for Mattis, I like him. Some of the quotes that ridgerunner mentioned above I really agree with. I think the War on the Rocks piece is mostly correct in that he's not an ideal choice for SecDef, but it's probably better this way around than if Flynn gets SecDef. And I still think Flynn is nuts, but he's got a track record of being good at coming up with effective ideas. So there's that.

As for the substantive part of my comment. Be warned - this part will be pretty frickin' Christiany. Skip it if you don't need that kinda thing right now.

Assuming there's no really bad shenanigans with vote counts and Trump is inaugurated, there's a very specific stance and role that Christians have at that point. I've personally spent a lot of time mulling over the relationship between Christians and power, the state, and leaders. It's one of the more obscure aspects of Christianity (including the stuff inherited from Judaism) and it doesn't get covered very well in theology courses nor in Sunday sermons, AFAICT. That doesn't mean you accept my position as is - do your own homework and so on. But consider.

A consistent theme running through both Testaments is that of God's people ending up in (often really bizarre) situations where they have a direct relationship and conversation with the most powerful people in their region/state/empire. Following the course of events as they unfold, this looks random and completely unpredicted. But if you take a more abstract view of the narrative, it's usually clear that God intended this relationship and conversation to occur, and quite deliberately. Some Old Testament personages here are (primarily) Joseph and Daniel, and also Moses to an extent (though there's some implications to ignore in the context of 2016 - Moses is a bit of a special case. He directly challenged state power, but that was a one-off, and is no longer appropriate today). In a New Testament context, the main example is the Apostle Paul. Perhaps second to him in the topical respect is the Apostle John.

All these people got caught up in historical events, and ended up in a position to speak to the ultimate power of the land. Usually this had a specific purpose: there was an issue of governance that needed to be addressed, and God saw fit to step in to make sure people didn't die needlessly, or there was an issue with the leaders' personal relationship with God and God wanted to address it directly but without scaring the shit out of people by showing up in person (yes really - better some crazy prophet; even the crazy prophets who experienced God in person tended to be unsettled by the experience. Not always fun, in other words). In Joseph's case, he helped prevent a famine wreaking havoc. In Paul's case, he needed to appear before Caesar, for a variety of reasons.

So what do Christians now do with Trump? Unfortunately, this is likely to be annoying to most people here, but I'll at least back it up with some scripture, since that seems to suffice for arguments against Trump as well.

I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men;
For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. 1 Tim 2:1-2

Do not speak evil about the ruler of your people. Exodus 22:28, quoted in Acts 23:5

Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's. Matt 22:21, KJV

Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Romans 13:1

Frustratingly, for people that oppose Trump, and who claim Christianity, that's the imperative. To boil it down to a phrase: the job is now to respect Trump and help him be a good leader. (I note this is what Obama is already doing and advocating.)

Yes, if you own the label "liberal," this is pretty infuriating. But if you're a Christian it's also essential. When Jesus says to love your enemies, it's for good reason: when the shit hits the proverbial fan and you (say) have a leader that absolutely disgusts you, that's when the commandment is really important to follow. Because following it results in the best outcome. The best outcome, and I believe the one advocated by the Bible, is that you suck it up and be gracious, because that's the high road, to use Clinton campaign vernacular. In my experience this results in progress and healthier relationship between adversaries and actual compromise. The alternative is just to fight and obstruct, which leads to less progress.

The other thing I want to work in here is that (in my experience as a Christian) the thing works. I've seen friends turn from assholes to unbelievably generous individuals, and I can't attribute that to anything other than Christianity. For myself - without becoming a Christian I'd either be dead or be a really worrying person. But while I still have a temper, both the previous possibilities are precluded now. I've seen Christianity turn bad men to good ones. And so when it comes to a Trump presidency, I'm not having a freakout. I have hope, and I have uplifting and personally encouraging things to say to Trump if I should ever meet him, however unlikely that may be.

So what I want to call people to is this. The high road. Grace. Helping Trump be a good leader when perhaps he doesn't deserve the help. Advocating for causes that are right by helping your leaders to empathise, even when it fucking sucks and seems like way too much emotional labour to be worth it. Supporting the political health of your country, not by violent resistance, but by steady, steadfast involvement, by supporting your institutions and your government (though it appals you) and your leaders (ibid). Think Lech Walesa, not Lenin.

That, perhaps annoyingly in 2016, is the message of the Bible. That like it or not, the authorities and leaders that rule are appointed by God, in an explicitly spiritual sense. Nations get the leaders they deserve (usually). So if you're not happy with the results for the next several years, work to improve the spiritual (more important) and political (less important) health of your country. That's the key to progress, in the small-l liberal sense. It's worth saying explicitly that a) violent resistance b) political secession are not on. Neither of these are appropriate goals for Christians. Spent your time and intellectual and spiritual energies elsewhere, where you're more likely to reap higher returns on your efforts.

What I believe in is this. God speaks to everyone, leaders included. If Trump and his administration won't hear God themselves, hear God for them. Be the prophetic voice they need. Save your country from the proverbial famines. Work for justice where only you can as as Christian.
posted by iffthen at 7:48 AM on December 3, 2016 [6 favorites]

What I'm not okay with is doing so without acknowledging the major structural advantages that Republicans have, many of which have been talked about at length in these threads.

I assume that's for me, but I completely agree. But the Constitutional order is what it is: if Democrats conclude they can't win under these terms and want to advocate for a new Constitution -- which is actually my position! -- then let's face up to that and start that work. If they think they can win under the current order by changing strategy/tactics/direction, do that. Obama was ostensibly a demonstration of the superiority of the second opinion, back when; I don't think he really looks that way anymore.

My point is that it's a fight and we're getting beat; the whole reason I posted anything is because the thread was convincing itself that Stein's photo of a broken seal meant something meaningful about these results. It just doesn't.

Man, I'm fucking done with armchair experts who don't show their work.

I think that's for me too, but the funny thing is it could be for anyone in five months of these threads.
posted by gerryblog at 7:48 AM on December 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

iffthen: All I can say to that is apparently the overwhelmingly Christian Republicans don't subscribe to that interpretation considering how they responded to Obama.
posted by R343L at 7:56 AM on December 3, 2016 [39 favorites]

Yes, they blew it: Trump is president and the GOP controls everything.

You might've noticed winning three in a row is a bit of a rarity. Also, Clinton has a 2.5 million lead in the popular vote. If it wasn't for Comey ratfucking the vote, or the bad luck of having a significant lead that was just barely poorly located, Dems control the presidency and the Supreme Court.

Mistakes were made, the recounts are not going to save us, but acting like everything was a catastrophe over 79,000 votes in MI, WI and PA is an overreaction. Many more people voted for the most progressive platform in history. If you want to fix things going forward, being realistic on where we are and how we got here is important. And while there are people who are probably too hopeful of a deus ex machina, being too negative on the other side of the coin can be just as damaging going forward.
posted by chris24 at 7:58 AM on December 3, 2016 [20 favorites]

iffthen: As a Christian of probably a very different sort from yours, I really hate that sort of proof-texting that has led you to what seems to me to be a truly bizarre conclusion. You can go through the Bible and find individual verses that say all kinds of things. But if you read the words of Jesus, one thing he was very clearly consistently on was the importance of speaking out against the powers that be and standing up for the least among us, the poor, the hungry, the thirsty, the imprisoned. He hung out with the despised. He identified himself with the words of Hebrew prophets who called their own people to do the same. He spent a lot of time arguing with the religious leaders of his day. He did not spend any time sucking up to rulers of any sort.

All that said, you do you and you do your interpretation of Christianity. I'll be over here with the least among us, following Jesus.
posted by hydropsyche at 8:01 AM on December 3, 2016 [58 favorites]

acting like everything was a catastrophe over 79,000 votes in MI, WI and PA is an overreaction

But that's what I'm saying. It's not (just) Clinton (barely) losing a winnable race, mostly through the bad luck of arbitrary state boundaries. It's eight years of party collapse, centered precisely on the Obama years that we weren't and still aren't seeing clearly.
posted by gerryblog at 8:03 AM on December 3, 2016 [8 favorites]

Do not speak evil about the ruler of your people. Exodus 22:28, quoted in Acts 23:5

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 8:04 AM on December 3, 2016 [60 favorites]

It's eight years of party collapse, centered precisely on the Obama years that we weren't and still aren't seeing clearly.

The issue with this analysis is that it starts with 2008. So in other words, Obama is punished for losing seats he helped win in 2008. The numbers are less when compared to where things stood in 2006.

It also fails to take into account the whitelash that occurred in the last 8 years in response to a black president, culminating in Trump's election. I mean, sure, you can blame Obama for this as well if you want for being black. But every single civil rights advancement in this country has been met with a huge backlash. Reconstruction - Jim Crow. CRA - the Southern Strategy and Reaganism/5 Republican landslides in 6 elections.
posted by chris24 at 8:11 AM on December 3, 2016 [10 favorites]

It’s true that racism is a powerful and durable force in our politics. But it is also true that Donald Trump is an incompetent clown who ran an amateurish campaign rife with mistakes. The Democrats should have won this election in a landslide. They did not, and there is no nobility or reassurance for them in a narrow loss in the electoral college or a win in the popular vote. And continuing to insist that a Donald Trump win was either some kind of strange fluke or completely inevitable is a recipe for repeated defeat.

Ezekiel Kweku, Skin in the Game, MTV.com (17 November 2016).
posted by Sonny Jim at 8:12 AM on December 3, 2016 [5 favorites]

But it is also true that Donald Trump is an incompetent clown who ran an amateurish campaign rife with mistakes.

Or, he ran a new kind of campaign the flummoxed and bypassed the media. Or worse, pandered to their worst instincts and got him $2 billion in free coverage that won him the primary and gave him a huge advantage in the general.
posted by chris24 at 8:17 AM on December 3, 2016 [18 favorites]

There are two different ways to look at this: one is that the Dems overachieved in spite of an unprecedented campaign to delegitimise Democratic-led governance and fix elections against them; the other is that if you don't create things capable of surviving a change in power, then it doesn't matter what good you did during the time you were in power.

Mitch McConnell broke this shit from the safe confines of Kentucky. (Well, not Kentucky, since he's basically a DC resident who makes contractual-obligation appearances back "home".) There ought to be an effort to gather thousands of people in the state who lose access to healthcare and have them blockade his DC house.
posted by holgate at 8:25 AM on December 3, 2016 [15 favorites]

When one side places a strong value on established laws, rules, and norms, and the other side doesn't and willfully violates those same laws, rules, and norms, the working system is no longer in balance. The side choosing to commit those violations has an asymmetrical advantage that the other side can't match and still hold the beliefs and values it claims. Score that how you will, but the "winning is everything" model has some serious drawbacks to it too.
posted by gusottertrout at 8:37 AM on December 3, 2016 [33 favorites]

Whom she married has nothing to do with her qualifications for office.

Well, she certainly provides an exception to the Romney Rule in regards to Trump related marriages.
posted by y2karl at 8:39 AM on December 3, 2016

iffthen, I'd argue that you're only touching on one side of a tension that exists in Scripture. I echo what hydropsyche says about caring for the 'the least of these'. While Christians collectively should not be partisan -- the Church is not and should not be either 'the Republican Party at prayer' or 'the Democratic Party at prayer'; the Church is nevertheless inherently political because it is concerned with the well-being of humans. It is involved; it has a stake; it takes sides -- and the side it takes, always, if it is truly being the Church, is with the people who are disempowered and marginalized.

While this moment is many other things as well, from a Christian point of view it is a theological crisis. I point you to the work of evangelical Anglican theologian (and former Bishop of Durham) Tom Wright (emphases mine):

[The] Caesar-cult was fast-growing, highly visible, and powerful precisely in its interweaving of political and religious allegiance. As various writers have recently urged, you don’t need such a strong military presence to police an empire if the citizens are worshipping the emperor. Conversely, where Rome had brought peace to the world, giving salvation from chaos, creating a new sense of unity out of previously warring pluralities, there was a certain inevitability about Rome itself, and the emperor as its ruler, being seen as divine.... Rome had power... to create an extraordinary new world order. Rome claimed to have brought justice to the world... The accession of the emperor, and also his birthday, could therefore be hailed as euaggelion, good news.... The emperor was the kyrios, the lord of the world, the one who claimed the allegiance and loyalty of subjects throughout his wide empire. When he came in person to pay a state visit to a colony or province, the word for his royal presence was parousia.

With all this in mind, we open the first page of Paul’s letters as they stand in the New Testament, and what do we find? We find Paul, writing a letter to the church in Rome itself, introducing himself as the accredited messenger of the one true God. He brings the gospel, the euaggelion, of the son of God... the Lord, the kyrios, of the whole world. Paul’s task is to bring the world, all the nations, into loyal allegiance —hypakoē pisteos, the obedience of faith — to this universal Lord. He is eager to announce this euaggelion in Rome, without shame, because this message is the power of God... Why is this? Because in this message (this ‘gospel of the son of God’), the justice of God, the dikaiosynē theou, is unveiled. [This introduction to the book of Romans] must have been heard in Rome, [and] Paul must have intended it, as a parody of the imperial cult.

I've elided much of the detail of Bp Wright's argument here for the sake of the thread's length, and the full article (which is required reading, I think, for anyone concerned about Protestant theology in a time of empire or fascism) is freely available here. His basic point, though, is that much of the theological vocabulary of the New Testament (parousia / glorious appearance; euanggelion / evangelical, gospel; kyrios / Lord and even the basic creedal affirmation "Jesus is Lord") was, to its first hearers, a clear (though sotto voce) appropriation of imperial vocabulary: "Jesus is Lord and Caesar isn't". I'm convinced that from a theological perspective, large swathes of the white evangelical American church have fallen headlong into the ancient idolatry of nationalism and civic religion, having (to quote Scripture again) 'a form of godliness, but denying its power'.

Will white American Christianity bend the knee to our new Caesar? Much of it already has. Those Christians who have not cannot stay silent, cannot retreat to a stained-glass world of niceties and pious hopes for salvation in the world to come; we have to speak and we have to act as if this world, too, is loved by and wept over by God. If we don't believe that, we don't truly believe in the Incarnation.
posted by tivalasvegas at 8:44 AM on December 3, 2016 [32 favorites]

I'll be over here with the least among us

now, I don't always think very highly of Metafilter either but there's no need for this kind of

anyway what I learned from the bible is sometimes God hardens Pharoah's heart, for fun. If God chooses or has chosen to use a greater or a lesser Trump as his instrument, as it were, that will not be good for any of us, probably.
posted by queenofbithynia at 8:45 AM on December 3, 2016 [4 favorites]

Frustratingly, for people that oppose Trump, and who claim Christianity, that's the imperative. To boil it down to a phrase: the job is now to respect Trump and help him be a good leader.

You are, in my opinion and in my reading of scripture, conflating two things that do not necessarily need to go together - the need to try to make Trump a better ruler, and an incorrect need not to rebel against him and his dictates. I am a #NeverTrump Republican, and my reading is strongly different from yours. (Everyone who hates religious talk may want to skip to the next comment)

A little further down in Romans 13 we also have:

Render unto all men therefore their dues. Tribute, where tribute is due; custom, to whom custom; fear, to whom fear; honor to whom honor. Owe no man any one but to love one another; for he whom has loved his neighbor has fulfilled the law.

What are the dues which Trump is due? What is Trump due? Well, the Bible also has an answer for that. What is Trump? What has he shown us of himself?

Matthew 7:16- By their fruits ye shall know them. Do men gather a bunch of grapes from thorns, or from thistles figs? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, and the evil tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can an evil tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not good fruit shall be cut down and shall be cast into the fire.

Trump is due, as a Christian, our prayers for his salvation - the love one owes a neighbor - but he is not due our mindless obedience simply as an authority. The idea that everyone owes obedience to authority is true only insofar as it does not conflict with a higher authority. Who is the highest authority? Where does God stand in all of this? Where is Christ placed?

Ephesians 1:21- Above all principality, and power, and virtue, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come.

Are you seriously arguing from a theological perspective that obedience to earthly authority should ever take precedence over obedience to God?
posted by corb at 8:50 AM on December 3, 2016 [30 favorites]

My favorite thing about God is the beard

Look, she's getting old and can't be bothered to pluck her chin every morning. Stop the judginess!
posted by tivalasvegas at 8:52 AM on December 3, 2016 [19 favorites]

Are you seriously arguing from a theological perspective that obedience to earthly authority should ever take precedence over obedience to God?

Only Republican earthly authority surely since the same people often didn't feel the same compulsion when Obama was in office.
posted by gusottertrout at 8:56 AM on December 3, 2016 [8 favorites]

So, I've got a new concern with regards to our nuclear defense and I don't think it's the concern many people have had.

I don't think MAD works under Trump. He has too many international assets that he has obviously and publicly put on a higher level than his obligations to the country. So I don't know for sure that he would retaliate and I don't really want to think about how likely he would be to retaliate. I don't think the man has any deterrence value.
posted by Slackermagee at 9:05 AM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

That's in Paul's First Epistle to the Republicans.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:06 AM on December 3, 2016 [5 favorites]

There's also the professional classes reliance on technological and scientific breakthroughs to provide relief to the least well off. It's a form of materialism that allows folks to callously put off action now, put off sacrifice for now, and wait for some vague device that will make everything better.

Techno-utopians are worshippers of mammon in Christian vernacular.
posted by Strange_Robinson at 9:11 AM on December 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

i think the lesson of the discussion so far is that you can't predict how any particular Christian is going to act based on scripture, because you don't know their frame of interpretation.

as far as Trump is concerned, Christians en masse will probably react similarly to previous presidencies: Evangelicals will keep their traps shut as long as they can sense progress on their particular moral hobbyhorses, liberal Catholics will continue to be liberal, etc.
posted by murphy slaw at 9:18 AM on December 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

I don't think MAD works under Trump. He has too many international assets that he has obviously and publicly put on a higher level than his obligations to the country. So I don't know for sure that he would retaliate and I don't really want to think about how likely he would be to retaliate. I don't think the man has any deterrence value.

It's the almost orthogonal point but one of the most chilling things I saw on Twitter in the last month was the realization that there are now buildings all over the world personally owned by the US president, with his name emblazoned upon them, none of them situated or having been constructed with an eye towards defensibility (the way an embassy might be). It seems like a recipe for disaster.
posted by gerryblog at 9:20 AM on December 3, 2016 [4 favorites]

Look, I don't even know what this means, but if he's going to tweet everything can someone please teach him how to RT?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:20 AM on December 3, 2016

the lesson of the discussion so far is that you can't predict how any particular Christian is going to act based on scripture, because you don't know their frame of interpretation.

You can if you listen. Here's a good shorthand: the more they rely on the Old Testament, the more likely they are a fundamentalist. Those folks would burn me at the stake as a heretic. Which is why I've never blindly thrown in with Republicans, far too many of whom think Leviticus still applies.
posted by Strange_Robinson at 9:22 AM on December 3, 2016 [4 favorites]

He has too many international assets that he has obviously and publicly put on a higher level than his obligations to the country. So I don't know for sure that he would retaliate and I don't really want to think about how likely he would be to retaliate.

I can genuinely assure you that Trump *not* nuking someone in response to a nuclear attack is among the least of my worries. Him nuking the wrong people in response to a nuclear terrorist attack is far more likely and chilling.
posted by Candleman at 9:22 AM on December 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

...I'd add "nukes somebody in response to a non-nuclear terrorist attack" or "nukes an ISIS encampment to show he means business" to my list too, now that we're being so honest.
posted by gerryblog at 9:24 AM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

I can genuinely assure you that Trump *not* nuking someone in response to a nuclear attack is among the least of my worries. Him nuking the wrong people in response to a nuclear terrorist attack is far more likely and chilling.

It's not that him not nuking someone as an action that worries me, it's whatever happens when someone decides that he probably won't and they can go for X.
posted by Slackermagee at 9:25 AM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

You can if you listen. Here's a good shorthand: the more they rely on the Old Testament, the more likely they are a fundamentalist.

i guess what i'm saying is that having mefites quoting scripture at each other as if that is going to tell us anything about how Christians at large are going to act is hopeless, because Christians aren't a monolithic entity at any scale you care to use.
posted by murphy slaw at 9:26 AM on December 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

Donald Trump's New Defense Secretary Will Keep Ties with Theranos

Donald Trump's New Defense Secretary Will Keep Ties with Thanos

Slight correction, for the record.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 9:26 AM on December 3, 2016 [10 favorites]

Where Does Trump Get His News? BuzzFeed News analyzed all the links Donald Trump tweeted since he launched his presidential campaign to determine where the president-elect gets his news.

posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:34 AM on December 3, 2016 [5 favorites]

I reacted a little strongly because it sounded like outright dismissal. Christians, as an identity block, are not monolithic. It's just like any other identity that way.
posted by Strange_Robinson at 9:35 AM on December 3, 2016

In Joseph's case, he helped prevent a famine wreaking havoc.

You conveniently omit Genesis 47:20-21

So Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh; for all the Egyptians sold their fields, because the famine was severe upon them. The land became Pharaoh's; and as for the people, he made slaves of them from one end of Egypt to the other.
posted by bukvich at 9:38 AM on December 3, 2016 [5 favorites]

If I were on the team at Google News, I would sure be tempted to do some manual tweaks to the news feeds of Trump staffers.
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:39 AM on December 3, 2016 [7 favorites]

I've made the point that Trump seems to quote the Satanist's bible rather than the Christian Bible.

Trump stated what was his favorite verse: Eye for an eye.
And similar Trump quote: Get even with people. If they screw you, screw them back ten times as hard. I really believe that.
Satanic bible: Eye for eye, tooth for tooth -aye, four-fold, a hundred-fold!

Trump: You can't be too greedy.
Satanic bible: A Satanist knows there is nothing wrong with being greedy.

Trump brags of his orgies and praises violence.
Speaking of his son, Barron. "He's strong, he's smart, he's tough, he's vicious, he's violent — all of the ingredients you need to be an entrepreneur."
Speaking of a foursome he had, "I wouldn't say 300 [pounds], I would say could be about 375. I figure 125 a piece as opposed to 100."

From the Satanic bible:
Satanism is a blatantly selfish, brutal religion.
And,
The seven deadly sins of the Christian Church are: greed, pride, envy, anger, gluttony, lust, and sloth. Satanism advocates indulging in each of these "sins" as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification.

Of these, Trump does not have sloth.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 9:44 AM on December 3, 2016 [6 favorites]

There was nothing complicated at all about the Christian vote for Trump. He took the clearest possible stance against Roe v. Wade, including an (unprecedented) list of potential Supreme Court nominees each one of whom is a reliable (seeming) vote to overturn Roe. As I previously argued in response to a post on the green, this may well have been his single most important move, because it completely nullified Clinton's efforts to get traditional values voters to stay home or vote third party out of distaste for Trump's divorces and language about women.
posted by MattD at 9:58 AM on December 3, 2016 [10 favorites]

(This being a subset of Trump's overall most important contributor to victory, which is that the vast majority of Republicans voted for him despite a large percentage of Republican leaders seeming to be against him.)
posted by MattD at 9:59 AM on December 3, 2016

it's whatever happens when someone decides that he probably won't and they can go for X.

If the past months have taught us anything, it's that Trump is unpredictable. There's relatively few actors out there with weapons of mass destruction and I can't imagine any of them would reach the conclusion that there'd be no retribution because of real estate values.

There was nothing complicated at all about the Christian vote for Trump. He took the clearest possible stance against Roe v. Wade, including an (unprecedented) list of potential Supreme Court nominees each one of whom is a reliable (seeming) vote to overturn Roe.

It's untrue that he took a clear stance against Roe v. Wade, but he did make it clear he didn't really care about the issue and that he'd happily trade away women's rights for votes.

Don't conflate anti-abortion voters with Christians. There are many Christians that voted against him because of his racist rhetoric and advocating murder and torture, among other reasons. And others that were torn between wanting to end abortion and being against other things he advocated for and ultimately came down on the wrong side. It's definitely complicated and dismissing winning Christian votes as impossible as long as the Democrats are pro-Choice is a losing strategy.
posted by Candleman at 10:15 AM on December 3, 2016 [6 favorites]

They still managed to pass Obamacare, the stimulus and the auto bailout. So they saved the auto industry, the economy, and insured 20 million.

Passing Obamacare without any GOP input was the fatal flaw.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 10:17 AM on December 3, 2016

Passing Obamacare without any GOP input was the fatal flaw.

The GOP wanted no input. They were the party of no the entire time.
posted by Talez at 10:19 AM on December 3, 2016 [59 favorites]

It’s true that racism is a powerful and durable force in our politics. But it is also true that Donald Trump is an incompetent clown who ran an amateurish campaign rife with mistakes. The Democrats should have won this election in a landslide. They did not, and there is no nobility or reassurance for them in a narrow loss in the electoral college or a win in the popular vote. And continuing to insist that a Donald Trump win was either some kind of strange fluke or completely inevitable is a recipe for repeated defeat.
Ezekiel Kweku, Skin in the Game, MTV.com (17 November 2016).

On the one hand, absolutely. But, on the other hand, the other folks in the GOP primary also thought he couldn't possibly win until suddenly it became horrifyingly clear that he would.

Passing Obamacare without any GOP input was the fatal flaw.

The GOP declined to participate; they could have had plenty of input. Also the plan is basically RomneyCare, so...
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 10:19 AM on December 3, 2016 [9 favorites]

> Passing Obamacare without any GOP input was the fatal flaw.

You can't be serious. There were zero GOP votes, but the entire construction of the exchange model was RomneyCare 2.0. Democrats tried and begged to get GOP members of Congress to sign on, but they simply dragged the proposal to the right while contributing zero votes.

Also, let's grant for the sake of argument that they could have gotten some GOP votes without neutering the bill even more than it was by the Mary Landrieus and Ben Nelsons within the Democratic caucus that made it more conservative without Republicans having to participate -- what would a handful of these votes have changed about the way the rest of Obama's presidency played out? Do you really think that the GOP would have been a valuable partner for anything at all?
posted by tonycpsu at 10:24 AM on December 3, 2016 [38 favorites]

i guess what i'm saying is that having mefites quoting scripture at each other as if that is going to tell us anything about how Christians at large are going to act is hopeless, because Christians aren't a monolithic entity at any scale you care to use.

Every fourth person you see walking down the street is a white evangelical and 81% voted for Trump. That is about as monolithic as you are going to find.
posted by JackFlash at 10:36 AM on December 3, 2016 [14 favorites]

It's definitely complicated and dismissing winning Christian votes as impossible as long as the Democrats are pro-Choice is a losing strategy

welcome to reality. Trump got the same 80% of the evangelical vote that Romney and Bush did.

To put that in perspective, that's the vote split of billionaires, orthodox jews, and also the strongest "Red" counties.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 10:37 AM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

The GOP wanted no input. They were the party of no the entire time.

While true, the electorate didn't see it that way. They saw midnight passage and backroom deals.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 10:46 AM on December 3, 2016

Republican voters might have seen it as midnight passage and backroom deals, every Democratic I know sees Republicans as the party of obstruction.
posted by maggiemaggie at 10:48 AM on December 3, 2016 [10 favorites]

Trump got the same 80% of the evangelical vote that Romney and Bush did.

Evangelicals are all Christians but not all Christians are evangelicals, so to dismiss all Christians as 80% unwinnable is foolish.

That other 20% is also not an insignificant voting block, so retaining them is important.
posted by Candleman at 10:49 AM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

the electorate didn't see it that way.

You can't entirely blame the Democrats for not winning the messaging war with the part of the electorate that reads and believes Brietbart.
posted by C'est la D.C. at 10:50 AM on December 3, 2016 [13 favorites]

Some protestants cheered when Kennedy was killed. The papist had been removed from leadership.

Maybe bringing the tensions within Christianity to the surface would be a good long term strategy to counter the right. For example, the left sure could use some Christians to call out the spiritual arrested development of evangelical leaders.

When Bush two claimed he heard god wanted endless war in the Middle East, it sure would have helped to have a prominent left Christian say something like, 'There's a difference between one's own ego and the voice of god. Taking lives is a direct violation of the Ten Commandments, and if murder must occur, it must be throughly justified.'
posted by Strange_Robinson at 10:50 AM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

Donald Trump says there is no need for full wall between Mexico and US due to ‘mountains’ and ‘vicious rivers’
posted by futz at 10:51 AM on December 3, 2016 [5 favorites]

> While true, the electorate didn't see it that way.

What's your counterfactual here? Obama and Democrats partner with the GOP who began Obama's term saying their #1 priority was to make him a one-term President. Do you expect a good healthcare bill to come out of that process? Do you think the public was going to reward them for trying just because they included some Republicans? Are you remembering to also count the millions within the Democratic base who would have revolted at Democrats failing to fight for the true healthcare reform that Obama campaigned on?
posted by tonycpsu at 10:52 AM on December 3, 2016 [5 favorites]

And others that were torn between wanting to end abortion and being against other things he advocated for and ultimately came down on the wrong side. It's definitely complicated and dismissing winning Christian votes as impossible as long as the Democrats are pro-Choice is a losing strategy.

In my understanding, there's no daylight at all between Mormon Christians and (trinitarian) evangelical Christians* on the abortion issue; and Mormons were one of the few conservative groups that did move substantially against Trump, whether by switching to Clinton, by protest-voting for Egg or by staying home. So I think that abortion, like 'economic anxiety', is another red herring. Not that people don't genuinely believe themselves to have been motivated by that single issue: but the question is, why did Mormons turn on Trump when Evangelicals didn't?

One possibility is simply the presence of a validator (Evan McMullin) within the community who presented a politically viable alternative -- by which I mean, not that he was going to be anything but a spoiler, but he demonstrated that one could be a 'good Mormon' and also vote against the Republican nominee. There wasn't a similar evangelical leader to validate an anti-Trump vote in this way, I don't think. So a lot of evangelicals felt they only had one choice that was consonant with their subculture, even if they had reservations; and now that they have identified themselves with him, they're doing the very human thing of retroactively justifying their decision.

Another possibility is that Mormons share a collective history of actual religious oppression at the hands of mainstream Protestant Americans that makes them more wary of authoritarianism -- that they have theological and cultural resources that white evangelical Protestants, who do not have a history of having been oppressed (and are always trying to find ways to play the martyr card anyway) can't draw on to resist fascism.

Thirdly, it may be that the quiet opposition (or at least surprising neutrality) of the Church hierarchy is much more powerful among Mormons than among evangelical Protestants as a whole. It's odd to me since I'm used to thinking of conservative Protestants as typically much more decentralized; moderate Protestants as being somewhat more hierarchical (think Presbyterian or Methodist), and of course Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox as being the most formally hierarchical of all. But Mormons, to my limited understanding, have a fairly strict and powerful ecclesiastical structure as well.

I'd love for people more familiar with the LDS than I to weigh in. I think it's an interesting and useful thing to compare.

*I'm not sure whether Mormons consider themselves evangelicals, hence my parenthetical
posted by tivalasvegas at 10:54 AM on December 3, 2016 [12 favorites]

Democratic base who would have revolted

I had a chuckle at that. The Dems would just keep electing the same people over and over, hoping this time they'd win something.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 10:56 AM on December 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

Jack Mormon here. I'd bet most Mormons are keenly aware at how much the evangelicals hate them. It's one of the few ways I've been involved in shaping religious dialogue among my peers.
posted by Strange_Robinson at 10:59 AM on December 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

> I had a chuckle at that.

If you don't think Obama would have lost significant support if he signed a health reform bill that could get Chuck "Death Panels" Grassley's vote, then we're not living in the same reality. And you dodged the rest of my question about how exactly you think getting GOP votes (a) would have been possible and (b) would have helped.
posted by tonycpsu at 11:01 AM on December 3, 2016 [4 favorites]

Member of Putin's party: 'United Russia won the elections in America'

Russia's government denies that it tampered in the U.S. election or even took sides. But now that the results are in, members of President Vladimir Putin's United Russia party aren't holding back.

"It turns out that United Russia won the elections in America," Viktor Nazarov, the governor of Omsk, Russia, declared in a radio interview.
posted by futz at 11:04 AM on December 3, 2016 [8 favorites]

The national and state parties would have spent huge amounts of money primarying any GOP Rep/Senator who voted for the PPACA.
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:04 AM on December 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

Evangelicals are all Christians but not all Christians are evangelicals, so to dismiss all Christians as 80% unwinnable is foolish.

That other 20% is also not an insignificant voting block, so retaining them is important.

That last 20% doesn't vote as a block so there is no clear path to reaching them, while the 80% does vote as a block so they are wooed by conservatives. The differences between the Evangelicals and other Christians has really little to do with Christianity per se, as "Christian" is a fundamentally incoherent marker of values at this point, meaning virtually nothing but who you are choosing to group yourself with in its more extreme manifestations. Beyond that and some vague concept of Christ near the center of their religion, there isn't much else for common elements, with even Christ's nature and role being seen differently by various believers. The value sets Christian voters rely on are more about their worldly associations than their religious ones.
posted by gusottertrout at 11:04 AM on December 3, 2016

There was nothing complicated at all about the Christian vote for Trump. He took the clearest possible stance against Roe v. Wade, including an (unprecedented) list of potential Supreme Court nominees each one of whom is a reliable (seeming) vote to overturn Roe.

Not all Christians think overturning Roe is the single most important issue in the world. In fact, many of us are pro-choice. I am a pro-choice Christian. I think God would much rather have babies born to people who love them and want them. And I am really sick of so-called Christians who devote all this energy to saving fetuses but do not give a shit when it comes to living, breathing fully developed human beings. Jesus said not one word about abortion, but he talked constantly how we were supposed to care for the living, breathing fully developed human beings all around us.
posted by hydropsyche at 11:04 AM on December 3, 2016 [13 favorites]

This is something. NYT: Will Ivanka Trump Be the Most Powerful First Daughter in History? (yes it's in the Style section, because, you know what go to hell that's not where this should be)

When Nancy Pelosi, the minority leader of the House of Representatives, called Donald J. Trump shortly after the Nov. 8 election, they talked about domestic policy and infrastructure. But when Ms. Pelosi raised the specific subject of women’s issues, the president-elect did something unexpected: He handed the phone over to another person in the room — his 35-year-old daughter, Ivanka.

Women's issues came up and he passed the phone to Ivanka? I honestly don't know whether to be horrified or reassured.
posted by zachlipton at 11:05 AM on December 3, 2016 [23 favorites]

Arrrgh. Obamacare is the Republican input. It's functionally indistinguishable from the sort of health care reform the Republicans would have put forward in the 80s. And it still got 0 Republican support.

I have no idea what the Rs are planning to do with health care and, frighteningly, I don't think they know either. My guess is they're going to stumble into blowing up the whole system through repealing subsidies and price controls without repealing the regulations which make those things necessary. But I don't actually know. And neither do they!
posted by Justinian at 11:06 AM on December 3, 2016 [40 favorites]

The New Yorker; THE PROPAGANDA ABOUT RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA By Adrian Chen, DECEMBER 1, 2016
posted by bukvich at 11:06 AM on December 3, 2016 [4 favorites]

Unofficial BART Notice Calls Out Racism, Etc., Tells Riders To 'Get Your S**t Together' [photo, San Francisco Bay Area public transit]
posted by zachlipton at 11:09 AM on December 3, 2016 [23 favorites]

I have no idea what the Rs are planning to do with health care and, frighteningly, I don't think they know either. My guess is they're going to stumble into blowing up the whole system through repealing subsidies and price controls without repealing the regulations which make those things necessary.

They'll probably listen to the insurance industry and "fix" the ACA in ways that lead to more profits for insurers while providing some fig leaf of care they can sell to voters as important change. At least that's the way they usually work, profits for the rich, slogans for the poor.
posted by gusottertrout at 11:11 AM on December 3, 2016 [7 favorites]

But it is also true that Donald Trump is an incompetent clown who ran an amateurish campaign rife with mistakes.

He did run an amateurish campaign, but maybe Donald wasn't trying to run a campaign. At least running a political campaign was secondary to his primary goal, which was to create an entertaining and riveting show, with him as the audience surrogate, underdog, protagonist, and eventually hero.
posted by FJT at 11:13 AM on December 3, 2016 [4 favorites]

There is zero need for any individual to work 40+ hours a week. The work needs to be spread around because there simply isn't enough work to be done to achieve full employment any more, and the problem is only getting worse.

I feel like it would be easy sell. Just get on TV and ask those who can to take, like, three Fridays off in a row (or Mondays). Not everyone at once or anything but when it makes sense for you. Those three weeks could be your life.

I'm coming around to the idea that the whole point of civilization is to get us all to a point where no one needs to work and everyone has everything they want. Like a natural communism let's say. I think a transition to a 32 hour work-week would be a good first step.
posted by VTX at 11:14 AM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

What's your counterfactual here? Obama and Democrats partner with the GOP who began Obama's term saying their #1 priority was to make him a one-term President. Do you expect a good healthcare bill to come out of that process?

* Don't pass as ambitious a bill.
* Eliminate the filibuster first, pass a more ambitious bill with the 50th Dem senator as opposed to the 60th.
* Pass an equivalently ambitious bill, but on a different non-Romneycare-based economic model.
* Pass a bill with salutary effects that are visible to the typical voter.
* Pass a bill whose salutary effects take place immediately, not in a staggered manner.
* Pass the popular fixes one by one rather than all at once, moving the burden of "compromise" to the GOP.
* Table healthcare altogether until the economic crisis has stabilized. Use your honeymoon and supermajority period to borrow money at zero or subzero interest rates and spend it on infrastructure and jobs (you know, exactly what Trump is going to do).

There are a world of other possible actions for Obama to have committed himself to. I think the last one is probably best, and the one he chose is probably one of the worst, both tactically and strategically -- ACA bought the Democrats a world of problems while sacrificing, rather than advancing, a core liberal agenda item, and now is likely to be overturned entirely with few or no long-term consequences. I'm hopeful that the preexisting condition exclusion and no lifetime limits will survive Trump's ego -- I don't think he wants a parade of disabled children and veterans staging die-ins on the Capitol steps for the next four years -- but I don't know that I'd bet on it.
posted by gerryblog at 11:15 AM on December 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

@kevinroose:

Twitter should rename "While you were away" to "Oh god, what did he do now?"
posted by Wordshore at 11:15 AM on December 3, 2016 [6 favorites]

Henry Kissinger visits China to ease concerns amid Trump transition

Kissinger was in China yesterday for the Taiwan debacle. Is Kissinger acting in an official capacity? The article doesn't make it clear.
posted by futz at 11:18 AM on December 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

They'll probably listen to the insurance industry and "fix" the ACA in ways that lead to more profits for insurers while providing some fig leaf of care they can sell to voters as important change. At least that's the way they usually work, profits for the rich, slogans for the poor.

Apropos of what I said about, I think the most likely outcome is that the preexisting condition exclusion and no lifetime limits will stay, as well as something like a rebranded version of the mandate, but insurance companies will be able to sell garbage policies. Maximum profits, minimum benefit, everything bad that happens as a result is Obama's fault, forever and ever amen.
posted by gerryblog at 11:19 AM on December 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

* Table healthcare altogether until the economic crisis has stabilized. Use your honeymoon and supermajority period to borrow money at zero or subzero interest rates and spend it on infrastructure and jobs (you know, exactly what Trump is going to do).

There are a world of other possible actions for Obama to have committed himself to. I think the last one is probably best, and the one he chose is probably one of the worst, both tactically and strategically -- ACA bought the Democrats a world of problems while sacrificing, rather than advancing, a core liberal agenda item, and now is likely to be overturned entirely with few or no long-term consequences.

Interesting. You generally see people criticize Obama for his naïveté with the Republican opposition, but here you're advocating for more of it? The Dems were going to lose the house in 2010 for no other reason than it was a mid-term election, so the end of that year is basically your deadline to do anything. Whose definition of the economic crisis being "over" do you use? Because if you come out and say that you're not dealing with healthcare until that's taken care of then as far as the Republicans are concerned, the crisis is never going to be over.
posted by LionIndex at 11:22 AM on December 3, 2016 [8 favorites]

Vox Donald Trump’s huge, ambitious school voucher plan, explained

Together, DeVos and Trump want to oversee the biggest change to American public education in half a century. Trump’s plan for his first 100 days includes a $20 billion federal voucher program for children living in poverty, a program he’d likely pay for by dismantling the biggest existing system of federal support for public schools.

posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 11:24 AM on December 3, 2016 [4 favorites]

@DanaZkat His Majesty King Abdullah today made a phone call with US Vice President-elect @mike_pence
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 11:27 AM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

There are a world of other possible actions for Obama to have committed himself to. I think the last one is probably best

Congress had just spent a considerable amount of money on infrastructure as part of the stimulus. That part was already taken care of. Your proposal is that President Obama and the Democrats should have ignored health care, one of the primary things they ran on and one of the biggest issues Americans were complaining about. They saw a window of opportunity and went for it, and even if they hadn't, odds are good they never would have gotten another such opportunity.

The ACA as passed was also never intended to be the end all and be all. The plan was to make tweaks and corrections in follow-up bills as the market adjusted. But then it became a giant political issue and nobody could touch it, even when some changes would have generally made sense to everyone. That's why the Administration stretched things as far as they could (if not much farther in some cases) administratively.

I'm hopeful that the preexisting condition exclusion and no lifetime limits will survive Trump's ego

Guaranteed issue is not feasible without some kind of subsidy and mandate. All three parts work together, or there simply won't be insurers in the exchanges. Some Republicans have a kind of harebrained scheme to replace the mandate with "continuous coverage," where you get screwed over if you're uninsured for any period of time (perhaps because you couldn't afford the premiums) and the subsidies with less generous tax credits. There's a lot of reason to believe this won't really work--too many people will fall out of the market--, but it may be irrelevant if they move forward with a repeal without a replacement, because insurers will flee in droves first.
posted by zachlipton at 11:29 AM on December 3, 2016 [4 favorites]

I guess the Jordanian government know's who's driving.
posted by murphy slaw at 11:30 AM on December 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

having mefites quoting scripture at each other is in itself one of the strangest things I've experienced on this site, and maybe a sign of the apocalypse.

As an agnostic, I sometimes find comfort in reading the Bible, for many reasons. Some things have never changed for humans, because we are human. But when it comes to politics and governance, things have actually changed the last couple thousand years. If you don't think so, you need to give the bible studies a break and read some history.
These last few decades have been the most peaceful in the history of humanity. More people have been able to sustain themselves. More people have been able to depend on the rule of law. More people have had access to healthcare and to education. More people have lived in democracies. And all of this progress has been the direct result of democracy, of international law, of international trade and communication.
The worst thing about the current situation is that we are about to loose everything we have achieved because of a relatively small minority who choose to believe obvious lies.
Don't imagine that anyone, in their deepest heart, does not know climate change is real and man-made.
Don't imagine that anyone, in their deepest heart, does not know abortion can be necessary and had been so forever
Don't imagine that anyone, in their deepest heart, does not know universal healthcare is cheaper and better
Don't imagine that anyone, in their deepest heart, does not know that all men and women are created equal and are entitled to equal rights
(well, I could go on and on but so can you)
A lot of the discussion now is disingenuous - wether it is throwing scripture at one another or chasing the elusive WWC. We are in the middle of a global sea change, and a lot of people are scared and confused. That is fair enough. But our leaders should be leading and they are not.
posted by mumimor at 11:32 AM on December 3, 2016 [11 favorites]

Because if you come out and say that you're not dealing with healthcare until that's taken care of then as far as the Republicans are concerned, the crisis is never going to be over.

I don't think it's a formal announcement, of course not. But 2009 was a massive opportunity to pass laws to advance the project of long-term Democratic dominance under the banner of economic emergency, including jobs programs, Green Economy spending, infrastructure spending, mortgage bailouts, etc. Any evaluation of the actions Obama took has to be evaluated in that context, and if we're looking for counterfactuals, we should be imagining actions Obama might have taken then that would have made the period 2010-2016 less of a total bloodletting. In part that's important so we know what to do if we ever get in power again, but it's also important so we know what actions of Trump we should commit ourselves to blocking with the same vituperation that they fought Obama/Romneycare. As many have said in this thread, they committed themselves on Day One to making Obama's a failed presidency, and they did it. Schumer, in contrast, is already signaling he'll working with Trump on the Trump jobs plan...
posted by gerryblog at 11:32 AM on December 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

. But 2009 was a massive opportunity to pass laws to advance the project of long-term Democratic dominance under the banner of economic emergency, including jobs programs, Green Economy spending, infrastructure spending, mortgage bailouts, etc. Any evaluation of the actions Obama took has to be evaluated in that context, and if we're looking for counterfactuals, we should be imagining actions Obama might have taken then that would have made the period 2010-2016 less of a total bloodletting.

They did pass most of that too. There was a stimulus full of green job initiatives, a mortgage refinance program, infrastructure, all of it. This revisiting of 2009 has made no mention of Lieberman or Ben Nelson. Or that we're talking about a 6 month window from Al Franken's seating to Scott Brown's victory. The Democrats didn't have 60 votes for any of more that shit than what they got either, they were relying on traitors in their own party facing total and bad faith resistance from the republicans and the complicit media. Blaming 2016 on revising 2009 is little better than citing baseless polls that Bernie would've won.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:39 AM on December 3, 2016 [10 favorites]

While true, the electorate didn't see it that way. They saw midnight passage and backroom deals.

I would be utterly astonished if the percentage of the electorate that had any reasonable idea at all about the methods used for passing the ACA was out of the single digits.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:40 AM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

Donald Trump says there is no need for full wall between Mexico and US due to ‘mountains’ and ‘vicious rivers’
posted by futz at 2:51 PM on December 3

It's breathtaking to be ignorant about virtually everything.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 11:48 AM on December 3, 2016 [15 favorites]

I don't think it's a formal announcement, of course not. But 2009 was a massive opportunity to pass laws to advance the project of long-term Democratic dominance under the banner of economic emergency, including jobs programs, Green Economy spending, infrastructure spending, mortgage bailouts, etc. Any evaluation of the actions Obama took has to be evaluated in that context, and if we're looking for counterfactuals, we should be imagining actions Obama might have taken then that would have made the period 2010-2016 less of a total bloodletting.

A considerable part of the problem was simply that Obama and the Democratic Party very much came in intending to fix the "economic emergency," but read that emergency as something distinct from a number of the other issues under discussion. Obama, in particular, seems to have seen health care and green initiatives as long-term, incrementalist projects, in contrast to "emergency measures" like the continuation of TARP and the auto industry bailout.

Theirs was fundamentally a "big institutions" view of the economy, a genuine belief that "too big to fail" means too big to fail." And, of course, there was also the sense of "political capital" as a finite resource. Perversely, they didn't see the situation as a top-to-bottom state of emergency in quite the way a lot of ordinary people did. Obama governed with an eye to maintain as many norms of DLC-inflected/liberal consensus political norms as possible, because he and most other Democratic politicians essentially came up in a period when that was how Democrats won.

His models were the Clinton presidency and, subsequently, the Democratic gains of the previous election cycle that put Obama himself in the Senate and gave Democrats those majorities, the narrative they were working on was one in which you run Blue Dog (conservative) Democrats in "conservative" states and run the party from the top down once in office. (They deliberately disbanded their turnout operation because it was *too* grassroots.)

Nearly every decision they made in that first year in office was fed by these sensibilities, and by a more general sense that the end of Bush 43's presidency was a call for the restoration of "normalcy." The historical narrative of the New Deal they believe in is that FDR "saved capitalism" from communism and fascism; this was their chance to do the same, to save the market from itself. Because that is "how things work."

And, of course, they fully accepted the new foreign policy structure, the permanent emergency of terrorism, in a way they did not see the market effects -- or, frankly, the coming racialized backlash -- as similarly fraught. The Democrats of '09 were a party governed by the logics of tacking towards the center as they understood it and by the notion that things had changed irrevocably in 1989 and 2001, but not in 2007.

To propose counterfactuals is to imagine not merely different political actions, but fundamentally different political actors. It is to put genuine radicals with a total vision of the country in place of self-defined "sensible" technocrats who saw their role as the restoration and maintenance of business as usual.

To the extent that Obama's actions changed over the course of his two terms towards some of the moves he made in the last two years of his presidency, my sense is that this was the result of a gradual and often granular view of issues, growing if belated understanding that the norms were eroded or gone.
posted by kewb at 11:59 AM on December 3, 2016 [16 favorites]

Don't imagine that anyone, in their deepest heart, does not know climate change is real and man-made.
Don't imagine that anyone, in their deepest heart, does not know abortion can be necessary and had been so forever
Don't imagine that anyone, in their deepest heart, does not know universal healthcare is cheaper and better
Don't imagine that anyone, in their deepest heart, does not know that all men and women are created equal and are entitled to equal rights

You mean inside the bubble, right?
posted by Rykey at 12:07 PM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

* Eliminate the filibuster first, pass a more ambitious bill with the 50th Dem senator as opposed to the 60th.

How would we be feeling right about now if the Democratic Senate had followed this course? Terrified or very terrified?
posted by Justinian at 12:07 PM on December 3, 2016 [6 favorites]

A bit more on Mormons now that I've got a proper keyboard to compose from:

Mormons are exceptionally family centered. This is in a way that evangelicals really aren't. Evangelicals will more or less overlook anything as long as the individual in question professes to have found god. Mormons, by contrast, will excommunicate over divorce, per-marital sex, abortion, the whole nine yards. There is definitely some local discretion in these matters, but folks who deviate in any public way will be shunned and marginalized, whether they are thrown out or not.

Mormons fall within the works divide of the works vs grace divide. This largely means Mormons must be an example. It's not enough to ask for god's forgiveness, one also has to live correctly. They are a lot more like old school Irish Catholics and Mexican Catholics.

The persecution stuff mentioned here is relevant too. Please don't underestimate one of the few peoples who stood up to the US military and won.

Trump's multiple marriages, and his locker room talk, along with the growing rabidness of prior evangelical allies, would definitely be enough to split the Mormon vote. You've also got Harry Reid as an example of a Democratic Mormon to help matters.

A final note, Mormons vary somewhat by region, and has its own rather complicated pecking order. For instance, Utah Mormons tend to look down on Mormons outside Utah. Genealogical connections to the early church also count like minor royalty.
posted by Strange_Robinson at 12:09 PM on December 3, 2016 [14 favorites]

Also, while Mormon leadership is very hierarchical, it is also mostly amateurs. I'd have to check for where the line gets drawn, but I think the prophet and apostles would be the only professional class leaders.
posted by Strange_Robinson at 12:13 PM on December 3, 2016

How would we be feeling right about now if the Democratic Senate had followed this course? Terrified or very terrified?

I am certain the GOP will pull the plug on it the minute they feel like it would advantage them to, so I'd be equally terrified. I also think it's unlikely that Trump gets elected, and perhaps even that Dems lose the House, in a context in which the Democrats can pass legislation post-Scott-Brown.
posted by gerryblog at 12:14 PM on December 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

The idea that people weren't "allowed" to read the PPACA comes from Hillary Clinton's joke, in response to the torrent of malicious lies, slander, and libel about the bill, that we'd have to pass it to see what was in it. The Republicans removed the context they were creating and presented it as fact, because the Republican Party long ago discarded morality and truth as for the weak.

(This ties into my overall "The Republican Party has chosen to be the party of Satan" theory- glad I don't believe in any such being, or else I'd be making much, much darker conclusions.)
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:16 PM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

It was Pelosi's joke, not HRC's.
posted by gerryblog at 12:17 PM on December 3, 2016

Ah, that's my mistake.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:18 PM on December 3, 2016

* Don't pass as ambitious a bill.

What does this mean? Which parts would you have cut? You can't just say "do less" as a counterfactual because the specifics affect how the bill would have been received

* Eliminate the filibuster first, pass a more ambitious bill with the 50th Dem senator as opposed to the 60th.

Yes, that would have gone over well. When Democrats threatened the nuclear option to stop Bush 43's judicial nominees the country did not support them. To kill it not just for nominees but normal legislation was not a political possibility in 2009.

* Pass an equivalently ambitious bill, but on a different non-Romneycare-based economic model.

Again, specifics are necessary here for your counterfactual to be compelling. What model? Exchange and subsidy is the only way I'm aware of to retain the private medical insurance companies' role, which was a requirement not just for Republicans but also a majority of Democrats. Single payer was simply not possible.

* Pass a bill with salutary effects that are visible to the typical voter.

Many of them were. Some weren't because healthcare delivery costs are going up and nobody really notices when things are getting more expensive, but at a slower rate.

* Pass a bill whose salutary effects take place immediately, not in a staggered manner.

If you look at the provisions, what you'll find for the most part is the ones that were easier to implement were done first and the ones that were harder were back-loaded.

* Pass the popular fixes one by one rather than all at once, moving the burden of "compromise" to the GOP.

Was never going to happen. Remember the "Gang of Six" negotiations? The three Republicans tanked any and all of the popular fixes because they would have given political advantage to Obama.

* Table healthcare altogether until the economic crisis has stabilized. Use your honeymoon and supermajority period to borrow money at zero or subzero interest rates and spend it on infrastructure and jobs (you know, exactly what Trump is going to do).

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was signed on February 17, 2009. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was singed on March 23, 2010. He did in fact use his "honeymoon" to pass stimulus, but not the kind of stimulus you're talking about here, because of course Republicans didn't want that kind of stimulus. They wanted it to be mostly tax cuts, not new spending. If you believe he could have gotten a better stimulus, please make your case.
posted by tonycpsu at 12:27 PM on December 3, 2016 [12 favorites]

China has lodged a formal diplomatic protest while Chinese diplomacy experts call to end relations with the US if he does it again.

Shen Dingli is not a radical, he's one of the leading international relations and diplomacy experts in China.
posted by T.D. Strange at 12:34 PM on December 3, 2016 [18 favorites]

The Forward: REVEALED: The Full Keith Ellison Tape Shows He Was (Mostly) Praising Israel — Not Trashing It

The original clip was released by Steven Emerson's "Investigative Project on Terrorism," basically one step behind Pamela Geller-level Islamophobia, who cut down a long speech to just a short clip to attack Ellison. Eventually Emerson released the full 22-minute speech.

I think it's nuanced and I don't love everything he has to say, but I also don't need a DNC chair to be in 100% agreement with AIPAC on US-Israel relations (most American Jews aren't in 100% agreement either, thankfully). Ellison's main point is that Muslim-Americans should be more politically organized, which is more than reasonable and exactly what you'd expect him to say at such an event, and he was hit by an anti-Islam group with a out-of-context short clip.

There are some good questions about whether the DNC chair should be a full-time job, not to mention the proxy fight over how left the party should be, but I wish the party was having that debate instead of making it all about Israel.
posted by zachlipton at 12:37 PM on December 3, 2016 [9 favorites]

If you believe he could have gotten a better stimulus, please make your case.

Actually, please don't, and instead read the literally 1000s of comments at the time for why it wasn't on the table. The threads are still here.
posted by T.D. Strange at 12:37 PM on December 3, 2016 [15 favorites]

In National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, Experience Meets a Prickly Past

Days after Islamist militants stormed the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012, Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn reached a conclusion that stunned some of his subordinates at the Defense Intelligence Agency: Iran had a role in the attack, he told them.

Now, he added, it was their job to prove it — and, by implication, to show that the White House was wrong about what had led to the attack.

Mr. Flynn, whom President-elect Donald J. Trump has chosen to be his national security adviser, soon took to pushing analysts to find Iran’s hidden hand in the disaster, according to current and former officials familiar with the episode. But like many other investigations into Benghazi, theirs found no evidence of any links, and the general’s stubborn insistence reminded some officials at the agency of how the Bush administration had once relentlessly sought to connect Saddam Hussein and Iraq to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
...
Many of those who observed the general’s time at the agency described him as someone who alienated both superiors and subordinates with his sharp temperament, his refusal to brook dissent, and what his critics considered a conspiratorial worldview.

This feels like the kind of thing that got Flynn fired, and since it's the same thought process that got us into Iraq, it's the kind of thing that gets many many people killed.
posted by zachlipton at 12:40 PM on December 3, 2016 [16 favorites]

China has lodged a formal diplomatic protest while Chinese diplomacy experts call to end relations with the US if he does it again.

Putin must be loving this shit. He has a bunch of pals in Trump's administration and they're busy destroying relations with one of his biggest regional rivals. Is there a Russian equivalent saying for 'killing two birds with one stone'?
posted by PenDevil at 12:43 PM on December 3, 2016 [9 favorites]

China has lodged a formal diplomatic protest while Chinese diplomacy experts call to end relations with the US if he does it again.

During the campaign, Trump made a huge deal out of the way Obama was greeted at the airport in China when he arrived for the G20 summit and says he would have turned around and left if he was treated that way (I wonder if he knows the plane has to be refueled). To him, this was some deep national shame that we could not endure.

Surely Chinese foreign policy officials are well aware of Trump's obsession over this incident. What are the chances they use it to embarrass him?
posted by zachlipton at 12:45 PM on December 3, 2016 [10 favorites]

It's the almost orthogonal point but one of the most chilling things I saw on Twitter in the last month was the realization that there are now buildings all over the world personally owned by the US president, with his name emblazoned upon them, none of them situated or having been constructed with an eye towards defensibility (the way an embassy might be). It seems like a recipe for disaster.

Not that it negates your point, but the Trump Organization doesn't actually own much of anything internationally. Other than a handful of golf courses the buildings that have his name on them are all licensing deals where the actual owner of the building pays the Trump Org a yearly fee to slap his name on it.

Domestically their holdings are more extensive. Golf courses make up the bulk, along with a handful of properties and joint ventures in NYC and LA.
posted by zrail at 12:47 PM on December 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

One possibility is simply the presence of a validator (Evan McMullin) within the community who presented a politically viable alternative

Mitt Romney vocally speaking out against Trump early on probably also played a part in it.

As Strange_Robinson and rainydayfilms note, if you leave aside the Mormon Church's LGBT and racial issues (yes, I realize these are huge issues, but can we not re-litigate them in this thread?), individual Mormons likely have more in common with the average MeFite than the average Evangelical does. I've met far more Evangelicals that endorsed George W.'s use of torture than Mormons, for example.

We also know (or think we know) that a strong subset of Trump voters (and Republican voters in general) want authoritarianism. I would conjecture that the Mormon church fulfills much of that need for structure and order in the lives of its followers that want it, whereas the much more decentralized and less structured Evangelical churches do not, so their followers look for it in government.

And was this another failure in messaging, and/or is the Fox News phenomenon to blame?

My parents switched from relatively real news to mouthpiece news (the Washington Times in this case, IIRC) around the time of Obama's election. One thing that sticks out vividly in my memory of reading a hit piece on Oregon's health care system circa the death panels talking points. It told the tale of a woman who didn't qualify for Medicaid but was covered by Oregon's health plan for next to free. It had paid for her cancer treatment the first time around, but it had come back and she'd been denied coverage for a very expensive experimental treatment that showed marginal improvement over traditional treatments, and this was trotted out as proof that socialized medicine was evil.

And people like my parents ate this up, despite the fact that the woman in question would have been dead or bankrupted years before without the program, as she couldn't have gotten treatment at all when she first had cancer.

Surely Chinese foreign policy officials are well aware of Trump's obsession over this incident. What are the chances they use it to embarrass him?

What are the chances he then embarrasses us?
posted by Candleman at 12:48 PM on December 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

I think: China, evil; Russia good, is hardwired into the Trump mentality. They are behind the global warming scare (Trump said this, really). This is why Trump wants to suspend the TPP.

Trump believes by breaking off trade with China we will bring back U.S. jobs. This is why we will have a recession/depression/World War in the first year of Trump. (Not all three, just the best to worst scenarios.)
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 1:01 PM on December 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

the general’s stubborn insistence reminded some officials at the agency of how the Bush administration had once relentlessly sought to connect Saddam Hussein and Iraq to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

This is so painful to read, yet so unquestionably true

..
..
Don't imagine that anyone, in their deepest heart, does not know that all men and women are created equal and are entitled to equal rights

You mean inside the bubble, right?

Well, yes, mostly I do, which is why I wrote about our leaders leading. It is so outrageous to hear people (both politicians and pundits) speaking against their own better knowledge every day. But I also believe that most of the people know better. My trumpist FB friends almost all know better, they are trolls who get a kick out of provocation and who are mostly driven by petty grievances against women and in some cases POC. I have a couple or more FB friends who are among the 27%: incredibly ignorant and vulnerable to all forms of manipulation. They would be equally susceptible to a liberal populist (see how many trumpists in news reports tell they voted for Obama).
Most of my friends are European, and among them, the people who voted for Brexit or vote for racist, populist parties follow the same pattern, but in Europe I know some people I don't know in the states: rural working and middle class conservatives. They all know they are being racist and hateful and that is wrong, and they are more angry at the urban elites than at the immigrants and refugees. They also understand the economy very well thank you, and they (somewhat rightly) feel they have been deliberately abandoned by the mainstream politicians and media.
Where they are dramatically wrong is that they feel they are managing all on their own, and that it won't make any difference if they lose the EU subsidies, the welfare, the education and the healthcare they have now. But I get why they feel that.
Right here where I am, authoritarianism will not find fertile ground, because even though people feel disenfranchised, they also feel they can fire and hire the politicians as they like. Corruption is relatively low. If that were to change, I could easily see how people would prefer an (in their mind) not corrupt strongman to a corrupt politicians.
As a consequence, I believe the unravelling of Trumps various conflicts of interest will be his undoing. I don't think Trump voters had thought this through when they voted, not least because of the media failure of reporting it. But I also don't think this is acceptable for the general public.
posted by mumimor at 1:06 PM on December 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

To propose counterfactuals is to imagine not merely different political actions, but fundamentally different political actors. It is to put genuine radicals with a total vision of the country in place of self-defined "sensible" technocrats who saw their role as the restoration and maintenance of business as usual.

While I largely agreed with kewb's history, I would push back just a touch on this as it reminds me of why some on the left view some aspects of politics as disdainful. The opposition of "genuine radicals with a total vision of the country" against ""senisible" technocrats" maintaining business as usual strikes me as a bit idealistic rather than actually a view of how the world works in a way. The importance of corporate backing and support from corporate ownership, finance, and other top level capitalists shouldn't be underestimated in either getting things passed or in the amount of opposition that will be raised should they object. Setting aside ideals over what might be better for all, the world as it works is currently joined at the hip to the workings of global capitalism, so it isn't something that can be ignored by whoever wants to get anything accomplished in Washington. Fixing that even a little will be an enormous process in itself, not something that can be seen as an add on or alternative point of view with reasonable probability of success.

I'm not against reform in that area at all, but it's one of the things that gets glossed over by some on the left when talking about progressive economic reform. It isn't just going to be voting for a "real" lefty over a technocrat, it'll require much much more than that to pass even basic reforms unless there is a dire situation already at hand, in which case the government has to focus on fixing the problem first, often under blackmail like conditions from banks and firms, who threaten to fight the change at the expense of the people unless certain strategic values are left in place. That's why it's far more important people like Warren are in the senate fighting for smaller reforms all the time rather than running for president hoping they'll get a chance to pass comprehensive reform all at once. The amount of political and economic force that would be arrayed against truly bold radical reform would be staggering, so it's better not to wishcast it as likely to happen if only the right person would be voted in.
posted by gusottertrout at 1:10 PM on December 3, 2016 [7 favorites]

China, evil; Russia good, is hardwired into the Trump mentality

What I don't quite understand is that hasn't China allowed trump and his family to produce their products more cheaply? And what about China's cheap inferior steel that trump loves?

What draws him to Putin? Is it Putin's alpha male manliness? I mean the US has always had touchy relations with russia so why does trumple love them so much? Is it essentially love of dictators?

I am generalizing here but it does it come down to racism against the Chinese? Both countries are authoritarian and trump seems to like that...
posted by futz at 1:18 PM on December 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

Post Deleted; so I'll throw it into the pile...

Title: No Stranger to Truth and Bullshit

On my local NPR station (WNYC) this weekend the angst over the #newpresident persists, and, to my mind, has taken a very thoughtful turn. From PBS's This Week In Politics: On [the #newpresident] and His B.S. (8 min), and from On The Media: How Talking About [the #newpresident] Makes Him Normal In Your Brain (12 min) with George Lakoff.

Seems NPR is having it's own existential crisis and is building understanding from the bottom up...

After the fold:
In the second program, Brook Gladstone asks, "How can we cover the [#newpresident] without covering him?". Berkeley Professor George Lakoff's answer is both linguistic and cognitive (suggesting at one point, if the #newpresident was named "Twimp" nobody would have voted for him).

And in the first program, Quinta Jurecic, a research assistant at the Brookings Institution, introduces her blog readers to a 1986 essay by philosophy professor emeritis Harry Frankfurt republished by Princeton University Press in 2005. Quinta suggests we can understand the #newpresident better by considering Professor Frankfurt's distinction between Truth and B.S.

In the broad context of the history of the presidency, "mainstream" media and the personal publishing revolution, Quinta's article underscores the tone of several big themes:"Clearly, we as a culture are having a metaphysical moment".

Metafilter is no stranger to Professor Frankfurt, previously: (2005), (2011) and highly quoted in Metafilter comments: We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home (11/2015), in Opening lines of philosophy articles (2013), in The Nobelity of the Igs (9/2016), in "I have difficult news" (2012), in After the 2016 US election (11/10/2016).

Also, comments point to another article discussing Professor Frankfurt's work:, [the #newpresident] Is Not a Liar by Jeet Heer. New Republic (12/1/2015).
posted by xtian at 1:38 PM on December 3, 2016 [11 favorites]

Woman Displays 10,000 Rainbow Lights To Defy Homophobic Neighbor
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:39 PM on December 3, 2016 [19 favorites]

I think Russia has supported Trump's investments when virtually nobody else would. He has had a history of advisors who have been pro-Russian. The alt-right has had a pro-Russian section for years and Trump feeds off of this.
They are Caucasian and not slanty-eyed.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 1:39 PM on December 3, 2016 [4 favorites]

There's talk about which Bible Trump is using as his base, but are we sure he's not actually using the Rules of Acquisition? A sample:

• Once you have their money, you never give it back.
• Never spend more for an acquisition than you have to.
• Greed is eternal.
• A deal is a deal.
• Never place friendship above profit.
• War is good for business.
• Peace is good for business.
• Employees are the rungs on the ladder of success. Don't hesitate to step on them.

Yes I keep coming back to Star Trek in these threads. It all applies so well!
posted by Servo5678 at 1:39 PM on December 3, 2016 [12 favorites]

There certainly are liberal pro-choice Christians but that's not a consequential political category. They don't vote based on faith, and when politics and faith come into conflict (e.g. gay marriage) it's their faith that changes.

It's pro-life Christians who vote based on abortion and Trump ticked the box, just like he ticked the box for white women and high earners outside of solid blue metros and every other can't-lose Republican demographic. It was that careful and deliberate base-building element of his campaign that got him to the point that the small shifts in five states could make him President.
posted by MattD at 1:42 PM on December 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

Trump didn't win because of what he supported (pro-life?). He won because he attacked vulnerable groups, groups that fearful people fear. Latinos, immigrants, refugees, Muslims. He entered a fishing contest and threw a hand grenade in the pond. It wasn't sophisticated, it wasn't moral. It was destructive. But look at how many fish he caught.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 1:48 PM on December 3, 2016 [37 favorites]

Reminder, which shouldn't be necessary: not all Christians are white. The voting behavior of black, Latino and Native American (and possibly Asian? I don't know about that) Christians is very different from the voting behavior of white Christians.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 1:50 PM on December 3, 2016 [26 favorites]

Regarding climate change: almost all my rural white friends who didn't acknowledge climate change five years ago do now. And from my limited experience in rural USA, the people I once met in Virginia were way ahead on this. Preppers are weird, but the ones I met had a clear understanding of how climate change might radically alter or fundamental conditions. They didn't agree with the Bush administration on this.

Identity politics determine elections because what is being threatened is peoples' identities.
posted by mumimor at 1:59 PM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

They are behind the global warming scare (Trump said this, really). This is why Trump wants to suspend the TPP.

Trump is a manchild pawn of course, but this makes me wonder if Putin hasn't made a calculated decision that climate change is likely to be a net benefit for Russia. Not having warm-water ports means their great cities are not at sea level at risk of immediate inundation, and they are already used to what most of the world considers insanely crappy weather. Most of the immediate problems of climate change will affect the US and China a lot worse and more directly than they will Russia. To someone of Putin's manly-man temperament kneecapping the effort to stop climate change could seem like a bold chess move.
posted by Bringer Tom at 2:21 PM on December 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

The education proposals linked above will devastate public schools. Seriously, I am concerned that my son won't have a high school to go to that isn't a 30 minute drive. All of the private schools in our area are fundy xtian who believe the Flintstones are a documentary. The closest private school with a good education is 3 towns over in the rich folks part of the world, and they already have tuition in the 22,000 range, and have almost full enrollment. I am a smart, educated woman, and I am not even vaguely qualified to teach a gifted kid in all AP classes. And this will destroy things like music and art classes, if the majority of federal funding is stripped and the plan requires that the state make up the shortage. It is the end of public education in the U.S.

There have been many times when I've offhand joked about leaving the states, but realistically it's not a rational thing, I own real property, a small business, a fuckton of animals, and I'm damn near retirement age as far as finding new employment is concerned. And yet, if the trumpets are going to gut my son's only chance to success, wtf do I do?

All of this assuming we don't die in a whoopsie holocaust. This is not okay.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 2:25 PM on December 3, 2016 [49 favorites]

Most of the immediate problems of climate change will affect the US and China a lot worse and more directly than they will Russia

I don't know about that - the permafrost melting all over Siberia is likely to have very extreme consequences, similar to those of the ice-cap melting, but with extras such as methane pockets opening.
Russia is far too dependent on export of fossil fuels for it to be a healthy economy, and the Putin administration has done nothing to diversify. Who has ever seen a Russian product? AFAIK, they aren't even self-sustaining regarding basic foods. (Come to think of it, that might be a part of the Ukraine conflict, Ukraine is a huge agricultural power).
Putin and the GOP are soulmates because they are in the same situation: their model of the world is wrong, and they can only govern through propaganda and other lies. Till now, the GOP has pretended to be on board with the fact that Russia is an adversary. But Trump pulled that silk screen away.
posted by mumimor at 2:33 PM on December 3, 2016 [9 favorites]

Deplorable Donald didn't need to be "normalized"... he was safely in the Main Stream from the day he got "The Art of the Deal" published. From then on it was just a matter of successful Branding. And the Main Stream Media never realized how much Political success in the 21st century depended on the same kind of Branding as selling consumer goods (which Trump sucked at) or real estate or Reality TV (which he was more successful at). And how much they had contributed to it over the last 4 decades (Donald's entire Public Career). It was only when he started "saying outrageous things" (things Republicans usually only whispered) that he became, in the eyes of an out-of-touch Media Class (that even included part of the Right Wing Press) "not normal".

Trump is not any "New Normal", just an optimized version of Normality that has been evolving since Reagan.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:35 PM on December 3, 2016 [6 favorites]

Reince Priebus is considered to be a Taiwan-friendly politician, who has previously met with Tsai. The Taiwanese foreign minister David Lee was happy with his pick. Interesting.
posted by Apocryphon at 2:44 PM on December 3, 2016

It was that careful and deliberate base-building element of his campaign that got him to the point that the small shifts in five states could make him President.

Trump caught flak for muffing an interview with Jake Tapper in 2015, where he said "I'm pro-choice" before correcting himself and saying "I'm pro-life." And then he took criticism *from pro-life organizations* in April, 2016, when he initially suggested that women who get abortions should be punished. His campaign quickly had to issue a press release bringing the candidate's official position into line with the usual "punish the doctors, the women are dupes" argument.

In your comments on the election, you consistently push the line that Trump's victory is evidence of a successful, rational strategy and that his voters made rational , tactical decisions built solely on clear, internally consistent ideological commitments. And in contrast, you seem to have decided (long ago, by all indications) that all liberals and the Democratic candidate have thought and acted in bad faith all along and suffered for it. It's a weird set of poorly justified assumptions that seems to undergird pretty much all of your post-election commentary, and it's trivially false.

To claim that Trump was carefully staking out specific positions and sending clever, clear signals to specific chunks of the GOP base all along is basically to ignore 90% of what he actually said and did during his campaign, to willfully block out all the scrambling press releases, the flip-flops on issues and positions visible from space, the vague or absent details of policy implementation, the constant campaign staff reshuffles, and the self-contradictions and pure word salad that littered his speeches.

Trump's one consistent signal was anti-establishment, "not business as usual." That was his successful appeal. But it was primarily an emotional appeal, not a position or policy-based one.

2016, of all years, demolishes the axiom of successful political behavior as rationality; this is in no small part why this is being viewed as such a seismic political and cultural shift.
posted by kewb at 2:45 PM on December 3, 2016 [38 favorites]

And yet, if the trumpets are going to gut my son's only chance to success, wtf do I do?

You send him to school but you supplement. You sit him down to watch science programs with you, take him on field trips, sign him up for piano lessons. You are lucky in that there are so many inexpensive or even free educational experiences out there to anyone with broadband and some discipline. Lots of people have gone to crappy schools in backwoods areas and been accepted into good universities.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:01 PM on December 3, 2016 [10 favorites]

WashPo: "Yes, you can blame millennials for Hillary Clinton’s loss"

*sotto voce*
It's internecine, then.
posted by Apocryphon at 3:06 PM on December 3, 2016 [6 favorites]

If I were looking to profit from the Trumpocalypse, I would definitely start a chain of for-profit online K-12 schools that could offer bogus "school choice" to kids in areas with no private school. Sort of like Trump University: Junior High edition. You could probably make a fortune.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 3:15 PM on December 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

Why Blue States Are the Real ‘Tea Party’
posted by T.D. Strange at 3:15 PM on December 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

WashPo: "Yes, you can blame millennials for Hillary Clinton’s loss"

2017: Kickstarter to fund the production of Nerf bats with the word "overdetermination" printed on the side, which will then be used to gently correct journalists, campaign staffers, and pundits making claims about the 2016 election.
posted by kewb at 3:17 PM on December 3, 2016 [6 favorites]

Kewb, I'll actually agree with you that Trump's primary campaign departed from expected patterns in profound ways that surprised everyone and with which political scientists will grapple with for many years.

But as for the general election, your math is upside down. You don't get to the last million votes in half a dozen swing states until you get to the 60+ million base votes, and those base voters are about signal, not noise. All of the Tweets and the controversies and debate zingers were the noise -- the signal was tax and regulation cuts for the business class, pro-life judges for (politically identified) Christians, some form of protectionism for those who feel threatened by globalization, etc. etc., which made Trump a better choice than Clinton any Trump misgivings aside. In other words, Trump was, to what is by far most important extent, elected by the same people and for the same reasons as George W. Bush was elected in the 2000s, and the Republican Congressional and legislative majorities were elected.
posted by MattD at 3:19 PM on December 3, 2016 [4 favorites]

The Daily Beast: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s Campaign CEO, Once Wrote a Rap Musical

We have reached post-peak Hamilton.
posted by Apocryphon at 3:25 PM on December 3, 2016 [7 favorites]

Russia is likely to benefit more from global warming than other countries, but that doesn't mean it won't suffer some serious negative consequences as well. Melting permafrost seriously messes with anything built on permafrost with the assumption that it will remain frozen. There's also increased drought and increased insect outbreaks across Russia's vast forest, which will lead to more wildfires. It's ironic and potentially catastrophic that more warming means they have greater access to fossil fuel reserves in the Arctic.
posted by mollweide at 3:29 PM on December 3, 2016 [4 favorites]

I got contacted about being a Michigan recount observer, so I signed up for some shifts. I mean, it's not going to change anything, but if the recounts happen, people need to observe them, so why not?
posted by FelliniBlank at 3:30 PM on December 3, 2016 [34 favorites]

That's weird, if I were going to assign blame for the Clinton loss, Robby Mook would be a lot higher on the list than Millenials
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:32 PM on December 3, 2016 [12 favorites]

As for the liberal candidates, I think that Clinton's signal was fine and her campaign was in perfectly good faith. You knew what she wanted to do, and why, and could have reasonable confidence she would try to achieve it. And it worked! She got her base out too, with few if any defections for her email server or Benghazi malpractice.

As for losing the battle for the last critical million votes, I think that there was a lot of complacency and over-confidence, which led to a fatal failure to realize that the small number of people Trump was actually adding to the coalition were of greatly-outsized importance in Electoral Vote terms. Thus she watched Trump gathering tens of thousands of people to rallies throughout the upper midwest in the week before the election and it never occurred to her to say "maybe I should just get on a plane and go out there for a few days and match him rally for rally."
posted by MattD at 3:33 PM on December 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

WashPo: "Yes, you can blame millennials for Hillary Clinton’s loss"

I read about this topic earlier today and thought about it all afternoon. I love Hillary Clinton and will always thing she would have made a fantastic President, but now that we know how many young people stayed home maybe running a 70 year old woman with low charisma was not the best choice. Maybe it needs to be like the Supreme Court pick-- the youngest best candidate you can find.

In my opinion I think the Democratic Party can skip over the Evangelicals and the WWC and go right for the next generation. Go Left. Go even farther Left than that. Free child care. Free college. Single payer. Sensible gun control. $15.00 minimum wage to start. And number one on the list with a flying bullet: Climate Change treaties, laws, and regulations.

Screw the trickle down crap-- go right for the wealthiest. Close loopholes. No more business tax avoidance schemes, no more offshore banking. Tax capital gains.

Put more people into the government. We need more park rangers, more food inspectors, more people at OSHA. Invest in long term science research. Increase educators and pay them more. Expand the CDC. Double the size of the EPA and make sure any business that damages the environment in any way pays for the damage they caused.

The Republicans are winning with their extreme views so we need to stop pussyfooting around. We need visionaries that can explain their visions in clear language-- not the language of politicians-- so that this new Democratic Party can get people excited about all the ways our government can help people and make lives better.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:38 PM on December 3, 2016 [74 favorites]

It has been IMO very incorrectly stated that 'most elected Republicans' were Anti-Trump. Maybe privately, but damned few were open enough to be seriously observed as 'running away' from him any more than were 'running away' from Romney in 2012. And the Republican Machine was working its hardest to deliver every possible vote to every downticket Republican, many of them moving money and resources from the Presidential races to Congressional races. And the voters brought into the polling places to vote for their beloved local R or just to vote against that awful local D are most likely going to vote for the R in other races, right? So unless the 'beloved local R' was openly and obviously anti-Trump, their success would contribute to his.

This election was a Prefect Storm of factors that combined into an unprecedented disaster, slightly but adequately overbalancing the factors trying to prevent it.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:40 PM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

All of the Tweets and the controversies and debate zingers were the noise -- the signal was tax and regulation cuts for the business class, pro-life judges for (politically identified) Christians, some form of protectionism for those who feel threatened by globalization, etc. etc., which made Trump a better choice than Clinton any Trump misgivings aside.

Trump emitted so much noise that I think it's just as valid to argue that the various sectors of the GOP base indulged in apophenia simply to *find* a clear, specific signal, and that Trump gradually adjusted to the feedback he got from his crowds.

For example, it's hard to explain why the business class weren't significantly alarmed by the protectionism signal, for example, and there are other examples of Trump sending potentially contradictory messages. (Claiming he'd bring back coal and simultaneously promising to open up fracking in the same speech, for example.) Nor does it effectively explain why some of the noise -- "Two Corinthians," for example -- didn't meaningfully interfere with the signals being heard during the primary process.

But I'd agree that by August, when it mattered most, he and his campaign staff had gotten most of the signaling down. (I also suspect that this was more in the vein of wrangling the candidate than being directed by the candidate, but that isn't something I can support.) There's a line to be drawn to people like Ailes and Bannon joining the campaign; their media savvy supplemented Trump's own in significant ways, and they both had experience merging political messaging with spectacle. And this meant that neutral or hostile coverage were as good as positive coverage; the spectacle was the attraction for most people, and the (by now refined and directed) signaling could get through to the base.

My sense is that there are a lot of reasons for the election outcome. One of them is that question of spectacle. I'm not sure Hillary Clinton could have run a rally of the sort Trump did; political candidates generally don't and don't have to. Among other things, my sense is that the lesson future campaigners will draw is that it is better to be a TV character than a traditional candidate, or even a Reaganesque or Obamaesque "communicator."

I suppose part of why I remain unconvinced that this was a deliberate strategy, rather than a showman constantly modifying his pitch on the fly, is the degree to which his post-election signaling has been so contradictory and all over the map. And I'm still convinced he's going to do a lot of damage -- not merely to "progressive" principles, but actual damage to valuable institutions, to foreign relations, and to the economy -- as president.
posted by kewb at 3:41 PM on December 3, 2016 [10 favorites]

Politico Trump heading to donor’s 'Villains and Heroes' party. The president-elect is expected at the annual costume party hosted by his top donors.


It's hosted by the Mercer family. Bannon is also expected.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:47 PM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

One of them is that question of spectacle.

Assuming that Trump isn't impeached, this is the biggest problem facing any Dems who are considering a run at the Presidency in 2020. How do you run against this guy when he consumes all the oxygen in the room? The GOP primary contenders couldn't do it. Hillary couldn't do it. How does one do it?
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 3:50 PM on December 3, 2016 [4 favorites]

I suppose locking the door and sealing the windows is right out?
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 3:53 PM on December 3, 2016 [4 favorites]

I'd say that people should be upset their champion of the working man is attending a costume party for billionaires where they give away Rolexes, but the same people elected a billionaire with gold seatbelts on his private jet, so they really should know what they were getting into there.
posted by zachlipton at 3:54 PM on December 3, 2016 [17 favorites]

The Bloomberg article Politico linked to has contradictory info on Trump's appearance:
"Conway said Trump will be traveling on a nationwide “thank you” tour and that members of his family also aren’t expected to attend.".
posted by Sweetdefenestration at 3:57 PM on December 3, 2016

How do you run against this guy when he consumes all the oxygen in the room?

HuffPo: Oprah for President, 2020
posted by Apocryphon at 3:57 PM on December 3, 2016 [5 favorites]

The original clip was released by Steven Emerson's "Investigative Project on Terrorism," basically one step behind Pamela Geller-level Islamophobia, who cut down a long speech to just a short clip to attack Ellison. Eventually Emerson released the full 22-minute speech.

OK, I read the full speech. Weirdly, although The Forward criticises The Investigative Project on Terrorism for only releasing an excerpt, they actually link to the complete speech on TIPT's website. They might have pointed this out explicitly.

First, you could do a lot worse than read David Schraub's typically thoughtful response to it, as well as his earlier post from before the speech was made public. I think Schraub's right when he says that they are worrisome remarks; I also think he's right when he says that they're not disqualifying.

One reason the speech is disappointing is because it's conspiratorial and stupid. US policy in the Middle East does not revolve around Israel. The USA did not invade Iraq because of Israel; it does not have a presence in Bahrain because of Israel; nor does it have a presence in Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, and a bunch of other places in the Middle East. Its response to the Arab Spring was not focused on Israel's interests, or its relaxation of sanctions on Iran, or its presence in the Gulf and Red Sea. This should be obvious, and it is exactly what you would expect: Israel is a small country and the USA is a great one, and the USA's interests are its own. So it's disappointing because you would expect someone like Ellison to be more thoughtful.

Secondly, the speech is worrying because it traffics in antisemitic tropes. In Ellison's speech he says that "United States foreign policy in the Middle East is governed by what is good or bad through a country of 7 million people". It's an awkwardly-worded statement, which makes it hard to criticise. Did he mean that US policy is governed by what is good or bad for Israel, which is factually incorrect but within the realm of civil rhetoric? Or did he mean that US policy is governed through Israel? Because that's not acceptable; it's a classic antisemitic slander; and IMO would totally justify the ADL's response.

The other objectionable thing Ellison said in that speech is "that country [i.e., Israel] has mobilized its Diaspora in America to do its bidding in America". Once again, you can take that either way: Ellison's basically saying that Muslims should be as politically active as Jews. On the other hand, it's also saying that Jews are Israel's operatives in the USA, that they do its bidding. That's the old dual-loyalty slur, and like the :"Israel dictates to the USA" it's part-and-parcel of classic antisemitic ideology.

I feel that this would probably be less offensive to me if Ellison didn't have a background in the Nation of Islam. His direct involvement was around two decades ago, although a piece in The Tablet says that his association with NOI continued until 2006. The Nation of Islam is a religiously antisemitic organisation, in the sense that the World Church of the Creator is a religiously racist organisation, and (as I said in an earlier thread) my first exposure to organised antisemitism in the USA was when I saw an NOI booth selling copies of The Protocols of Zion.

So I'm a bit conflicted over this. By all accounts Ellison's been a good representative, and he wrote a thoughtful letter about his past with the NOI, addressed to the Minnesota JCRC. Nobody suggests that he's a current member or supporter; and race relations in the USA being what they are, I'm not surprised that an African-American leader would have some association with it. On the other hand, would I cut the same slack to someone who was a member of other antisemitic groups?

So what it comes down to is, I believe there are real and substantial reasons for concern over Ellison's nomination. It's not so much that I think he would be a bad leader, as that the US needs to have a conversation about antisemitism in political discourse (even unconscious antisemitism) and people are so desperate to find a Democratic savior that they're downplaying some very genuine problems. I don't know that his background and views should be disqualifying, but that's partially because of my fear that we'd end up with a circular firing squad and there would be even fewer African-American leaders with standing in the Democratic Party.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:59 PM on December 3, 2016 [11 favorites]

Trump voters are immune to charges of Trump's hypocrisy, they voted for him precisely because he's rich, but it's an aspirational rich rather than Romney's elite smart-guy rich they hated even while he tried to sell them the right policies. They want to be Trump, have Trump's money, and act with Trump's fuck you attitude in a way they never wanted to be boring, kind-of-whiny-liberal-sounding-drinks-wine-not-Bud Mitt Romney. Trump is how they would act if they every won the $billion Powerball. That's why they'll never care about his hypocrisy, or conflicts, or ethical violations, or any of it. They long to be him and do the same things.

Pointing out his gross conflicts may be necessary to defeat him, but it was never going to be sufficient in 2016, and won't be in 2020.
posted by T.D. Strange at 4:01 PM on December 3, 2016 [22 favorites]

> They want to be Trump, have Trump's money, and act with Trump's fuck you attitude

You forgot "and grab women by the pussy", but otherwise, yes, I agree.
posted by RedOrGreen at 4:05 PM on December 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

Green Party drops statewide Pennsylvania recount
posted by prefpara at 4:07 PM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

Trump voters are immune to charges of Trump's hypocrisy, they voted for him precisely because he's rich, but it's an aspirational rich rather than Romney's elite smart-guy rich they hated even while he tried to sell them the right policies.

But not all Trump voters are Trump superfans. And we can't appeal to the superfans anyway, so fuck 'em. But there exist people who voted for Obama in 2008, and voted for Trump in 2016. If what they liked about Trump was that he wasn't one of those "corrupt political insiders", then pointing out the instances where he's being more corrupt might help get them to Trump-fatigue soon. The margin by which we lost was narrow.

Hell, Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter have already started attacking him a little. Those two bottom feeders always know which way the wind's blowing.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 4:13 PM on December 3, 2016 [8 favorites]

US policy in the Middle East does not revolve around Israel

Israel is a small country and the USA is a great one, and the USA's interests are its own

Thing is, they have a lobby here, and their influence on our politics far outweighs their size.

I think you're missing here the evangelical right's interest in Israel's future (evangelicals have been programmed to care a lot about Israel), plus the general neocon interest.

I don't mean to say neocons are a jewish catspaw here, but Israel [along with Jordan of course] is a main buddy nation we can generally rely on to give us some geostrategic footing in the Eastern Med.

The adventure of 2003 was to convert Iraq to our camp, too, but the neocons got mixed results with that.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 4:14 PM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

Green Party drops statewide Pennsylvania recount

Hot Rod: The Matrix?
Ultra Magnus: It's gone...
Kup: And with it all hope.

posted by Talez at 4:14 PM on December 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

In contrast to what is sometimes called idealism, the realist position holds that the political world is governed not by morality but by clear and calculable interests. Alliances and conflicts turn into transactions with predictable outcomes. The realist reasoning is applied most clearly and most often to international relations, but it has seeped into all political life, turning virtually every conversation into a discussion of possible outcomes.

Realism is predicated on predictability: it assumes that parties have clear interests and will act rationally to achieve them. This is rarely true anywhere, and it is patently untrue in the case of Trump. He ran a campaign unlike any in memory, has won an election unlike any in memory, and has so far appointed a cabinet unlike any in memory: racists, Islamophobes, and homophobes, many of whom have no experience relevant to their new jobs. Patterns of behavior characteristic of former presidents will not help predict Trump’s behavior. As for his own patterns, inconsistency and unreliability are among his chief characteristics.

...We cannot know what political strategy, if any, can be effective in containing, rather than abetting, the threat that a Trump administration now poses to some of our most fundamental democratic principles. But we can know what is right. What separates Americans in 2016 from Europeans in the 1940s and 1950s is a little bit of historical time but a whole lot of historical knowledge. We know what my great-grandfather did not know: that the people who wanted to keep the people fed ended up compiling lists of their neighbors to be killed. That they had a rationale for doing so. And also, that one of the greatest thinkers of their age judged their actions as harshly as they could be judged.

Trump: The Choice We Face by Masha Gessen, who wrote the Autocracy: Rules for Survival piece that's made the rounds and is already worth a reread, particularly Rule #1: "Believe the autocrat." He really is as bigoted and unintelligent as he appears, and speculating about his secret intentions is a wasted effort.
posted by byanyothername at 4:14 PM on December 3, 2016 [20 favorites]

How do you run against this guy?

Here's my optimistic thought. This guy consistently polled with more negatives than his opponent. The fact his opponent was also in the negatives gave him an opening. His popularity dropped regularly when he was encouraged to speak freely. His popularity dropped when consistent attention was paid to his scandals. One of the problems of the late-breaking Comey crap was not just the Clinton-specific scandal but was also that much less attention was being paid to Trump.

As President, he's going to be the center of attention for four years. His incoherent word salad is going to be on repeat constantly. He's not going to be competent. There will be at least one guaranteed scandal and undoubtedly many more. Republicans are going to trash, or attempt to trash, services Americans depend on. If he's above 30% approval in 2020, I'll be surprised. 54% of voters went against him. Most of those voters are not going to change their mind in four years, absent a miracle or national crisis. He's going to be imminently beatable.

That doesn't mean the Democrats can't snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. They're very good at that. But I don't understand why Mr. 46% vote and 42% current approval is considered invincible just because he managed a very slim edge in a handful of states.
posted by honestcoyote at 4:23 PM on December 3, 2016 [14 favorites]

How do you run against this guy when he consumes all the oxygen in the room?

George Clooney/Catherine Zeta-Jones 2020!

Or Gavin Newsom/Kamala Harris 2020
posted by kirkaracha at 4:24 PM on December 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

But I don't understand why Mr. 46% vote and 42% current approval is considered invincible just because he managed a very slim edge in a handful of states.

It's not so much "invincibility" as it is that the ( risk of thing ) * ( horribleness of thing ) result is so off the charts with this dude...
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 4:27 PM on December 3, 2016 [5 favorites]

But I don't understand why Mr. 46% vote and 42% current approval is considered invincible just because he managed a very slim edge in a handful of states.

Many of us are also expecting that millions of people who voted against him this time will not be permitted to vote against him next time, or ever again. The Voting Rights Act is dead under Jeff Sessions. People who try to register voters will be prosecuted, he's done it before. There could be a national ID law and any number of further restrictions they can dream up. None of it will be overturned by the Republican Supreme Court. Trump will control the 2020 Census.
posted by T.D. Strange at 4:39 PM on December 3, 2016 [23 favorites]

But I don't understand why Mr. 46% vote and 42% current approval is considered invincible just because he managed a very slim edge in a handful of states.

Because he ran a dumpster fire of a campaign, was incoherent through most of his campaign speeches, ran against the most qualified candidate in history, and he still won.
posted by Talez at 4:45 PM on December 3, 2016 [11 favorites]

You're right to be very seriously worried about voting rights, but let's hold on to our real reasons for hope: we do not need to wait for DOJ/AG to bring suits under the VRA, and organizations like NAACP and LCCRUL bring them all the time; the case out of Wisconsin with a new test for partisan gerrymandering may get a SCOTUS majority behind it, which could unsnarl a lot of states within just a few years and prevent fuckery after the next census; the recent case out of NC may help win further victories in the disenfranchisement arena.

This is an incredibly important issue, but we are not helpless.
posted by prefpara at 4:45 PM on December 3, 2016 [16 favorites]

So part of the other problem in disqualifying Ellison for his affiliation with the Nation of Islam two decades ago is that if you are talking about people who have worked with black communities two to three decades ago (especially black communities in northern US cities), it is very difficult to find people who didn't have some ties to Farrakhan, because there were so few organizations that had the power and the drive to advocate for black communities in the 80's and 90's that the Nation of Islam seemed like an okay group to sidle up with - because at least they had the money and the pull to get some things done.

Obama (through Reverend Wright) supposedly had ties to the Nation of Islam through Farrakhan, because Wright had worked with him. Jesse Jackson had to deal with that in his campaign. Al Sharpton had worked with Farrakhan on some marches and probably some other civil rights campaigns in the past.

The Nation of Islam is a horribly antisemitic institution and Farrakhan himself is as bad as Trump if you're talking about corruption and misplaced worship of dictators. But it's a horribly antisemitic institution that was allowed to thrive through widespread neglect of black communities for decades.
posted by dinty_moore at 4:49 PM on December 3, 2016 [15 favorites]

the case out of Wisconsin with a new test for partisan gerrymandering may get a SCOTUS majority behind it,

And it may not. We have a empty seat on the Supreme Court, remember, and I don't think the Republicans are above stacking it with an extra few seats if it comes to that.

That's what concerns me.

That, and the fact that Russia has made it clear that the Democratic party can and will be hacked at any time. It's like Watergate, except it goes on forever.

And liberal fools on the left treated Wikileaks as though it had any redeeming qualities.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 4:52 PM on December 3, 2016 [7 favorites]

> If what they liked about Trump was that he wasn't one of those "corrupt political insiders", then pointing out the instances where he's being more corrupt might help get them to Trump-fatigue soon.

Excellent point. This is definitely a demographic to go after.

But there's the problem of outrage fatigue. Dumb Donny's going to keep gish galloping around the Ghina shop like a radical oxidizer. Are likely voters going to be outraged at stuff that doesn't affect them directly?

An effective counter to Trump, I think, needs to include some direct connection to how Dumb Donald's actions/innactions negatively affects everyone/target audience directly.

Given the observations limited to the last decade/coupladecades, incrementalism is a grueling fight, it has to be a "Gotcha!" that everyone agrees is a gotcha. How Dumb Donny plowed through every gotcha thrown at him is retarded*.
posted by porpoise at 4:52 PM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

Wait. The Green Party couldn't afford the bond? What happened to all the money Stein raised?
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 4:58 PM on December 3, 2016 [7 favorites]

Has anyone besides Ellison said that they wanted the DNC chair? The main other name I heard being bandied around was Howard Dean, and he explicitly said he didn't want it.

It's hard to tell if he's the best choice if we don't know what the other options are.
posted by dinty_moore at 4:58 PM on December 3, 2016

Has anyone besides Ellison said that they wanted the DNC chair

Ilyse Hogue from NARAL, and Tom Perez's names have come up too.

Edit: Ah, here, Wikipedia's got a page too.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 5:01 PM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

We have a empty seat on the Supreme Court, remember, and I don't think the Republicans are above stacking it with an extra few seats if it comes to that.

They can't under current law, which sets the Supreme Court as "a Chief Justice of the United States and eight associate justices." Of course they could always change the law.
posted by kirkaracha at 5:02 PM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

*retarded: proposed action in response to political retardation would be to accelerate voter education and voter engagement and voter turnout

The DeVos appointment re: "school choice" - this is doubling/tripling down on the "reforms" of the 70's. Less young adults will have reasoning skills to compete in the global workforce, much less the local workforce - but that's not a bug but a feature - another easily manipulable voting bloc.

But even in Canada, I know lots of people who basically abrogate what they were taught about history (well, most of these assholes now run the "family business") and dropped out of college/University because they thought it wasn't worth the effort for the partying that came with it. As "business owners" they could have the same parties, only hookers and blow were easier to come by.

Even if the Perfect Education Suite (We guarantee $80,000, or your money back!) isn't bullshit, I see a large chunk of people who don't value education/knowledge/facts/striving-for-better at all.
posted by porpoise at 5:04 PM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

So part of the other problem in disqualifying Ellison for his affiliation with the Nation of Islam two decades ago is that if you are talking about people who have worked with black communities two to three decades ago (especially black communities in northern US cities), it is very difficult to find people who didn't have some ties to Farrakhan [...]

I did say that, although admittedly it was near the bottom of the Great Wall O' Text. Yes, this is a problem, which is why I'm glad he's been frank(ish) about his association and willing to have a conversation about it. It sounds weird to say that a similar association should be more problematic for a white politician, but there are many more white politicians and they've enjoyed many more paths to success.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:06 PM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

But I don't understand why Mr. 46% vote and 42% current approval is considered invincible just because he managed a very slim edge in a handful of states.

Because he ran a dumpster fire of a campaign, was incoherent through most of his campaign speeches, ran against the most qualified candidate in history, and he still won.

In addition to those bleak words, he also ran with a historically, unprecedentedly disunified Republican Party -- at least at the level of the party leadership, but also at a grassroots level-- and as someone who manifestly, undeniably didn't look and act like a president, and he still won. In 2020 he'll have the whole party behind him, they'll have spent the last few years of united government running up the national debt buying off interest groups in the Rust Belt, and it won't seem preposterous that he's president anymore, it'll seem like a totally normal thing. If his advisors are able to keep him from causing a genuine disaster in a way that can be successfully pinned on him even given the sorry state of our media -- and maybe even if they can't -- the sad fact is he'll be tough to beat in 2020.
posted by gerryblog at 5:15 PM on December 3, 2016 [8 favorites]

Hey kewb, you keep using the term "overdetermination", what do you mean by that? Is this meant in the mathematical sense, and if so, how?
posted by indubitable at 5:16 PM on December 3, 2016

Wait. The Green Party couldn't afford the bond? What happened to all the money Stein raised?

Wisconsin raised the filing fee from 1.1 million to 3.5 million and now they're dealing with lawsuits in all three states, which (I'd wager) may have been expressly meant to, idk, decimate their coffers.

(Pennsylvania also had arcane filing rules requiring 3 voters from each district to file a recount request which might have been logistically impossible.)
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 5:16 PM on December 3, 2016 [8 favorites]

Trump heading to donor’s 'Villains and Heroes' party. The president-elect is expected at the annual costume party hosted by his top donors.

A plutocrat costume party? What do they do, sacrifice virgins?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:42 PM on December 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

Hey kewb, you keep using the term "overdetermination", what do you mean by that? Is this meant in the mathematical sense, and if so, how?

It's not meant in the mathematical sense, but is rather borrowed from Freud via Louis Althusser. Basically, the idea is that a big event does not have a single, simple cause, but multiple complex causes, any one of which might have been sufficient to bring it about no one of which can be singled out as "the" cause.

Put another way, it's an argument against looking for reductive explanations of big events.
posted by kewb at 5:43 PM on December 3, 2016 [19 favorites]

A plutocrat costume party? What do they do, sacrifice virgins?

Trump literally told you on the Hollywood Access tape.
posted by Talez at 5:44 PM on December 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

UberRiche/Politicians LARPing? WTH?

Damn you 2016. Damn you you damned dirty year!
posted by porpoise at 6:02 PM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

From 2014, but probably worth retweeting...
posted by Mchelly at 6:04 PM on December 3, 2016 [5 favorites]

A plutocrat costume party? What do they do, sacrifice virgins?

obviously they dress up like nazis, but fancy dress nazis, not everyday nazis
posted by poffin boffin at 6:26 PM on December 3, 2016 [5 favorites]

Takes a few paragraphs to get going, but wow:

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in The New Yörker: Now Is the Time to Talk About What We Are Actually Talking About
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:29 PM on December 3, 2016 [22 favorites]

The New Yörker

I see what you did there.
posted by tivalasvegas at 7:43 PM on December 3, 2016 [5 favorites]

Jay Rosen suggests comparing Adichie's excellent New York article with Liz Spayd (NYT Public Editor)'s not-so-excellent When the Language of Politics Becomes a Minefield

Satan, a rakish former employee of God who some say is fast and loose with morality - the Times' Public Editor rewrites Dante's Inferno

--@dcbigjohn
posted by zachlipton at 7:46 PM on December 3, 2016 [13 favorites]

Liz Spayd (NYT Public Editor)'s not-so-excellent When the Language of Politics Becomes a Minefield

ctrl+f "true" Phrase not found

ctrl+f "truth" 1 of 1 match

"They wash out the grays, which is usually where the truth lies."

I didn't realize that the pursuit of truth was a minefield for journalism. I don't know how one can write an article about how journalism moves forward in an era that "many people" are calling post-truth without addressing that question.
posted by tivalasvegas at 8:28 PM on December 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

Would ordering a copy of Buried by the Times and having it overnighted to Liz Spayd's office be an appropriate response to her column's discussion about grays and "360-degree view[s]" and "open doors to understanding?"
posted by zachlipton at 8:43 PM on December 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

those base voters are about signal, not noise. All of the Tweets and the controversies and debate zingers were the noise -- the signal was tax and regulation cuts for the business class, pro-life judges for (politically identified) Christians

These guys would vote for a gerbil with an R by its name as long as it doesn't look in the camera and say over and over, "I'm pro choice and love taxes."

Trump's election was proof of their idiotic, amoral loyalty in the face of a shitbag candidate, not proof that the shitbag candidate reached them with subtle messaging.
posted by fleacircus at 8:45 PM on December 3, 2016 [31 favorites]

Just tried watching Saturday Night Live - unwatchable! Totally biased, not funny and the Baldwin impersonation just can't get any worse. Sad

--@realDonaldTrump

It never stops.
posted by zachlipton at 9:20 PM on December 3, 2016 [10 favorites]

Do you guys think we could be living inside an SNL skit in some larger macro-universe, where this all makes sense as a poorly conceived, poorly written joke? Be honest.
posted by gerryblog at 9:21 PM on December 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

at least when he's watching shows that make fun of him* he's not setting off an international incident

*not because he's mad, it's actually funny that you think he's mad because he's so not bothered
posted by murphy slaw at 9:32 PM on December 3, 2016 [4 favorites]

Such a small and insecure man. Sad. For us.
posted by tonycpsu at 9:32 PM on December 3, 2016 [11 favorites]

As an aside I rather liked the Christian discussion earlier in this thread, to be honest. I agree with some of the other discussion, that the left could stand to make more morally-motivated arguments; not just based in Christian morality, but certainly including it.
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 9:32 PM on December 3, 2016 [7 favorites]

at least when he's watching shows that make fun of him

He got back at the Tower of Doom at 11:48pm, probably to watch it.

SNL should do a skit where he's hit on the head by a falling piece of gold-plated fascia and becomes a competent and thoughtful person and Kellyanne Duckspeak starts hitting him with random ornaments to bring the real him back.
posted by holgate at 9:41 PM on December 3, 2016 [22 favorites]

I love Kate McKinnon dearly, but SNL needs to stop stop stop playing Kellyanne Conway as a sympathetic character. It only serves to normalize what is very much not normal.
posted by Ruki at 10:20 PM on December 3, 2016 [56 favorites]

The SNL skit was apparently about his random unhinged tweeting, so we are now officially living in Inception.
posted by holgate at 10:21 PM on December 3, 2016 [10 favorites]

Live Mike Pence’s dream in The Handmaid’s Tale first-look photos
Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:22 PM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.

I was actually thinking of getting that as a discrete tattoo (actually to cover up a very 90's tattoo), but then I saw in the Wikipedia article that John Boehner had that on his desk, so way to ruin everything, Boehner.
posted by Ruki at 10:44 PM on December 3, 2016 [8 favorites]

I love Kate McKinnon dearly, but SNL needs to stop stop stop playing Kellyanne Conway as a sympathetic character.

Yeah, she's playing her as someone with a conscience and soul.
And Bannon should've just straight-up been in a Nazi uniform. C'mon, SNL!
posted by kirkaracha at 11:19 PM on December 3, 2016 [10 favorites]

Huh. This may mean nothing at all, but I've never seen it before (and it's not happening with other words I've tested just now). I did a define: Google search to check my spelling on a word, and the result from Merriam-Webster included this:

What made you want to look up seditionist? Please tell us where you read or heard it (including the quote, if possible).

I'm rarely paranoid, but.

Uncanny.
posted by vers at 11:42 PM on December 3, 2016 [16 favorites]

I'm rarely paranoid, but.
It looks like they take their SEO for unusual or rare words from a 'Seen and Heard' section underneath the definition. Any random rare word will bring it up.
posted by Thella at 1:03 AM on December 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

Mod note: One deleted. Please don't do cut and pastes of long articles / sections of articles or multi-part tweets; a link to the original with some explanatory text is much better. Thank you!
posted by taz (staff) at 1:10 AM on December 4, 2016

Here's the SNL cold open mocking Trump for tweeting, which he then promptly tweeted about, thus bringing us so far through the looking glass that maybe irony really is like rain on your wedding day, because who the hell knows anymore in 2016?
posted by zachlipton at 1:15 AM on December 4, 2016 [22 favorites]

Hold me. Today I saw on TV right-wing Australian senator Cory Bernardi wearing a "Make Australia Great Again" cap, a gift he received while in New York recently on secondment to the UN. I fervently hope I never see another one.
posted by valetta at 1:30 AM on December 4, 2016 [7 favorites]

Damn, from the New Yorker piece.

Identity politics is not the sole preserve of minority voters. This election is a reminder that identity politics in America is a white invention: it was the basis of segregation. The denial of civil rights to black Americans had at its core the idea that a black American should not be allowed to vote because that black American was not white. The endless questioning, before the election of Obama, about America’s “readiness” for a black President was a reaction to white identity politics. Yet “identity politics” has come to be associated with minorities, and often with a patronizing undercurrent, as though to refer to nonwhite people motivated by an irrational herd instinct. White Americans have practiced identity politics since the inception of America, but it is now laid bare, impossible to evade.

posted by threeturtles at 1:53 AM on December 4, 2016 [54 favorites]

Now I finally inderstand the expression 'Fuck you and the horse you rode in on'.
Kellyanne is the horse.
posted by Too-Ticky at 2:06 AM on December 4, 2016 [14 favorites]

It is really amazing how much people complain about identity politics as if it's somehow a new phenomenon that's gotten out of hand. Today's white supremacists talk as though they've just invented the concept of whites acting and voting as an ethnic group, while more mainstream conservatives often decry that people keep mentioning race as though they can will our problems away if we all work really hard to pretend they don't exist.

White identity politics was baked right into the Constitution; just look at the 3/5ths compromise. The Klan was a profoundly effective political machine devoted to identity politics. It's only called "identity politics" when minorities are involved; white identity politics have, through our history, just been called "politics," even when they advance an explicitly white supremacist agenda.
posted by zachlipton at 2:21 AM on December 4, 2016 [44 favorites]

I'm wondering if a VAGINA DENTATA sign to be carried in the 1/22 march would help or hurt the cause
posted by angrycat at 3:19 AM on December 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

"Don't try to grab unless you want to lose a finger"
posted by crocomancer at 4:11 AM on December 4, 2016

I find Kellyanne Conway as repulsive as the rest of them. Every single thing she says is a lie. She covers over horrible things with the thinnest veneer of 'niceness' and I can't believe anyone gives her a pass at all.
posted by maggiemaggie at 4:35 AM on December 4, 2016 [16 favorites]

Kellyanne reminds me of Serena Joy.
posted by pxe2000 at 4:44 AM on December 4, 2016 [10 favorites]

I think many of us find it difficult to parse women as horrible. See Ivanka.
It's just another delightful feature of internalized misogyny.

Interestingly, trumpists seem to have no such problem with Hillary Clinton.
posted by Too-Ticky at 4:49 AM on December 4, 2016 [7 favorites]

The tweeticle Golden Eternity had posted linked to this long Atlantic piece: How Democrats killed their populist soul. It's a policy-historical analysis I hadn't come across before, very interesting read.
posted by progosk at 5:30 AM on December 4, 2016 [11 favorites]

Stoller's related series of tweets started here; as he introduces it, it's "about why people have such a hard time understanding Trump. It's because they don't understand Obama."
posted by progosk at 5:48 AM on December 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

White identity politics was baked right into the Constitution; just look at the 3/5ths compromise.

Just took at the Electoral College.

"At the Philadelphia convention, the visionary Pennsylvanian James Wilson proposed direct national election of the president. But the savvy Virginian James Madison responded that such a system would prove unacceptable to the South: “The right of suffrage was much more diffusive [i.e., extensive] in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of Negroes.” In other words, in a direct election system, the North would outnumber the South, whose many slaves (more than half a million in all) of course could not vote. But the Electoral College—a prototype of which Madison proposed in this same speech—instead let each southern state count its slaves, albeit with a two-fifths discount, in computing its share of the overall count.

Virginia emerged as the big winner—the California of the Founding era—with 12 out of a total of 91 electoral votes allocated by the Philadelphia Constitution, more than a quarter of the 46 needed to win an election in the first round. After the 1800 census, Wilson’s free state of Pennsylvania had 10% more free persons than Virginia, but got 20% fewer electoral votes. Perversely, the more slaves Virginia (or any other slave state) bought or bred, the more electoral votes it would receive. Were a slave state to free any blacks who then moved North, the state could actually lose electoral votes.

If the system’s pro-slavery tilt was not overwhelmingly obvious when the Constitution was ratified, it quickly became so. For 32 of the Constitution’s first 36 years, a white slaveholding Virginian occupied the presidency."
posted by chris24 at 5:53 AM on December 4, 2016 [41 favorites]

I'm wondering if a VAGINA DENTATA sign to be carried in the 1/22 march would help or hurt the cause

If you pair it with VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE you can't go wrong.
posted by dis_integration at 6:17 AM on December 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

Keith Ellison has offered to quit congress in order to lead the DNC.

DJT went on a twitter rant at 7:30 this morning to say that he will drastically cut taxes and regulations for US businesses but if they try to leave the country he will hit them with a 35%tax in retribution. He said they could cross state borders-- which is so nice for them.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:38 AM on December 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

I really want to know what pro-Trump business leaders think of that.

Plus, wouldn't it encourage companies that don't already have a presence here to not move to the U.S. for fear that if they ever move again, they'd face harsh tariffs.

On top of that, Trump has started calling out individual companies, which seems very distasteful for a president to do.
posted by drezdn at 6:49 AM on December 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

Kellyanne Conway has a veneer of niceness? She seems straight up evil to me.

That why she has the veneer of niceness. Pleasant voice, pleasant tone, insincere smile. That's what makes it a veneer.
posted by Talez at 6:54 AM on December 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

Wow that tweetstorm of Trump's this morning.

The U.S. is going to substantialy reduce taxes and regulations on businesses

I wonder if that includes the minimum wage. If so expect Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee to power a new renaissance in American manufacturing.
posted by Talez at 6:59 AM on December 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

Between the Taiwan gaff and now his calling out specific companies I can't imagine who (among those that 'run things'/actually work in government and see to its function) wants to put up with this crazy shit.

That is, I want to assume they have a containment program for him to keep his shit from flying all over and screwing up everyone's good time.

Because can you imagine if no one has a plan in place to deal with this? (Where this = Trump and his decidedly knee-jerk way of getting through life.)

he he he ha Hah ha . it's not that funny
posted by From Bklyn at 7:02 AM on December 4, 2016

Holy cats, this series of responses to t-rump's SNL snitty pout on Twitter is wonderful.
posted by vers at 7:12 AM on December 4, 2016 [33 favorites]

@HeerJeet
USA finally has a president who wants to destroy capitalism & American global hegemony. And he's a Republican! What a world.
posted by chris24 at 7:31 AM on December 4, 2016 [10 favorites]

The U.S. is going to substantialy reduce taxes and regulations on businesses, but any business that leaves our country for another country,

fires its employees, builds a new factory or plant in the other country, and then thinks it will sell its product back into the U.S. ......

without retribution or consequence, is WRONG! There will be a tax on our soon to be strong border of 35% for these companies ......

wanting to sell their product, cars, A.C. units etc., back across the border. This tax will make leaving financially difficult, but.....

these companies are able to move between all 50 states, with no tax or tariff being charged. Please be forewarned prior to making a very ...

expensive mistake! THE UNITED STATES IS OPEN FOR BUSINESS

(I figured this was important enough that we should have all the tweets here for reference.)

First the part about cutting regulations gives me pause-- no wait, it scares the shit out of me. Are we talking about working conditions? pollution? environmental impact studies? Regulations are not put into place lightly or randomly-- they are all there for good reason.

But lets cut to the chase.

A 35% tariff on all foreign goods? Does he honestly thing this would work? I'm stunned. What about Carrier? Will they be able to sell the air conditioners that they are making in Mexico in the United States with a 35% mark up? Did they know this before?

Is there any way this does not affect companies already manufacturing abroad? For example, what happens to Ivanka's 100 million dollar business? All of her goods are manufactured overseas. Surely you can't have a tariff for one company but not another.

Surely you can't have a tariff that affects only American companies but not foreign countries. What happens now to imported cars? What about all of the goods that are sold in WalMart? Does he not understand that most Americans cannot afford shoes that are made in America?

Does this also apply to food? Will we be paying 35% more for fruits and vegetables?

Finally does he not understand if the USA slaps a substantial tariff on foreign goods, they will hit American made goods with the same tariff?

I bet every American manufacturer/importer/exporter woke up to a headache this morning. Jeet Heer seems to think this is toothless and congress will never agree to this but how scary is it to have a PEOTUS firing off crazy ideas that pop into his head.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 7:32 AM on December 4, 2016 [19 favorites]

I think Republicans in Congress are the ones having a headache this morning. It's going to be uncomfortable to wriggle out of a proposal that is so specific.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:35 AM on December 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

It isn't specific though. "Any business that fires its employees"? Any employees? Or a certain number in a certain timeframe? What about firing employees, hiring "independent contractors" in the US then firing those workers and moving overseas? What if you open a foreign factory first then fire the American factory workers?
posted by melissasaurus at 7:41 AM on December 4, 2016

@megancarpentier
So, in case it's unclear: targeting exports from one company, US or not, in another country is a violation of the WTO agreement/any FTA.

A blatant violation like this would allow the country in question to leverage retaliatory tariffs on an equivalent $ amount of US exports.

This shit is precisely why countries after WWII signed the GATT, which, after several rounds became the WTO: it limits harmful trade wars.

So it's not just forcing Americans to essentially pay higher prices for goods, but will result is US companies paying tariffs abroad.

For example, he could slap tariffs on whatever Rexnord makes, and Mexico could slap tariffs on whatever furnace Carrier makes in Indiana.

Historically, once this tit-for-tat started, it didn't stop until everyone slapped tariffs on everything. (This would be a clusterfuck.)

Prices go up, demand goes down. Depending by how much, in the medium- to long-term, companies may start making shit here to fill demand.

But that shit will be more expensive than now, and they will seek from the government continued tariffs etc in order to stay in business.

Upside(ish): It will probably break Americans' of our consumerist ways, long term and possibly after mass personal bankruptcies.

And if they don't teach this at Wharton (Trump) and Harvard Business School (Bannon), I don't know what the fuck they do teach at the Ivies.
posted by chris24 at 7:46 AM on December 4, 2016 [37 favorites]

Do you think trump supporters understand that a tariff is a tax? A tax that will effect them most of all, since our entire low-end consumer economy is based around cheap goods produced through outsourced labor. That's a rhetorical question, of course they don't. It's really hard to not be grimly satisfied at the prospect of these people dying of preventable diseases because they don't have government funded health benefits as they struggle to pay 100 dollars for a Mexican made walker in the aisle of the Walmart.
posted by codacorolla at 7:46 AM on December 4, 2016 [8 favorites]

Oh, it isn't specific enough to be possible, and it will never, ever, ever happen, for like a hundred and twelve reasons. (Reason number one: nobody in the Republican party but Trump wants it to happen.) But it's specific enough that Congress isn't going to be able to say "well, we kind of did something that's in the spirit of that, so good enough."
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:46 AM on December 4, 2016

And what is an "American company"? Is Apple? What about Toyota?
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:48 AM on December 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

It's really hard to not be grimly satisfied at the prospect of these people dying of preventable diseases because they don't have government funded health benefits as they struggle to pay 100 dollars for a Mexican made walker in the aisle of the Walmart.

Personally, I find it very easy not to be grimly satisfied about this, but then I have friends whose families from Trump land, and I have family in Indiana, so "those people" are real individuals to me. I'm plenty mad at them and scared of what they've wrought, but a lot of them have very hard lives already. They're people who already can't get much health care, they're people who already struggle to afford things at Wal Mart and...I don't know, this awful future of vastly increased and totally unnecessary human suffering brings me no grim satisfaction whatsoever.
posted by Frowner at 8:00 AM on December 4, 2016 [29 favorites]

I'm gonna see if I can get Millionaire Sex Predator Donald Trump to stick
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 8:01 AM on December 4, 2016 [11 favorites]

For example, he could slap tariffs on whatever Rexnord makes

The plant that's closing makes bearings, so if you are a US manufacturer who makes anything that requires bearings they'll be 35% (or however much) more expensive. So now offshoring looks even more attractive, you can manufacture your product somewhere where both labor and bearings are considerably cheaper.
posted by peeedro at 8:01 AM on December 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

It's breathtaking to be ignorant about virtually everything.

A convenient untruth provides so much more elbow room.
posted by y2karl at 8:02 AM on December 4, 2016

I'm sure there's a well reasoned policy paper backing up the 35% number, not just a large sounding penalty he pulled out of his ass.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:04 AM on December 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

The Economist on Trump's Taiwan phone foolishness, via @JamesFallows. Last 2 sentences:

If all this seems a lot of fuss over a phone call, it is. But it is also a fuss about a man who is about to govern the most powerful country on earth, who makes impulsive moves and seems not to understand their full significance.

posted by kingless at 8:10 AM on December 4, 2016 [21 favorites]

via Tom Wright of the Brookings Institute: Significant @KellyannePolls comment: Sec State must "adhere to pres elect's America First foreign policy & be loyal to his view of world." It suggests Trump is worried about being boxed in by mainstream. His challenge is finding a loyalist for Sec State who is confirmable. Also possible Trump blames advisors (incl J Bolton) for manipulating him into Taiwan phone call & is now looking for a loyalist as Sec State
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:15 AM on December 4, 2016

Guys, if you have GOP reps or senators, this trade war business would be a good thing to write to them about. The Taiwan & Pakistan phone call clusterfucks too. They may not do anything now, but doesn't hurt to start prodding them early.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 8:25 AM on December 4, 2016 [6 favorites]

Pence bombed this morning on ABC's "This Week" (video)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:29 AM on December 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

You Heard It Here First: Trump May Not Propose A Budget Next Year
posted by C'est la D.C. at 8:32 AM on December 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

Even Austria is better at rejecting fascists than we are.

@AFP
#BREAKING Austria far-right concedes defeat in presidential race
posted by chris24 at 8:33 AM on December 4, 2016 [34 favorites]

The folks near the bottom will pay for the increased costs through their improved pay. That would be the optimistic reading.

From a labor point of view, a tariff would be used to help US competition. How can any American compete with the race to the bottom standards of global competition?
posted by Strange_Robinson at 8:36 AM on December 4, 2016

how scary is it to have a PEOTUS firing off crazy ideas that pop into his head.

Very scary, but in this particular case, with its impracticality and unseriousness, it's an obvious distraction from the actual and serious problem he created for himself with not only the diplomatic fallout from taking a jaw-dropping ill-advised phone call from Taiwan's president, but also the massive potential conflict of interest with the Trump Organization's expansion into Taiwan.

Trump tweeting diversionary bullshit is becoming so predictable that even SNL is mocking it.
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:39 AM on December 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

A rather maddening post from Richard Mayhew at Balloon Juice:

That Replace bill will cost money. It won’t cost as much money as the ACA but it will cost money.

That is a major problem as the major funding streams from the ACA (Cadillac Tax and high income tax surcharges) are gone. [...]

The Replace plan will cost money. And here is where we run into the Norquist problem. It is Republican orthodoxy that once a tax cut is passed it can never be re-enacted. [...] Assuming Norquist is still a major political enforcer of Republican orthodoxy, my best bet is that any Replace Bill will be like the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act (MMA) in that it is almost completely deficit financed.

The maddening part is not just that Republicans are going to run up the deficit after years of hectoring Democrats about fiscal responsibility, but also that it always plays out that way. Fiscal responsibility is for losers, I guess.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:40 AM on December 4, 2016 [20 favorites]

Man, that Pence video. He cites the Pew Research study, like, six times as support for the "illegals are voting by the millions" assertion. I had a pretty good idea of what the study probably said, but just to make sure, I went back and read the brief, and it says pretty much exactly what I thought it said: that states are lousy at updating their records. That means there are a lot of dead people on the rolls, a lot of people at the wrong addresses, and a lot of people who are registered both in the state they live in and a former state of residency. Pretty much none of these voting inaccuracies can or do lead to actual voter fraud: I suppose there might be a handful of folks impersonating dead people, and a few submitting dual ballots when they're double-registered, but I would be very much surprised if the total number of such cases topped, say, 500 nationwide.
posted by jackbishop at 8:46 AM on December 4, 2016 [14 favorites]

Coming soon: the Eastern Ohio Special Economic Zone.

The Organization's sniffing around Taiwan is a reminder that it doesn't have a presence in Hong Kong or Macau and probably never will.
posted by holgate at 8:48 AM on December 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

Pence is right: I do find it very refreshing having a president-elect that tells us what he believes is true.
Offer does not include actual refreshment.
posted by kirkaracha at 8:53 AM on December 4, 2016

Coming soon: the Eastern Ohio Special Economic Zone.

Yep. The Agenda 21 people who voted for Trump are going to flip their shit.
posted by Talez at 8:58 AM on December 4, 2016

Bill Maher @billmaher
Its been almost a month, will I ever get used to Trump? Fuck no. Its like watching a toddler playing with a gun - you're always nervous.

Stopped clock yada yada yada.
posted by Talez at 9:02 AM on December 4, 2016 [31 favorites]

From a labor point of view, a tariff would be used to help US competition.

You mean from the company's point of view. If Carrier is a sign of how this works, then companies will just keep the minimum amount of workers and work hours to not trigger the tariff, and then use technology and automation to further cut down labor costs. And then with "less regulations" they may be able to keep wages low, have no paid overtime, and skirt around a bunch of other stuff for those who do work.
posted by FJT at 9:14 AM on December 4, 2016 [7 favorites]

This tariff thing is beyond nuts. I know we're not going to get the glorious fully automated luxury communism we need in my lifetime, but in the meantime why can't we at least get semi-rational capitalism? Where are the goddamn all powerful globalist masters of the universe when we need them? Calling all Bilderbergers: fix this mess.
posted by dis_integration at 9:19 AM on December 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

If so expect Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee to power a new renaissance in American manufacturing.

It's probably a mistake to try and read anything coherent into the scrambled-egg twitterbot but the typical GOP meaning of "you can move to any state tariff-free!" is "move to a southern non-union state with low minimum wage, while forcing state and local governments to compete in terms of grants and tax giveaways." That isn't much comfort to the people of Bleaksville, OH who voted for jobs to appear on their doorstep, unless the aim is to turn the Rust Belt into Northdixie, a boss-ruled wage-slave oligarchy. Which may well be the aim.
posted by holgate at 9:23 AM on December 4, 2016 [6 favorites]

Commentary: What have we done? - Oklahoma Gazette

This is the unmasking of evangelical religion in America. It is not, in the end, about character or virtue. It is not about what love does to transform the human heart. It is about power, it is about fear, and Donald Trump tapped into widespread economic frustration and a smoldering rage about the displacement of the working class, especially less-educated white workers. They believe that Trump is the strongman who can save them. He is the first president ever elected who has never held office or served in the military and does not seem to understand why nuclear weapons cannot be used.

posted by Talez at 9:27 AM on December 4, 2016 [40 favorites]

Calling all Bilderbergers: fix this mess.

I have this impossible dream that somehow a consortium of smart, rational, rich private citizens and global players will come together and make an unrefusable offer to t-rump to NOT take the presidency. I mean, surely he can be bought off at some price, right?

Please, please. I am begging here, and I know I'm not alone.
posted by vers at 9:27 AM on December 4, 2016 [11 favorites]

Also possible Trump blames advisors (incl J Bolton) for manipulating him into Taiwan phone call & is now looking for a loyalist as Sec State

Man, I wish I had the power to plant leaks in the mainstream media. I remember that during Obama's first term, there was a constant stream of low-level stories about comments various advisers claiming that he didn't understand issues or know how to lead during meetings.

If I had the power, I would do something like that to Trump, except I wouldn't attack him directly at all, ever. Instead, I'd go after his need for "loyalists" and sycophants in his inner circle. I would sow chaos among them fools.

Stories like "A source inside the WH claims that Pence and Ryan have both indicated that they believe themselves to be much smarter than Trump and can bend him to their will."

Then the following day I'd leak "Kushner, Conway war with Bannon over influence with President" and "Despite claims to contrary, signs of growing rift between Trump, Ryan." Then "Multiple sources claim Bannon the one really calling the shots; McConnell 'totally lacking in input on Republican agenda'" and "WH Insider: Kushner/Conway split threatens stability of Trump's staff" and "A source in Congress describes Mattis as running DoD with no oversight from White House."

Now that I think about it, I wouldn't be surprised to see Putin's team doing this kind of psyop to strengthen their hand in the battle to hold Trump's puppet strings and to force the WH to keep Mattis on an extremely short leash.

Hell of a time to be on this planet, I'll tell you what.
posted by lord_wolf at 9:52 AM on December 4, 2016 [18 favorites]

From the Oklahoma Gazette piece: If you vote for someone who violated all 10 [commandments], then obviously something else matters a lot more to you than the religion you are wearing on your sleeve.

I get that that is hyperbole, but I'm pretty sure that Donald Trump hasn't killed anyone yet. He's probably also a big fan of the fifth (or fourth, depending how you count): honoring your parents is the only way to get a big fat inheritance, after all.
posted by jackbishop at 9:57 AM on December 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

Someone should've told Trump that "wisdom" should not be your D&D dump stat.

Also, I'm being really astounded with the various R senators and congressmen who are all "IT'S REALLY GOOD THAT THE CURTAINS ARE ON FIRE" after the Taiwan phone call. I mean, I knew they were craven fools, but this exceeds even my low expectations.
posted by rmd1023 at 10:17 AM on December 4, 2016 [14 favorites]

it says pretty much exactly what I thought it said: that states are lousy at updating their records. That means there are a lot of dead people on the rolls, a lot of people at the wrong addresses, and a lot of people who are registered both in the state they live in and a former state of residency. Pretty much none of these voting inaccuracies can or do lead to actual voter fraud:

So I think that a lot of the problems are - what do we mean when we say voter fraud? Do we mean any time people vote illegally? Only when they intentionally vote illegally? Only when they intentionally vote illegally in an attempt to change an election? Only when they intentionally vote illegally in an organized attempt to change an election?

Because I would argue that there are in fact millions of minorly fraudulent votes across the US, that in no way have the ability to fix the Presidential election.

For example: when someone fails to register their new living situation with the elections board, and then votes according to their old residence - which they may have no idea is illegal - they are voting fraudulently, but it's not necessarily for nefarious reasons. They may view the place they're living as transient, they may view the place they used to live as their "true home", they may be afraid to have official documentation tying them to their current residence. But this very rarely takes place across state lines - it's usually even within the same city, so people don't think it matters, because they don't understand how legislative districts work. And so Joe City Councilman may get some more votes than they are supposed to - but for the most part, people don't really know how wrong that is and they're not doing it on purpose. And they generally know voting across state lines is wrong, so this doesn't really affect the Presidential much.

You also have issues where people don't really know when they're allowed to vote and when they're not allowed to vote because of felonies. So people may vote when they're not supposed to, but it doesn't mean they're a Felony Voting Conspiracy, it may just mean they don't really know. That could affect the Presidential, but I don't think it's high enough numbers to affect the Presidential election - maybe local races.
posted by corb at 10:19 AM on December 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

hasn't killed anyone yet

"Look, I don't know that that is a false statement, George, and neither do you."
posted by holgate at 10:21 AM on December 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

> Because I would argue that there are in fact millions of minorly fraudulent votes across the US, that in no way have the ability to fix the Presidential election.

Then please actually argue it instead of simply stating it as a premise. With only ~130 million registered voters in the US, your belief that at least 1% of them ("millions") move between precincts in a given year, fail to update their registration, and are not checked to ensure that they're registered in the new precinct is simply not something anyone should take seriously without some shred of evidence.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:23 AM on December 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

How many more of these inanities does he have to spout before the folks in the republican smoke-filled room start calling the electors?

trick question, infinity is not a number
posted by murphy slaw at 10:27 AM on December 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

via Tom Wright of the Brookings Institute: Significant @KellyannePolls comment: Sec State must "adhere to pres elect's America First foreign policy & be loyal to his view of world." It suggests Trump is worried about being boxed in by mainstream. His challenge is finding a loyalist for Sec State who is confirmable. Also possible Trump blames advisors (incl J Bolton) for manipulating him into Taiwan phone call & is now looking for a loyalist as Sec State
- roomthreeseventeen

Along these lines, Josh Marshall's missive yesterday draws parallels to the early Bush II administration's bungling of the North Korea nuclear issue, scrapping the Clinton-era dance of supplies-for-compliance and going for dumb, direct confrontation. The end result, as we know, is that NK is now a nuclear-armed state. I'm concerned we may see a similar situation play out with Iran considering many of the same bellicose idiots are sinking their claws into Trump.
posted by indubitable at 10:31 AM on December 4, 2016 [12 favorites]

The discussion on voting "irregularities" sort of misses the point, which is that state regulation and local administration of elections is a shambles, and everything moderately shambolic on the voter side proceeds from that. The Stein recount underlines this: you can assume "cockup before conspiracy" with those broken warranty seals and still conclude that nobody on the ground gives enough of a shit about the integrity of the infrastructure.

An actual fix would involve verified uniform standards and something like Canada's national voter register. No prominent elected Republican wants an actual fix, because no prominent elected Republican actually believes in free and fair elections. Plus, large chunks of the GOP base believe that federal databases are the mark of Satan and that cobbling together half-arsed and discriminatory state-level shit is superior because it delivers GOP victories.
posted by holgate at 10:34 AM on December 4, 2016 [18 favorites]

So apparently Vladimir Putin called Millionaire Sex Predator Donald Trump "clever"
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 10:35 AM on December 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

corb: Fair enough; I'll posit that the number of people voting in the wrong jurisdictions is higher than my "vanishingly-rare" estimate, but calling this fraud dilutes the definition of fraud past anything sensibly useful to talk about. Fraud typically involves intentionality by someone. If I make an effort to bamboozle cashiers into giving me the wrong change, that's retail fraud committed by me. If the cashier either gives me the wrong change deliberately or doesn't ring up some purchases and pockets the difference, that's retail fraud committed by the cashier (possibly with my collusion). But if my order is rung up wrong or the wrong change is given by an authentic accident which neither of us notices, is that fraud? At worst it's incompetence.

I'll admit a precinct shift might have influence on local elections, but I think the number of people intentionally exploiting that aspect is probably on par with my previous estimate of "vanishingly rare".
posted by jackbishop at 10:36 AM on December 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

your belief that almost 1% of them ("millions") move between precincts in a given year

I'm not saying most of them move in a given year and "forget" to update their voter registration. I'm saying most people I know - within my own communities - register to vote once and then leave it alone. They only update it when they move to a different state. Maybe that's not how people in your community act, but it is how people in my community do. My grandmother has voted from a different borough for the last twenty years. It is inconvenient for her. I'm pretty sure it's illegal. But that's where she's voted since she became a citizen and she will not stop. I tear my hair out about it on the regular. In my experience, most people do not care about precincts. In fact, I would wager real, hard money, that if you asked every single person you encountered in the course of your day what voting precinct they belonged to, less than 5% of them would be able to answer you without checking their phone.
posted by corb at 10:39 AM on December 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

The distance between the idea of lazy inter-district registration laggery and the straightforward claim Trump has been making of millions of illegal votes propping up Clinton in blue states is so huge that it makes zero sense to bother talking about the former in response to the latter. It may be an interesting subject in isolation but in context it's basically accomplishing nothing but legitimizing by association what I think we agree is bald-faced and malicious idiocy on Trump's part.
posted by cortex at 10:44 AM on December 4, 2016 [26 favorites]

In my precinct, I have to give them my name and they go through a box with cards in it until they find my registration record, and they do not have registration records for people registered in other precincts, so if someone tries what you say your grandmother is doing, they will not be allowed to vote here. That may not be how it's done in NY, but it's how it's done here, so extrapolating from what you say a family member is doing to the rest of the country, including places that actually check registration status, is not valid.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:44 AM on December 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

corb, does your grandmother have a driver's license? Or do the people you know not change their licenses when they move, either? In my state when you move to a new address you normally do update your driver's license and when you do that your voter registration gets updated at the same time, and then next election you get a little postcard with your precinct info on it and if you try to vote any place else you'll have trouble.
posted by dilettante at 10:45 AM on December 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

If people don't update their voter registration when they move to a different precinct, how do they get the thing in the mail that tells them where their polling place is? And if they did manage to get to the right place, they'd be signing the registry book next to their old address. What they do in some places, if you show up at the wrong precinct and aren't on the list, is give you a provisional ballot and then, assuming your registration checks out, they count it only for the contests you're eligible to vote for, so you can't vote for the wrong city council district or whatever, but you can vote for President or Senate or Governor. Many states will simply throw out provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct, which is pretty awful.

I'm sure there are a bunch of people who do manage to vote in the wrong precinct for various reasons, out of ignorance or laziness, but that's utterly irrelevant to the Presidential election; nobody is letting you vote in the wrong state or even in the wrong county.
posted by zachlipton at 10:53 AM on December 4, 2016

Data point, I am a NYC resident and have moved a bunch times in the past decade. I have, out of laziness, not updated my address and once or twice voted in a different precinct. I don't drive regularly, though I have a driver's license, but the address on it is from 3-4 moves ago. The totality of our voting process is in a state of disarray, and I think we risk lending credulity to the fraudulence issue by nit-picking at these details.
posted by Sweetdefenestration at 10:56 AM on December 4, 2016 [6 favorites]

Having worked at the polls here in August, it is not possible to vote if your current address does not match the one in the voter roles. Or, more accurately, you can submit a provisional ballot, but once it is verified as having been cast in the wrong precinct, it will be voided.

Even if different systems do make it possible to vote in the wrong precinct, that in no way allows a person to vote more than once, which is what most of the voter fraud claims seem to suggest.
posted by Superplin at 10:58 AM on December 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

so with today's result in austria, hitler's birthplace has done a better job of rejecting fascism than we did.
posted by murphy slaw at 10:58 AM on December 4, 2016 [22 favorites]

Data point, I am a NYC resident and have moved a bunch times in the past decade. I have, out of laziness, not updated my address and once or twice voted in a different precinct. I don't drive regularly, though I have a driver's license, but the address on it is from 3-4 moves ago.

I will vouch that this is extremely common behavior in NYC (people just vote wherever they've always voted, which they can easily do because they never change the address on their voter registration, and we do not require ID to vote), though I'm not sure the relevance to the discussion at hand.
posted by unknowncommand at 10:59 AM on December 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

so with today's result in austria, hitler's birthplace has done a better job of rejecting fascism than we did.

And thank fucking god for that, Europe is riding the right wing xenophobic horse with gusto enough as it is.
posted by lydhre at 11:02 AM on December 4, 2016 [26 favorites]

People voting at their old precinct but in the same state doesn't affect the presidential outcome (except maybe in NE and ME where they split the EC votes). So if this is what Trump "really means" then he's only casting doubt on the state and local races (that favor Rs) not the presidential race.

But I think there's a very very small chance that what he "really means" is bureaucratic inefficiencies and a very very large chance that what he "really means" is that women and POC shouldn't be allowed to vote, unless they're voting for him.
posted by melissasaurus at 11:04 AM on December 4, 2016 [14 favorites]

The AP had to pull reporters off the Trump campaign due to the way they were treated in the press pen and one "dangerous situation," but apparently decided that "reporter's safety in danger while covering US Presidential campaign" wasn't a newsworthy story and didn't tell us about it.

Sarah Kendzior has more on the AP trying to clean up for Trump.
posted by zachlipton at 11:05 AM on December 4, 2016 [33 favorites]

Meanwhile, here's Conway on Fox being asked about her comments about Romney, and she literally responds by saying that Trump flip-flopped all week.

In other news, Trump has this to say: "The Green Party just dropped its recount suit in Pennsylvania and is losing votes in Wisconsin recount. Just a Stein scam to raise money!"

Just as Stein announced she will hold a rally and press conference outside Trump Tower.
posted by zachlipton at 11:13 AM on December 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

Hills: smart enough to have millions of illegal voters, not smart enough to have them vote in the right places.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:13 AM on December 4, 2016 [13 favorites]

Hills: smart enough to have millions of illegal voters, not smart enough to have them vote in the right places.

And she's been lost in the woods for weeks now! Buy a map, lady!
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 11:23 AM on December 4, 2016 [9 favorites]

NBC: Top transition source indicates @JonHuntsman is in the mix for Secretary of State job. Adds that Mitt Romney has "definitely fallen back."
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:29 AM on December 4, 2016

So is he giving them all random weapons and letting them loose on an island full of bombs? I wonder if Romney ended up with the frying pan.
posted by lydhre at 11:36 AM on December 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

lol, hope it was worth it, mitt.

would sending him an 8x10 glossy of him submitting to trump in that restaurant be tacky
posted by murphy slaw at 11:37 AM on December 4, 2016 [8 favorites]

Huntsman is reasonably qualified, which seems to be something of a miracle for the Trump administration. I wonder if he'd take it. Being Trump's SoS seems like a complete nightmare.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 11:39 AM on December 4, 2016 [10 favorites]

would sending him an 8x10 glossy of him submitting to trump in that restaurant be tacky

Walk up to him with it and ask for an autograph.
posted by Talez at 11:43 AM on December 4, 2016 [14 favorites]

For example: when someone fails to register their new living situation with the elections board, and then votes according to their old residence - which they may have no idea is illegal - they are voting fraudulently, but it's not necessarily for nefarious reasons.

Heck, Steve Bannon himself was committing voter fraud by using an unoccupied house in Florida as his address.

In NC you don't have to show ID but you do have to audibly tell them your name and address when you arrive at the polls so that they can check them off before giving you a ballot. I suppose you could lie if you have moved but continue to tell them you live at the previous address.

About the promise to repeal regulations on businesses, I wonder if the Federal minimum wage will be one of those regulations as someone speculated above and if so-- how low could wages fall before people refuse to do the job? For example a new factory opens in Louisiana and they offer $5.00 an hour, will people out of work take that job if other safety nets like food stamps are cut? How about $3.00 an hour? What is the lowest possible wage a business could offer before even the most desperate people will walk away? How horrible that we have to even ask this question.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 11:43 AM on December 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

Incidentally, in addition to having been Obama's ambassador to China, Huntsman was a senior trade negotiator under George W. Bush. He also served his Mormon mission in Taiwan. He's got to be the person in the world best situated to realize what a clusterfuck the Trump administration is going to be internationally. I wonder if that makes him more or less inclined to take the job.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 11:45 AM on December 4, 2016 [14 favorites]

would sending him an 8x10 glossy of him submitting to trump in that restaurant be tacky

I'm thinking billboards in San Diego County and the D.C. area. And wherever else Romney spends a lot of time these days.
posted by Lyme Drop at 11:47 AM on December 4, 2016

Considering that Trump is almost guaranteed to break diplomacy as we know it by being too ignorant to even play Risk and yet still have access to a telephone, my inclination is that no SoS, save maybe Clinton herself, is going to be able to help us.
posted by lydhre at 11:48 AM on December 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

I was outside a little earlier where there was a white guy in his mid-twenties ranting about Trump, the Bushes, race, war, dead babies, in a non-stop string of conspiracy claims. This is now a familiar sight and vocal background in areas around many homeless and mentally unstable people in my neck of the woods. The Trump candidacy and election has dramatically increased both the literal volume of these rants and frequency of their presence. It's reshaped the forms of belief among the disturbed to different pathways of explaining their world. The anger/fear is palpably stronger and more volatile in how it's being expressed.

Many of the threads that informed at least this kind of expression of mental illness and likely its growth are being tied together in frightening ways. Nazis, trilateral commissions, 9/11, Agent Orange, Jews, blacks and other extremist fears connected in elaborate strings of half fact and fantasy have been common place mutterings for many unwell people here for as long as I've been here, but this increase in volume is new and disturbing since it suggests that people have a new found validation for their conspiracies which is causing actual damage to them and likely to those that might represent what they fear.

This election and the Trump presidency is creating a real mental health emergency. I don't mean this hyperbolically, I mean an actual pandemic which is going to keep inflicting damage and spreading if we can't find ways to address the situation in order to tone down the level of anxiety that is present everywhere. This is not just a political problem, this is a ever growing existential crisis for the US and the world. It isn't just Trump and this election either, it's the accumulation of forces and information that made his rise possible. If we can't find a way to address these issues, then I'm not sure what kind of future we can expect, but if we continue down this path it will almost certainly be bleak.
posted by gusottertrout at 11:49 AM on December 4, 2016 [26 favorites]

There's a fierce rivalry between the Romney and Huntsman clans, and it'd be pretty hilarious if what had happened was that Trump forced the former to pull a Christie, making nice in submission, only to pull away the football at the last second to give the position to the latter.

Huntsman speaks fluent Mandarin and is simpatico on cross-strait relations, so maybe there's a chance with him at State, Trump's America unexpectedly ends up with less tensions with some parts of the world.
posted by Apocryphon at 11:57 AM on December 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

Here's Brian Stelter, nailing it:

Let's tell some truths about lying, because the way Donald Trump lies has people rethinking some of the basic premises of journalism, like the assumption that everything a president says is automatically news. When President-elect Trump lies so casually, so cynically, the news isn't so much the false thing he said, it's that he felt like he could just go ahead and say it, go ahead and lie to you. That's the story. Why does he bend and flex and twist and warp and distort the truth? Personally I'm curious because I think Trump does it differently than past presidents. His lies are different and deserve scrutiny.

[...]

That's why I think fact-checking is important, but the framing of these stories is even more important. Take Trump's promotion of this voter fraud conspiracy idea. He said on Twitter "I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally." The journalistic impulse was to say something like "Trump claims he won the popular vote." I would suggest to you that better framing is "Trump lies again, embracing a far-right-wing conspiracy theory." See, focusing on the falsehood creates more confusion and gives the lie even more life. And that's the wrong way to go

posted by windbox at 11:58 AM on December 4, 2016 [53 favorites]

Evan McMullin has a 10 point plan for dealing with Trump's authoritarian government. It starts here: 1. Read and learn the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Know that our basic rights are inalienable.

#2 is find several credible news sources and keep well informed.



Huntsman speaks fluent Mandarin and is simpatico on cross-strait relations, so maybe there's a chance with him at State, Trump's America unexpectedly ends up with less tensions with some parts of the world.

Yes, but how is his Russian?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 12:00 PM on December 4, 2016 [14 favorites]

Walk up to him with it and ask for an autograph.

Pair it with a copy of Romney's No Apology book. Hardcovers available from $0.01!
And the title of Romney's book is a reference to Obama's mythical "apology tour." Trump's not the only one that propagates conservative bullshit.
posted by kirkaracha at 12:10 PM on December 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

There's a fierce rivalry between the Romney and Huntsman clans, and it'd be pretty hilarious if what had happened was that Trump forced the former to pull a Christie, making nice in submission, only to pull away the football at the last second to give the position to the latter.

It raises the further, kind of delicious, possibility that in an effort to humiliate Romney, Trump is going to appoint an establishment, moderate SoS whose pro-trade, internationalist ideology is exactly the opposite of Trump's supposed views. If this weren't real, it would be funny as hell. Sadly...
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 12:15 PM on December 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

DJT went on a twitter rant at 7:30 this morning to say that he will drastically cut taxes and regulations for US businesses but if they try to leave the country he will hit them with a 35%tax in retribution. He said they could cross state borders-- which is so nice for them.

This really shows that Trump doesn't give a damn about wage earners. When Boeing moved their assembly plant from Seattle to South Carolina they did not create a single new job but they did transform existing jobs into lower paying non-union jobs.

If we really wanted to prevent the race to the bottom we could put the equivalent of tariffs on companies that move jobs to states providing subsidies. It would be a simple matter of the IRS taxing companies the same amount as the state subsidy thereby offsetting it. This is much like the way companies are now taxed for forgiven debt -- they could be taxed for forgiven state taxes. This would be a dollar for dollar tax debit, not an expense, since state taxes are already a deduction for federal taxes.
posted by JackFlash at 12:16 PM on December 4, 2016 [12 favorites]

SNL skit involving Trump tweeting about watching "Trump" on SNL skit could be the most meta skit ever.

--@maneatscereal

Please tell me they're already writing this today.

Start with an exact recreation of last night's Trump tweets sketch, but it's interrupted by Baldwin's cell phone going off.
He breaks character and checks it, announcing a tweet from the President-elect. He shows it to Kate McKinnon, who suggests Baldwin read it out loud since he's got the impression down, after all.
Baldwin reads Trump's tweet and they both look at each other in silence for a bit. Cut to the high school kid and the other random retweetees, who are also staring at their phones in silence.
McKinnon turns to Lorne Michaels, standing off camera, and asks if they should finish the sketch. He says that there's no reason, Trump made the point better than they ever could. Baldwin emits a lone "Sad!" McKinnon asks if parody is dead.
They sit quietly for a moment, contemplating all this, when Baldwin's phone buzzes again. It's a tweet from President Obama, which he shows on camera: "Live from New York, it's Saturday night."
posted by zachlipton at 12:17 PM on December 4, 2016 [33 favorites]

Why can't we have an Obama-hosted SNL in January? Let's do that. He can be his own musical guest.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:19 PM on December 4, 2016 [17 favorites]

trump's lies are interesting because they resemble the way that russian state propaganda works. this is described in some detail in nothing is true (pomerantsev). from a certain pov it's pretty neat - it gives them a lot of flexibility and control. i think you could also argue that it's a natural outcome of (response to) a more academic (game theory) approach to politics because it undermines the assumptions made there.

having said that, i think much comes naturally to him (i don't think he was coached by russia, for example!). but the above helps explain why it works. it also suggests there will be more, from others, in the future. and it's going to be interesting how it affects international relations. taiwan was, presumably, just the start.
posted by andrewcooke at 12:20 PM on December 4, 2016 [7 favorites]

Why can't we have an Obama-hosted SNL in January? Let's do that. He can be his own musical guest.

ha, 01/21/17 is a saturday
posted by poffin boffin at 12:25 PM on December 4, 2016 [16 favorites]

Evan McMullin has a 10 point plan for dealing with Trump's authoritarian government.

i really try not to be cynical, but right now, the best way to tell whether or not a republican will display any principles at all is to measure the distance between them and the merest chance of a taste of the trump administration's power
posted by murphy slaw at 12:44 PM on December 4, 2016 [14 favorites]

murphy slaw, I'm sorry, but I can't parse that. What do you mean?
posted by Too-Ticky at 12:47 PM on December 4, 2016

The less likely they are to gain from the administration, the more likely they are to have principles

or "principles" since they are not being tested
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 12:48 PM on December 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

It reads to me as "Trump would never consider McMullin for a cabinet post, so he's free to say what he wants." I think that's rather unfair to ol' Egg, who seems to have been pretty consistent about Trump during the campaign, and probably wouldn't have been on Trump's list either way, so nothing gained nor lost.
posted by tonycpsu at 12:49 PM on December 4, 2016 [8 favorites]

I thought Egg's 10 point plan was pretty good, especially for sending to #NeverTrump conservative family members.
posted by maggiemaggie at 12:52 PM on December 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

The Comet restaurant in DC, which was a target of a fake news story, was just the target of an attack where a SWAT team was called in to deal with a man who walked in with an assault rifle. (Twitter thread)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:53 PM on December 4, 2016 [10 favorites]

i really try not to be cynical, but right now, the best way to tell whether or not a republican will display any principles at all is to measure the distance between them and the merest chance of a taste of the trump administration's power

Examining the great taste of Egg in particular, it's worth noting that his campaign started well after the point where it could have been advantageous to him personally; best case he won Utah, blocked a Trump victory, was roundly hated by the GOP (no job forever) and was treated as a principled Republican by the HRC administration (who still wouldn't give him a job). As it is right now, he is merely severely on the GOP shitlist, and is thus unlikely to get any future job as he isn't a team player.
posted by jaduncan at 12:53 PM on December 4, 2016 [7 favorites]

Evan McMullin has a 10 point plan for dealing with Trump's authoritarian government. It starts here: 1. Read and learn the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Know that our basic rights are inalienable.

"memorize the constitution"? news flash, egg: a piece of paper doesn't do you any good when the institutions charged with enacting it are subverted.

for someone whose head resembles a light bulb, he's remarkably dim.
posted by indubitable at 12:59 PM on December 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

Windbox's quote from Brian Seltzer above (today 2:58 eastern us) ties into something I've been pondering for a couple of days that I feel is simultaneously obvious and not addressed.

Yes, the media reports poorly on Trump and gave him waaaaay more time than Clinton. But we liberals (we Metafilter election thread followers; we, Coffeespoon & and friends and family) are complicit too. We click on the articles starting with the word "Trump" at an astounding frequency to enjoy the shadenfraude, worry, discuss how tweets are diversions. We help promote the "celebrity" of Trump by responding like that. We feed the clickbait beast.

Instead, I think we should consciously and carefully do the following (and encourage friends, family, newspapers, blogs, etc.) to do the same:

1. Talk about the incoming Trump administration instead of Trump. As in "Incoming Trump administration taps Wisconsin billionaire to lead department of education. then discuss Betsy De Voss" rather than "Trump asks De Vos..." This depersonalizes him and strips the veneer of celebrity. It acknowledges that what is coming is real, and frames the discussion in the correct context - politics - instead of celebrity." It's agonizing, but it's also true.

2. Focus more on actual actors instead of attributing to Trump personally. People like De Vos, Carson, and the Wall Street foreclosure Kings will be placed in charge of institutions they have an interest in dismantling. Trump may smirk and gloat, but they are the ones causing damage. Jessie what's her name said "there's no such thing as truth." It's deadly serious.

3. Ignore the tweeting diversions. Mockery just gets his attention and plays into the celebrity feedback machine. To the extent they raise substantive issues, do as someone said upthread - talk about as potential policy not "tweets". Or frame as "far right conspiracy theories".

4. Stop using his name. I like Holgate's option [] - complete erasure. Nicknames like Orange Cheeto feed into the celebrity machine in our minds and others. I haven't read it yet, but I think xtian's Lakoff article linked above will make that point.

Anyway, that's how I'm pulling out of my post-election slump this week. Suggesting to beloved Facebook "friends" that if they post politics, to focus on substance, not celebrity. (It'll be a hard sell.) Writing a letter to the editor of the WaPo, my newspaper. Writing to various NPR shows I occasionally listen to. I encourage you to do the same, and maybe we'll create a little reframing movement and start starving the beast of celebrity.
posted by Measured Out my Life in Coffeespoons at 12:59 PM on December 4, 2016 [36 favorites]

The correct cynical move for Egg would have been to STFU and then publicly endorse Trump on national security with his CIA career as bona fides. Given the treatment of every other wingnut idiot who did so pre-victory, it would maybe even have got him an extremely senior CIA job.

That is, to put it mildly, not the tack he took. I don't agree with him about much, but I do genuinely respect his stance.
posted by jaduncan at 1:00 PM on December 4, 2016 [14 favorites]

Yeah, Egg only became a candidate to try and prevent a Trump presidency, so I can't see holding his opposition as less than heartfelt. If Trump, for whatever reason did decide to offer him a role in his administration I'd see his thoughts on accepting or declining it being roughly in line with a reasonable Democrat's thoughts on whether or not they felt they could make a meaningful difference by accepting, otherwise they'd refuse. At this point it seems pretty clear McMullin has staked a strong position on trying to do what he thinks is best for the democracy, not the party.
posted by gusottertrout at 1:01 PM on December 4, 2016 [6 favorites]

If you want good news, I'm reading reports on Twitter that the Army Corps of Engineers has announced the Dakota Access Pipeline will not run through the Sioux reservation.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:04 PM on December 4, 2016 [9 favorites]

news flash, egg: a piece of paper doesn't do you any good when the institutions charged with enacting it are subverted.

You know what? At this point, we are all trying to protect that piece of paper because the alternative is guerilla warfare.
posted by C'est la D.C. at 1:06 PM on December 4, 2016 [10 favorites]

I thought Egg was setting himself up to run for Orin Hatch's senate seat in 2018.
posted by peeedro at 1:08 PM on December 4, 2016

If you want good news, I'm reading reports on Twitter that the Army Corps of Engineers has announced the Dakota Access Pipeline will not run through the Sioux reservation.

It already wasn't being routed through the reservation — just directly along the northern border and then across the river upstream of them.
posted by indubitable at 1:09 PM on December 4, 2016

It already wasn't being routed through the reservation — just directly along the northern border and then across the river upstream of them.

MSNBC is reporting that construction on the whole thing will stop.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:10 PM on December 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

CNN has a roundup of further allegations about Keith Ellison's past, and links to his response: Listening more. Talking less.

As before, I find the allegations disturbing (particularly his defense of Kwame Ture's speech), but I don't think you could ask for a better response from Ellison.
posted by Joe in Australia at 1:19 PM on December 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

sorry, i didn't mean to impugn mcmillen, i was commenting more on how mos republicans who spoke out about trump before the election have been between silent to simpering if they think there's any chance of a piece of the action.

egg has been a good, uh, egg during the whole ordeal. his example would be humiliating to the rest of the party if they had any shame reserves left.
posted by murphy slaw at 1:20 PM on December 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

A librarian (now EdTech) friend who joined twitter early on and got a frequently-misused handle is anticipating future incidents on social media. Also, related Twitter exchange.
posted by Wordshore at 1:31 PM on December 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

Reminder that the Italian referendum vote is today. A "no" vote could be very bad.

Italy’s referendum: what’s at stake and what you need to know.
posted by triggerfinger at 1:34 PM on December 4, 2016

Pence defends Trump’s false claims of voter fraud as self-expression
posted by futz at 1:36 PM on December 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

Even Austria is better at rejecting fascists than we are.

They rejected him the first time by half a point. This time it was 6 points.
posted by Talez at 1:38 PM on December 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

Futz: Pence defends Trump’s false claims of voter fraud as self-expression

I don't know about Indiana, but where I come from describing someone's views as "refreshing" means that they're blunt and ignorant. Also "just his opinion" is like the weakest possible defense of any statement ever.
posted by Joe in Australia at 1:40 PM on December 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

You know, with the whole Mitt thing, I was like *bet he's being set up to be humiliated* and I laughed at the dinner pictures as much as the next person, but seeing the actual shiv go down, I just feel week and sad and lost.

I mean, I have enough respect for the man to believe that he felt that it was his duty for God and county to abase himself to a man he clearly detests.

Cruz's celebration of Trump's Taiwan gaffe though, seriously, fuck that guy all over the place.
posted by angrycat at 1:41 PM on December 4, 2016 [17 favorites]

DAPL pipeline is still a go, but they're looking at other routes now:

The Army Corps of Engineers announced on Sunday that it would not approve permits for construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline beneath a dammed section of the Missouri River that tribes say sits near sacred burial sites.


posted by damayanti at 2:03 PM on December 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

Y'know, I'm starting to think Trump is kind of a dick.
posted by kirkaracha at 2:07 PM on December 4, 2016 [16 favorites]

No is going to win by a huge margin in Italy. Exit polls at the moment suggest 58-42. I'm an expat (and dual US citizen) and I voted absentee. I voted YES but I knew it was futile: it was a necessary reform that got turned into a referendum on the government and, in Italy, no one ever likes the sitting government. That's why we go through so many, like cheap clothes or single ply tissues.

The EU might be fucked and I am heartbroken over it.
posted by lydhre at 2:08 PM on December 4, 2016 [9 favorites]

The GOP’s unconstitutional plan to conscript local police into Trump’s deportation squads. Turns out no one actually cares about states’ rights.
posted by homunculus at 2:26 PM on December 4, 2016 [11 favorites]

Peter Thiel showed up at the Mercer costume party dressed up as Hulk Hogan.
posted by zachlipton at 2:32 PM on December 4, 2016

Uh, Mr. Trump is currently tweeting his hatred of China.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:33 PM on December 4, 2016

Uh, Mr. Trump is currently tweeting his hatred of China.

Holy fucking shit. This is my fault. I sent a tweet to Holly Johnson saying we need a new version of Two Tribes for Trump vs Jinping. I didn't think reality would go ahead and fucking do it.
posted by Talez at 2:38 PM on December 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

The EU might be fucked and I am heartbroken over it.

This referendum was a pretty opaque occasion for Italian voters to voice their wants/needs. It's kind of hard to tell how Italy's sistema will be shaken up specifically in consequennce, there's a systemic resilience to the old boot that's pretty hard to really upset. In addition, in real terms
M5S have so far proven a somewhat shambolic "new way", so what's really up next is pretty difficult to tease out of what's currently happening. Keep an eye on the banks, for now.

But yeah, Europe is really in for a scrape, if it's to make it through this, and the upcoming French presidentials...
posted by progosk at 2:39 PM on December 4, 2016

Uh, Mr. Trump is currently tweeting his hatred of China.

This map keeps looking more and more relevant every day.
posted by T.D. Strange at 2:40 PM on December 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

What the DAPL news means: They will be performing an environmental impact statement (EIS). The pipeline is still going to be completed, but they will be looking at alternate routes. This doesn't necessarily take the original route off the table, nor do alternate routes resolve all of the problems inherent with the Standing Rock route.

In the past year I commented extensively on a Park Service draft EIS and became somewhat familiar with the process. I intend to comment on the DAPL EIS as an individual, but if anyone can connect me with a group where I can put my skills to better use, please drop me a line. I am happy to volunteer my time doing research, looking for holes that open the project to litigation, and drafting comments.
posted by compartment at 2:42 PM on December 4, 2016 [9 favorites]

Pence defends Trump’s false claims of voter fraud as self-expression

Millionaire Sex Predator Donald Trump needs a basic class in epistemology.
posted by mikelieman at 2:42 PM on December 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

This is reality. This is fucking reality. I don't think the hordes screaming for blood in the trade vendetta quite realize that war with China wouldn't be televised on TV. It would be total fucking war. Every piece of US infrastructure, every citizen would be a legitimate target.

I'm not sure who would actually come to our aid if we provoked the sleeping dragon on that one. I would heartily expect NATO to come back with "you broke it, you buy it".
posted by Talez at 2:43 PM on December 4, 2016 [8 favorites]

The Predator-Elect.
posted by Too-Ticky at 2:44 PM on December 4, 2016 [8 favorites]

Looks like Stein might keep a bunch of that sweet recount money after all. The federal PA lawsuit ain't going anywhere.
posted by Justinian at 2:45 PM on December 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

Deplorable Donald's China Tweets.

Whose turn was it to hold the phone today? You had one job.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:47 PM on December 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

In among the Comet Ping Pong conspiracy reports (false flag! false flag!) is the discovery of stars and moons at the corners of the Comet sign-- clearly Islamic or satanic!

The sign is from an old-fashioned Jewish deli. Of course, that will just be incorporated into the conspiracy.
posted by zennie at 2:51 PM on December 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm about to go to bed, luckily the Southern Hemisphere tends not to have many ICBM targets so the nuclear fallout should be manageable when I wake up. Cheers!
posted by PenDevil at 2:53 PM on December 4, 2016

I'm about to go to bed, luckily the Southern Hemisphere tends not to have many ICBM targets so the nuclear fallout should be manageable when I wake up. Cheers!

Yep. As soon as any war breaks out I fully intend to pack my wife in the car, drive to Canada, and be on the first plane to Australia.
posted by Talez at 2:55 PM on December 4, 2016

I live a clean mile from Trump Tower. This is going really well.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:57 PM on December 4, 2016 [9 favorites]

The thing that gets me about the Taiwan call and the subsequent tweets is Trump insisting that the most important thing was that it was a call to congratulate him. This dovetails into the observations of how Trump's psychology is particularly unsuited to the job he is facing.

I have a friend who used to be married to a real problem drinker. When he fucked up, it was just like how Trump reacted in those tweets. "Sure I passed out in the back yard and missed your mom's birthday dinner; but I had a hard day at work, what was I supposed to do?" or "Sure I totaled your car last night; but my car was low on gas but it was my company Christmas party, what was I supposed to do?" Anything could be justified because his addiction had to be fed.

These latest China tweets are like my friend's ex-husband doubling down to blame the tree because it was planted so close to the road. Except the tree can only wreck your car if you run into it, it doesn't have the power to wreck the world economy or launch a nuclear strike.
posted by peeedro at 3:00 PM on December 4, 2016 [10 favorites]

Talez: Yep. As soon as any war breaks out I fully intend to pack my wife in the car, drive to Canada, and be on the first plane to Australia.

I don't think you'll get very far. The next war, at least the next big one, will destroy digital infrastructure first. The Chinese and Russians both have satellites which kill other satellites. So cell phones and other digital communications down. GPS satellites destroyed (to hinder cruise missile guidance) which will affect travel too. Power grid most likely hacked. Any internet infrastructure left standing would be DDOSed by rival botnets.

This is all without a single ICBM leaving the silo. A future Cuban missile crisis standoff won't involve actual missiles. I don't think "the security aspect of cyber is very tough" Trump gets this. Hardliners in China could simply come to the conclusion that we're too erratic a society and digitally bomb us back to blinking cursors at a DOS prompt.
posted by bluecore at 3:17 PM on December 4, 2016 [6 favorites]

I live a clean mile from Trump Tower. This is going really well.

I live about two miles away from Trump Tower at the moment. Shortly after the election, I turned down a chance to move into a nice studio near Columbus Circle (general traffic, inconvenience, etc.). Best of luck to you.
posted by Leslie Knope at 3:18 PM on December 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

I wonder if there's a point at which the sitting President simply says "Nah, this jackass ain't ready for the Game," and decides to have the PE taken out of the equation.
posted by Mooski at 3:22 PM on December 4, 2016

Yes there is, it is the point at which a country becomes a authoritarian tyranny.
posted by Justinian at 3:24 PM on December 4, 2016 [14 favorites]

A quick reminder: the relatively impressive shitshow that US-China relations is likely to be for a while has been caused a month before he even starts the job. Moving from the Chinese blaming the Taiwanese for the call to his response of just directly listing China's misdemeanours, that's a pivot right?

Again, all is fine. We've always been at [diplomatic] war with Eastasia.
posted by jaduncan at 3:27 PM on December 4, 2016

Yes there is, it is the point at which a country becomes a authoritarian tyranny.

Don't necessarily disagree, I just wonder what I'd do when I've got definite authoritarian idiot vs. possible discovery of measures taken to prevent the idiot from assuming power.
posted by Mooski at 3:28 PM on December 4, 2016

Plus they'll probably *love* it when (if Trump does all the things he's indicated he will) the Trump Administration pulls out of the Paris Agreement, does some ostentatiously heavily armed freedom of navigation exercises in the South China Sea with various regional allies, and demands that Japan and South Korea pay more towards their defence and/or get more military kit themselves. Well, possibly they won't. Hard to guess, apparently.
posted by jaduncan at 3:29 PM on December 4, 2016

@TheKevinDent 41 minutes ago
@realDonaldTrump It's hard to believe that people held concerns about your diplomatic skills.
posted by jaduncan at 3:31 PM on December 4, 2016 [11 favorites]

Is there really no one who can make him understand that it's reckless to just ad hoc start Twitter fights with countries? Would he listen to, I don't know, Arthur Kade?
posted by thelonius at 3:33 PM on December 4, 2016

At this point, I'm starting to assume that he's actively trying to get himself disqualified for the position before he has to start.
posted by porpoise at 3:35 PM on December 4, 2016 [6 favorites]

Even Austria is better at rejecting fascists than we are.

They rejected him the first time by half a point. This time it was 6 points.

Nate Silver opined earlier that Trump might be making fascism more unpopular in Europe since he is so hated there.
posted by chris24 at 3:35 PM on December 4, 2016 [33 favorites]

Can we get him to pick fights with anonymous electors before the electoral college vote?
posted by rmd1023 at 3:35 PM on December 4, 2016 [19 favorites]

Italy has, as expected, rejected the referendum and Renzi has resigned.
posted by zachlipton at 3:37 PM on December 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

I actually don't think that "all is fine."
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 3:39 PM on December 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

The distance between the idea of lazy inter-district registration laggery and the straightforward claim Trump has been making of millions of illegal votes propping up Clinton in blue states is so huge that it makes zero sense to bother talking about the former in response to the latter. It may be an interesting subject in isolation but in context it's basically accomplishing nothing but legitimizing by association what I think we agree is bald-faced and malicious idiocy on Trump's part.

Sorry, I just realized I got deep into the weeds on details and didn't explain my actual premise very well. So that's actually kind of exactly what I'm trying to hone in on - this kind of, oh, I don't know, like...trump l'oeil fuckery? Like, there exists a reasonable interpretation of what he said - whether it's "yeah there probably are a few million votes cast wrongly but it's actually NBD on the presidential level" or "yeah there are some reasons we should open public dialogue with Taiwan but thata's not the way to do it" - but that reasonable interpretation is not what Trump meant and not what Trumpkins are going to take from it.

I don't really have a good name for how to describe it - like, the cover of the original people? Because all of those are reasonable positions that can be disagreed with or not but aren't, like, the insane idiocy of Trump. But when people hear it reported, or hear the talking heads talk about it, or politicians repeate it, they are talking about it as though it were coming from the reasonable people, and thus by extension as though Trump were a reasonable person. It's kind of this - I don't know if deliberate or not, but it's a muddying of the waters.
posted by corb at 3:40 PM on December 4, 2016

trump is going past the point of "disqualifying" himself and walking up to the line of getting himself[redacted] by the CIA
posted by murphy slaw at 3:46 PM on December 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

I suppose this is what we get when we say the President has bigger issues to deal with than SNL

[sigh]
posted by Mchelly at 3:47 PM on December 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

So this is it, we are literally going to end up in either a nuclear war or some kind of apocalyptic cyber conflict some time during Trump's term because he can't control himself on Twitter and no one around him can stop him, right? We have put actually stupid people into the highest offices of the land and no one can say them nay. They're not even evil but canny, they're just dumb and mean.

Until these China tweets I had pretty much bracketed all that "Trump will get us into nuclear war" stuff as unlikely. But he's going to do it, isn't he? He's going to provoke one of the nuclear powers until there's an actual war, out of sheer stubborn stupidity.

When I was little I was really afraid of the bullies at school because I figured they were too dumb not to, e.g., push me down steep flights of stairs or into traffic - they wouldn't actually mean to kill me, of course, they'd just be too dumb to keep the bullying to survivable limits. I did not expect a return to this feeling as an adult.
posted by Frowner at 3:47 PM on December 4, 2016 [49 favorites]

trump is going past the point of "disqualifying" himself and walking up to the line of getting himself[redacted] by the CIA

I was just wondering a few minutes ago if his continued survival is playing hell with JFK conspiracy theorists.
posted by dilettante at 3:50 PM on December 4, 2016

Corb, maybe the term you're looking for?:

Dog-whistle politics is political messaging employing coded language that appears to mean one thing to the general population but has an additional, different or more specific resonance for a targeted subgroup. The phrase is often used as a pejorative because of the inherently deceptive nature of the practice and because the dog-whistle messages are frequently distasteful to the general populace. The analogy is to a dog whistle, whose high-frequency whistle is heard by dogs but inaudible to humans.

The term can be distinguished from "code words" used in some specialist professions, in that dog-whistling is specific to the political realm. The messaging referred to as the dog-whistle has an understandable meaning for a general audience, rather than being incomprehensible.

Dog whistles are the way to deniable say the things you want to say. You can always drop back to the innocent meaning, even though everyone knows you're almost certainly lying. See Trump later clarifying he didn't say *all* Mexicans are rapists.

One can be racist/sexist/authoritarian as all get out and then insist that you meant that in the incredibly tortured way in which it could possibly mean something else if you ignore the very clear implications of what was actually said. Then, for bonus points, you can criticise the PC police or something.
posted by jaduncan at 3:50 PM on December 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

Some information about our relationship with China, published a couple of months ago. (Source: The White House)

Christ, I'm scared.
posted by _Mona_ at 3:51 PM on December 4, 2016

Yeah, I've gone back and forth on the likelihood of surviving the next 4 years and these China tweets pretty much convince me we're so fucked. He's deliberately provoking an antagonistic nuclear power because he made a stupid protocol mistake on the Taiwan call and can't/won't back down or admit error. He's not even fucking president yet and this is about as minor a situation as you can get.

At least I live two blocks from NYSE so I won't have to live through the radioactive dystopian landscape afterwards.
posted by chris24 at 3:53 PM on December 4, 2016 [6 favorites]

Fearing abandonment by Trump, CIA-backed rebels in Syria mull alternatives

Three years after the CIA began secretly shipping lethal aid to rebels fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, battlefield losses and fears that a Donald Trump administration will abandon them have left tens of thousands of opposition fighters weighing their alternatives.

Among the options, say U.S. officials, regional experts and the rebels themselves, are a closer alliance with better-armed al-Qaeda and other extremist groups, receipt of more sophisticated weaponry from Sunni states in the Persian Gulf region opposed to a U.S. pullback, and adoption of more traditional guerrilla tactics, including sniper and other small-scale attacks on both Syrian and Russian targets. [...]

OK, it was already a horrible situation, but it appears that it can get worse.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:54 PM on December 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

jaduncan, yeah, it strikes me like there's some additional level I'm not catching - the specific element of wanting the 'innocent' level to catch a bunch of defenders who will then find themselves talking about the innocent stuff - but you may be right to just keep it simple. That certainly is a real thing he does.
posted by corb at 4:02 PM on December 4, 2016

Mod note: I am now redacting your dreams about [redacting] people because y'all know we don't do overt threats here and it's getting too close to the line.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 4:02 PM on December 4, 2016 [12 favorites]

Let's say a group of concerned citizens raised a billion dollars or so via Kickstarter or something, and promised to pay it to Trump personally upon his resignation from the Presidency on or before January 20th. Would that be illegal? It sets an ugly precedent, to be sure, but what doesn't these days?
posted by contraption at 4:03 PM on December 4, 2016 [9 favorites]

Does Pence have Trump's phone number? Can he like, call him or something?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 4:04 PM on December 4, 2016

It's stuff like this where I feel like what's even the point in marching or protesting or trying to save Medicare, because we're heading into a geopolitical situation that is going to be so terrible, dangerous and unstable that actually getting through it at all seems difficult. I really feel like the world has ended - not in the "there will be no more humans ever" sense, but in the sense that peace and safety and predictability have ended. Because of this clown and his buddies. They've single-handedly put the world on track to ruin and they're so dumb that not even "you can't be rich in a nuclear hellscape" deters them.

Lots of people are lots dumber than we thought, basically, and they were restrained from acting on their stupidity by a belief that they couldn't get away with it and the belief that they were isolated. Consider that guy who went into the fake-Clinton-scandal pizza restaurant with an assault rifle today - pure human stupidity and malice, and purely the product of this election.

It's a terrible day when I think "maybe Henry Kissinger can do backdoor deals and settle things down".
posted by Frowner at 4:05 PM on December 4, 2016 [24 favorites]

did he just complain about the US not taxing China?
posted by boo_radley at 4:06 PM on December 4, 2016

Yeah. You want it to be just plausible enough that people who want it to be innocent can believe it is, and will be annoyed when it's suggested that it isn't. The Mexican thing was a bad example for me to give, it's too unsubtle. Think welfare queens, maybe. For people who were racist, it was a reference to black people. For other people, it's truly about dependency on the state even if they then happen to think it's black people.

You actively need it to have two meanings so that people can select the one that makes them happiest.
posted by jaduncan at 4:06 PM on December 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

Does Pence have Trump's phone number? Can he like, call him or something?

According to Kellyanne Conway the best way to communicate with him is to go on TV.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:08 PM on December 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

This photo was taken six months ago.
posted by progosk at 4:09 PM on December 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

So Mike Pence will be playing Mike Pence on SNL every weekend for the next four years.
posted by peeedro at 4:09 PM on December 4, 2016

Lee Atwater on dog-whistling:

 You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

posted by kirkaracha at 4:11 PM on December 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

Matteo Salvini ‏@matteosalvinimi
Viva Trump, viva Putin, viva la Le Pen e viva la Lega!

Well the Northern Fascists are happy. Maybe they won't stop at destroying the EU and will reduce Italia back to its component city states occasionally warring each other over some slight.
posted by Talez at 4:15 PM on December 4, 2016

so, like i really thought that the trump administration was going to be like reagan 2.0 with exponentially more overt graft

but he's actually stupider and/or more senile than reagan and his handlers will not take away the direct line from his roiling id to the public internet

i was expecting the iraq war, once more with feeling edition

i really think we are on the brink of direct confrontation with the most populous nuclear power in the world because a spoiled rich kid has lost his marbles and won't shut the fuck up

i grew up in a town that was on all the maps as a soviet first strike target due to a major trans-pacific cable terminating there. i used to dream of nuclear annihilation all the time. i haven't had one of those dreams since the clinton administration

the nausea i feel right now tells me those dreams are all coming back in a big way
posted by murphy slaw at 4:16 PM on December 4, 2016 [12 favorites]

Why would there be a nuclear war?

Isn't it more that the US will be increasingly isolated by stepping out of international agreements and imposing tariffs on everyone and everything. In the beginning, it will be really tough for the rest of the world, after all, the US is the second largest market in the world. But waging a war against the US won't sell Chinese products, so more likely they'll just work harder on cultivating growing markets in South America, Asia and Africa. They also won't go for Taiwan now. Maybe if we get a second term of Trump, or the Ivanka presidency, but at that point, the US will be a failed state with no chance of waging war in South East Asia.

Europe will take a dip again, and the populists will rise, but in spite of cracks in the EU, the Euro will become increasingly attractive as the international currency, and eventually that will help Europeans get back on foot. The European Nationalists are semi-fascist, but I don't see they are out to enter more wars, they just want a fence in the middle of the Mediterranean. Many of them like Putin and will happily give him back those pesky Poles.

Trump has already handed Russia Syria, and they will gradually move back into some of the pre -89 territories, but the US with Trump at the helm won't rush in to save the old Eastern block countries, the UK has brexited, and Europe alone can't and won't take on Russia.

The most worrying thing IMO is the scramble of Iran war-hawks in Trump tower. But Putin will do what he can to prevent it. So will the Germans, who don't have any say with Trump, but might talk down the ayatollahs. I'd imagine the US armed forces will be resisting more firmly as well, after Iraq.
posted by mumimor at 4:21 PM on December 4, 2016 [6 favorites]

Why would there be a nuclear war?

Because if there's one thing Chinese leaders are known for it's being laid back and chill.
posted by Talez at 4:21 PM on December 4, 2016 [9 favorites]

You're right. The Chinese are widely known for being quite happy and willing to lose face in the face of an adeversary.
posted by Talez at 4:25 PM on December 4, 2016 [6 favorites]

because the president will be an unstable simpleton with a mean streak a mile wide and he's willing to risk a goddamn trade war over a phone call. i would be unsurprised if he reacted to, say, Pyongyang's next bout of chest-thumping extortion for aid with a couple of cruise missiles. from there, all out war with the chinese is left as an exercise to the interested student
posted by murphy slaw at 4:25 PM on December 4, 2016 [9 favorites]

Here's my worry re nuclear war: The idiots in the Trump administration say so much dumb shit, and pass so many dumb laws with international implications, and do so many dumb things on the financial front that there is a destabilizing effect in one of the nuclear powers, and then a shooting war which heats up and results in a limited nuclear exchange - our fault whether literally begun by us or not. With a worst case scenario being that our idiots in Washington progress from a limited nuclear exchange to a full-on war.

I'm not worried that the Chinese government is going to respond to Trump's tweets by launching bombs - I have a lot of confidence in the Chinese state from a "values stability and a firm grip on power" standpoint. I'm worried that Trump's tweets and Trump's policies are going to have knock-on destabilizing effects which will lead to nuclear war.

There's a book by Jo Walton, My Real Children, which suffers from too rapid and undeveloped a middle but which has a near future with a couple of Hiroshima-level nuclear exchanges - the planet isn't destroyed but a lot of people die. I worry about that too.
posted by Frowner at 4:28 PM on December 4, 2016 [17 favorites]

McCrory, the shit weasel, is going to pack the courts on his way out the door.

Slate NC Gov. Calls Special Legislative Session, Setting Up Possibility of Court-Packing Power Grab

Of course, McCrory asserts that the session’s purpose is to help communities ravaged by Hurricane Matthew. But we have seen this chicanery before. In 2013, North Carolina House Republicans took up a straightforward motorcycle safety bill—and turned it into an anti-abortion measure that placed ridiculously onerous requirements on abortion clinics. The Republican-controlled state Senate sat on the bill until late in the last full day of the legislative session, then swiftly passed it with minimal debate. McCrory promptly signed the bill into law, breaking a campaign promise not to further restrict abortion access. Democrats were caught entirely off guard and never fully mobilized.

Could Republicans pull a similar trick with a court-packing bill, waiting until the last minute of the upcoming special legislative session, then cramming through a bill that secures their control over the state’s highest court? Of course. Will they? It all depends on what they think they can get away with.

posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:31 PM on December 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

You know all those shootings in inner cities Trump was so deeply concerned about during the campaign? It turns out that the ACA is really useful in getting gunshot victims access to healthcare.
posted by zachlipton at 4:31 PM on December 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

i'm just grateful he doesn't have the nuclear codes yet. yet.
sob
posted by localhuman at 4:32 PM on December 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

Next up on Trump's Cavalcade of Twitter Shit: "Manchuria: China knows it belongs to the Japanese!"
posted by Talez at 4:32 PM on December 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

the US will be a failed state with no chance of waging war in South East Asia.

We have a bigger military budget than the next 10 biggest combined. We have thousands of nuclear weapons. There's no way we won't have the ability to wage war anywhere in the world for the next 4-8 years no matter how bad Trump leaves our economy and world standing.
posted by chris24 at 4:33 PM on December 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

Boston Globe Republicans looking to tighten New Hampshire election laws

the state could see a handful of election law changes now that Republicans are in charge at the State House.

Gov.-elect Chris Sununu wants to eliminate Election Day registration, while fellow Republicans in the legislature have long sought a 10- or 30-day residency requirement. They say the changes would give voters more confidence in New Hampshire’s election systems.

posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:35 PM on December 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

Because if there's one thing Chinese leaders are known for it's being laid back and chill.

In terms of wars outside their borders, yeah, they definitely have been for the last half-century or so. Luckily, China definitely isn't dumb enough to start a serious shooting war with the world's greatest military power, and aren't going to start throwing around nukes or carriers. The leadership is, if nothing else, not going to want to have their 30 years of economic growth ruined, and a serious war would go badly for all concerned.

They could just make it hard for US businesses to get permits and licences, or maybe just ensure that suddenly joint ventures are being inspected for tax violations. Maybe stop trade with Taiwan, put the squeeze on US allies politically or economically. I just think they'd try very hard indeed to tamp down on even a shooting war, and won't go nuclear absent some kind of massive invasion. They, unlike Trump, did not get into the leadership by being loudmouthed and insecure, and are sane enough to know they'd lose heavily militarily.

Especially given that they could just threaten to sell up USD holdings, call in their US Treasury debt, or do so at times when the market's already volatile. There's plenty of ways to generate pain. Why do so in the one area where they are definitively outgunned?
posted by jaduncan at 4:39 PM on December 4, 2016 [14 favorites]

I'm worried that Trump's tweets and Trump's policies are going to have knock-on destabilizing effects which will lead to nuclear war.

Within four years? That's a big push. Which nuclear powers would be up for an exchange, and why?
posted by jaduncan at 4:42 PM on December 4, 2016

Why do so in the one area where they are definitively outgunned?

One thing that China does not fuck around with is sovereignty. 1996 almost came to war over a fucking ROC president going to a school reunion.
posted by Talez at 4:43 PM on December 4, 2016 [6 favorites]

hmmmmm...how about a Gates Foundation analog for Voting Rights instead of malaria? The effects of the obstacles (gerrymandering, voter id, roll-purging...) have straightforward responses: Register the people and take them to the polls. This takes money, time, and people. Get some stat PhDs to figure out where.
posted by j_curiouser at 4:43 PM on December 4, 2016 [17 favorites]

NYT Business Since Birth: Trump’s Children and the Tangle That Awaits

It turns out that as Ivanka Trump attended the meeting with her father and Japan's Prime Minister, a Japanese apparel company who's largest shareholder is the Japanese government was working on a licensing deal for Ivanka's clothing line.

The article goes into more detail on the conflicts of interest and their history.
posted by zachlipton at 4:45 PM on December 4, 2016 [16 favorites]

how about a Gates Foundation analog for Voting Rights instead of malaria? The effects of the obstacles (gerrymandering, voter id, roll-purging...) have straightforward responses: Register the people and take them to the polls.

Anyone doing this needs to recognize that the GOP will attack and that they will fight dirty. Remember ACORN and the O'Keefe video? Not a reason not to do it, just that everyone involved will have to be on guard for shenanigans at all times.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 4:46 PM on December 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

Not a reason not to do it, just that everyone involved will have to be on guard for shenanigans at all times.

Agreed, though I think you've just described situation: normal.
posted by Mooski at 4:48 PM on December 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

re: nuclear saber rattling. will someone do a test before 20 Jan?
posted by j_curiouser at 4:50 PM on December 4, 2016

Globe Republicans looking to tighten New Hampshire election laws

Remember that stupid essay about how we can tots not vote for Clinton this year, it's not like we won't have another election?

For a lot of people, there won't be.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 4:51 PM on December 4, 2016 [8 favorites]

Within four years? That's a big push. Which nuclear powers would be up for an exchange, and why?

Maybe none! Maybe I'm too anxious, which would be great. And maybe we aren't looking at eight years of Trump.

But what is going to happen when Trump etc meddle in the India/Pakistan relationship? Or Trump lobs some bombs at North Korea or Iran? Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons, of course, but it would destabilize the region.

What happens if Trump decides that we're going to recognize Taiwan ? Obviously not "China says 'bombs away'", but surely that would generate an actual military conflict?

Hopefully we can scratch Russia off the list since Trump and Putin are BFFs now.

I mean, to me in retrospect the Cuban Missile Crisis looks unlikely and foolish. I worry about some similar kind of brinksmanship over Taiwan or resulting from the India/Pakistan situation but handled by Trump and his gang of self-interested fools.

But I mean, I'm not attached to these worries - if they're all totally stupid and unlikely I'm not going to cry in my bed or anything.
posted by Frowner at 4:54 PM on December 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

What is all this about China being aggressive? I'm no apologist for China, but I haven't seen them waging any wars on the other side of the globe, ever, and I truly can't imagine they would want to. Like Russia, they have another perception of what constitutes their sphere of interest than most people and governments in the West, but that can only turn into nuclear war if the US is the aggressor. And even though Trump is stupid, I can't see why he would want to attack China (during his first term).

Wut? We have a bigger military than the next 10 biggest combined. We have thousands of nuclear weapons. There's no way we won't have the ability to wage war anywhere in the world for the next 4-8 years no matter how bad Trump leaves our economy and world standing.

Well, to wage war, weapons and soldiers are not enough. You also need to maintain those weapons and feed those soldiers. And that can be really difficult if you run out of cash. And the US will run out of cash if it opts out of the international community as Trump is proposing. Don't imagine big American corporations staying on in the US if Trump blocks their access to global trade. Don't imagine the rest of the world won't impose equal tariffs on American products if the US does it first. Already today, I have very few Made in The USA products. If they are taxed with 35% on top what they cost today, I can find something else.
If the world stops trading in dollars, that debt crisis you have becomes something else altogether. Think Argentina.

Many dictators have decided to wage wars in that type of situation, as a desperate last move with the double goals of distracting their own population and robbing the other country. If Trump finds himself thinking of that, it would be more practical for him to invade Canada or Mexico than to invade China, because China is on the other side of the Pacific and it would require immense resources to get the soldiers and weapons over there. It would also fail, without any doubt. Trump could bomb all the main cities in China, and there would still be hundreds of millions of people resisting an American army.
posted by mumimor at 4:57 PM on December 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

Which nuclear powers would be up for an exchange, and why?

Trump would be. He can start it. We don't need someone else to be up for it. We already know Trump's fixation with nukes and his attitude of why have them if you're not going to use them.
posted by chris24 at 4:58 PM on December 4, 2016 [6 favorites]

One thing that China does not fuck around with is sovereignty. 1996 almost came to war over a fucking ROC president going to a school reunion.

There's a big difference between pushing ROC around with some sabre rattling that did happen and is within the normal levels of geopolitical handbags, even a very limited exchange with the ROC that isn't normal for PRC/RoC (say, a Korea style mutual bombing of strategically nothingburger fields or two navel vessels very unenthusiastically shooting at each other like two dogs ostentatiously growling) and going up, say, against a nearby US carrier group.

The difference in ability to hit back is astronomical, as is the knowledge that no matter how far the PRC go, they know that they can't knock out the boomers and indeed probably most of the land ICBMs. They also lose a conventional war heavily once the other carriers turn up, and don't have the ability to project force into the US even as the US has massive amounts of war materiel in Japan and RoK that are handily nearby, including nuclear weapons, a heavy deployment of USN, land based air power, men and heavy ground troops all within a couple of weeks. Plenty of planes within 12 hours of air strikes on the Chinese mainland. What even vaguely sane military would want that war?

It's literally impossible to win, and their military and civilian leadership aren't idiots. They also depend economically on selling stuff into the US, so they'll be concilliatory enough that that doesn't stop. The PRC care, more than anything else, about domestic stability. A pointless serious war doesn't give them that, whereas demonstrating that they have a bigger geopolitical dick than Taiwan never really plays too badly domestically, and given Taiwan's lack of allies internationally, generally has no real international consequences other than a USN carrier group ostentatiously sailing past. Everyone understands the subtle rules of that, and PRC aren't going to shit that bed by unexpectedly carpet bombing Taipei or attacking US forces.
posted by jaduncan at 5:00 PM on December 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

Well, to wage war, weapons and soldiers are not enough. You also need to maintain those weapons and feed those soldiers. And that can be really difficult if you run out of cash. And the US will run out of cash if it opts out of the international community as Trump is proposing. Don't imagine big American corporations staying on in the US if Trump blocks their access to global trade.

In 4 to 8 years we will not be a country unable to keep the lights on enough to push a launch button. Or send a carrier group. Or fly some B-52s or drones. American industry will not be relocated out of country in 4-8 years.
posted by chris24 at 5:02 PM on December 4, 2016

This is exactly what it's like to live with an alcoholic :(
posted by maggiemaggie at 5:04 PM on December 4, 2016 [36 favorites]

or heroin addict...the lies
posted by j_curiouser at 5:08 PM on December 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

Speaking of the lies: "Paul Ryan, when asked if Trump is correct that millions voted illegally, says: "It doesn't matter to me."

You would think that the integrity of elections would matter somewhat to the Speaker of the House.
posted by zachlipton at 5:10 PM on December 4, 2016 [49 favorites]

In 4 to 8 years we will not be a country unable to keep the lights on enough to push a launch button. Or send a carrier group. Or fly some B-52s or drones. American industry will not be relocated out of country in 4-8 years.

Oh, of course you can push a launch button etc. But waging war against China - or even Iran - would imply sending hundreds of thousands of troops into huge quagmires for long periods of time. If you are waging war against your biggest lender that will be a very brief experience. Specially if you have a record of defaulting on your loans.

Re.: American industry: you will be very surprised at how fast big multinationals can move if tariffs are imposed. All the American IT companies already have gigantic headquarters in Asia and Europe. It's not a big deal to get the rest out, leaving a small section for the American market.
posted by mumimor at 5:11 PM on December 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

[satire] Obama Politely Asks Trump to Wait Until Inauguration Before Destroying World [satire]
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:13 PM on December 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

the knowledge that no matter how far the PRC go, they know that they can't knock out the boomers and indeed probably most of the land ICBMs.

China has always had the good sense to have a limited nuclear arsenal, basically a minimal credible deterrent against the US and USSR/Russia. They have something like 50-75 icbms that can reach the US at all. Probably because that's enough to inflict unacceptable damage to the US in a second strike.

I don't mean that in a "sure, we'd get our hair mussed" way, only to note that the PRC has always been pretty sober and conservative about nukes.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 5:16 PM on December 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

You have to think that President Obama is having these "please ignore the complete moron, we'll try to fix it" conversations with China and other countries now.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:22 PM on December 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

The most worrying thing IMO is the scramble of Iran war-hawks in Trump tower.

James Mattis’ 33-Year Grudge Against Iran

In fact, Mattis’ anti-Iran animus is so intense that it led President Barack Obama to replace him as Centcom commander. It was a move that roiled Mattis admirers, seeding claims that the president didn’t like “independent-minded generals who speak candidly to their civilian leaders.” But Mattis’ Iran antagonism also concerns many of the Pentagon’s most senior officers, who disagree with his assessment and openly worry whether his Iran views are based on a sober analysis or whether he’s simply reflecting a 30-plus-year-old hatred of the Islamic Republic that is unique to his service. It’s a situation that could lead to disagreement within the Pentagon over the next four years—but also, senior Pentagon officials fear, to war.

“It’s in his blood,” one senior Marine officer told me. “It’s almost like he wants to get even with them.”

Funny how we have a grudge when we're the ones who overthrew Iran's democratically-elected government in 1953.
posted by kirkaracha at 5:24 PM on December 4, 2016 [13 favorites]

Trump would be. He can start it. We don't need someone else to be up for it. We already know Trump's fixation with nukes and his attitude of why have them if you're not going to use them.

I would, in all seriousness, like to think that in the event of a first strike order absent an improbably massive serious war people will tell the CiC or indeed whatever deity may or may not outrank him to fuck off, possibly by declaring him insane and having President Pence then agree it's a good idea not to randomly nuke people.

Pence is a terrible person. He isn't that terrible a person. Do I think a conversation discussing this possibility has already happened? Absolutely yes.
posted by jaduncan at 5:26 PM on December 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

You have to think that President Obama is having these "please ignore the complete moron, we'll try to fix it" conversations with China and other countries now.

The same Obama who consistently and repeatedly said "I remain confident that Donald Trump will not be the next president"?

I don't think he's in a position to be believed by world leaders now.
posted by tivalasvegas at 5:26 PM on December 4, 2016

Going back to 7:03 in this thread, is there any way at all for this excellent idea to have legs? As I said earlier, there has to be a price that would be unrefusable.
posted by vers at 5:27 PM on December 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

I would, in all seriousness, like to think that in the event of a first strike order absent an improbably massive serious war people will tell the CiC or indeed whatever deity may or may not outrank him to fuck off, possibly by declaring him insane and having President Pence then agree it's a good idea not to randomly nuke people.

At this point relying on any Republican to stand up to him is insanity IMO. They have cowered and pandered and aided and abetted since he led his first poll. They are craven opportunists and/or raging lunatics.
posted by chris24 at 5:30 PM on December 4, 2016 [9 favorites]

The amount we can raise in that hypothetical Kickstarter is far less than what the Looter-in-Chief is going to grift his way into over the course of four years.
posted by tonycpsu at 5:32 PM on December 4, 2016 [9 favorites]

This election and the Trump presidency is creating a real mental health emergency. I don't mean this hyperbolically, I mean an actual pandemic which is going to keep inflicting damage and spreading if we can't find ways to address the situation in order to tone down the level of anxiety that is present everywhere.

I was struck this afternoon that the last time I've seen such widespread self-reporting of spiraling anxiety IRL and on online forums was mid-to-late September 2001.
posted by BrashTech at 5:33 PM on December 4, 2016 [10 favorites]

Three years after the CIA began secretly shipping lethal aid to rebels fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad

oh wow, when did this Orwellian little turd roll into the WaPo stylebook?

WEAPONS. we're shipping WEAPONS to al qaeda "rebel groups".
posted by indubitable at 5:34 PM on December 4, 2016 [13 favorites]

The amount we can raise is far less than what the Looter-in-Chief is going to grift his way into over the course of four years.

Also, it would be bribery, which is illegal. In fact it's one of the "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" mentioned in the US constitution.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:34 PM on December 4, 2016

Anyway, in non-nuclear conflagration news...

@joshtpm
2016 was a higher turnout election than 2012. 58.8% ('16) of the voting eligible population vs 58.6% ('12). Likely will go a bit higher.
posted by chris24 at 5:35 PM on December 4, 2016 [10 favorites]

You would think that the integrity of elections would matter somewhat to the Speaker of the House.

Reek. His name is REEK.
posted by corb at 5:35 PM on December 4, 2016 [19 favorites]

> Also, it would be bribery, which is illegal. In fact it's one of the "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" mentioned in the US constitution.

Wait, I thought we were writing fanfic.
posted by tonycpsu at 5:40 PM on December 4, 2016

From the writer of the Art of the Deal.

@tonyschwartz
Always remember: two guiding principles drive Trump's behavior: getting richer and getting positive attention. There isn't much else.
posted by chris24 at 5:41 PM on December 4, 2016 [12 favorites]

And I thought laws against bribery had been more or less tabled.
posted by contraption at 5:42 PM on December 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

he ain't the potus yet. Buyout '16.
posted by j_curiouser at 5:42 PM on December 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

At this point relying on any Republican to stand up to him is insanity IMO. They have cowered and pandered and aided and abetted since he led his first poll. They are craven opportunists and/or raging lunatics.

I'm actually not buying President Pence as unexpectedly nuking some state. Especially with several extremely enthusiastic military officers advising him that it is going to pointlessly lead to a few million deaths and quite possibly electoral losses for several cycles.

I used to work in nuclear warfare related comms. I will absolutely say that I'm confident we'd have done absolutely everything possible to prevent what is as close as close can be to negligent discharge of nuclear weapons, including a claim that insanity makes invalid orders. Nobody but nobody is going to think that first strike is a good idea, and people are going to try really quite impressively hard to prevent it. I don't have a super high opinion of Pence, but he isn't insane.

Tl;dr: really not seeing an actual nuclear strike for many reasons.
posted by jaduncan at 5:42 PM on December 4, 2016 [9 favorites]

"High crimes and misdemeanors" is not defined in American law, as far as I know; and anyway its prosecution depends on the will of the House. It means whatever Paul Ryan wants it to mean.
posted by tivalasvegas at 5:42 PM on December 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

> DAPL pipeline is still a go, but they're looking at other routes now

Related threads.
posted by homunculus at 5:48 PM on December 4, 2016

Tl;dr: really not seeing an actual nuclear strike for many reasons.

I agree I don't see President Pence nuking someone, I worry about President Trump nuking someone before someone invokes Section 4 of the 25th Amendment. Pence isn't at Trump's side at all times. And nutjobs like Flynn as head of NSA don't help.

But I hope your inside knowledge and confidence that the system won't allow it is correct.
posted by chris24 at 5:51 PM on December 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

Also, it would be bribery, which is illegal. In fact it's one of the 'high Crimes and Misdemeanors' mentioned in the US constitution.

What if we just make a donation to the Trump Foundation?
posted by kirkaracha at 5:58 PM on December 4, 2016 [12 favorites]

We're reduced to debating whether there's going to be a second Great Depression caused by Trump's twitter-trade war, or if he's actually going to launch a first strike nuclear war. #MAGA
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:01 PM on December 4, 2016 [15 favorites]

Donald Trump Just Gave Chinese Hawks a Great Talking Point on the South China Sea For hawks in China, where a domestic debate exists on the correct path forward for the country in the South China Sea, Trump’s tweets will be a welcome development. Here you have the incoming president of the United States implying that Beijing would have to ask for U.S. permission to undertake activities in what China regards as its sovereign territory.

For Chinese proponents of further unilateral actions in the South China Sea, including, but not limited to, the declaration of an air defense identification zone, additional land reclamation activities, or the overt militarization of the Spratly artificial islands, Trump’s tweet will be an important data point. (I’d expect to see commentaries in the Global Times and other Chinese outlets seizing on this as well.) Trump, with his insinuation, may vindicate certain voices in China who’ve long argued that territorial hegemony is the United States’ final goal in the South China Sea and the U.S. Navy’s plan for the Asia-Pacific’s maritime environs more broadly.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:11 PM on December 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

So the Trump team is now spinning this as all intentional. Not sure what's worse, bungling us into war or intentionally provoking it.

WaPo: Trump’s Taiwan phone call was long planned, say people who were involved

Donald Trump’s protocol-breaking telephone call with Taiwan’s leader was an intentionally provocative move that establishes the incoming president as a break with the past, according to interviews with people involved in the planning.

The historic communication — the first between leaders of the United States and Taiwan since 1979 — was the product of months of quiet preparations and deliberations among Trump’s advisers about a new strategy for engagement with Taiwan that began even before he became the Republican presidential nominee, according to people involved in or briefed on the talks.

The call also reflects the views of hard-line advisers urging Trump to take a tough opening line with China, said others familiar with the months of discussion about Taiwan and China.

posted by chris24 at 6:13 PM on December 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm not claiming special authority here and not saying anything classified, just saying that people in those roles aren't there because they take launching nuclear weapons in a relaxed way. The prospect of someone making the order whilst mentally incapacitated is not something that hasn't been considered. Absent some clear reason for immediate launch, I'm quite sure that would be investigated. Very few people who want to nuke the world make it to four star general, either.

There's less of a culture of absolute deference than one might expect in these matters, and it's possible to be as procedurally difficult as one can while people work out how not to kill the world. Look at Petrov, for example, or the way that James Blunt (yes, the singer) just flatly queried and played for time to avoid obeying the order - directly from the NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, no less - to start a hot war with the Russian troops in Pristina until someone sane came on the radio.

In addition, firing nukes without a reason to justify deployment of WMD is clearly a war crime, and all bets are off for illegal orders as they don't have to be obeyed. An awful lot of people would have to agree it's a good plan before nukes actually started flying, and I just suspect that whatever would have to be done to cover up that the order was ever made would be done. It's not the Republicans I'd be betting on to stop this here, it's the active service military.

Not that it's a safeguard I think is likely to be used.

Also authoritarians can have much more fun invading somewhere that can't really fight back and then having a mental victory parade. For starters, the Pentagon might just tell you bombing Iran seems an achievable plan and give you five options on how to do it.
posted by jaduncan at 6:18 PM on December 4, 2016 [12 favorites]

I dunno, I trust the WaPo generally more than most, but that sounds like post-hoc rationalization to me.
posted by Rumple at 6:18 PM on December 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

yeah, no. that is grade A bullshit.
posted by j_curiouser at 6:19 PM on December 4, 2016 [12 favorites]

I'm not claiming special authority here

I hope my comment didn't come across as snark. I appreciate your knowledge and truly hope you're right.
posted by chris24 at 6:21 PM on December 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

So much misinformation. Shows how easily you can create your own post-fact world. Just flood reality with as much bullshit as possible and nobody knows what's going on. That way if someone calls you on it you can pick and choose and deny everything else.
posted by Talez at 6:21 PM on December 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

Given how 2016 has played out, I extrapolate that not a single one of our predictions is going to be entirely correct but that something even more extraordinary happens, and is allowed to.
posted by porpoise at 6:25 PM on December 4, 2016 [6 favorites]

Sure, definitely months of planning and then "Taiwan called to congratulate me, was I not supposed to take the call?"
posted by jason_steakums at 6:26 PM on December 4, 2016 [21 favorites]

Given how 2016 has played out, I extrapolate that not a single one of our predictions is going to be entirely correct but that something even more extraordinary happens, and is allowed to.

So instead of nuking China, it'll actually be Sweden. We can't rule anything out
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:27 PM on December 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

Alex Baldwin to Trump on his impersonation...

@ABFalecbaldwin
...@realDonaldTrump
Release your tax returns and I'll stop.
Ha
posted by chris24 at 6:35 PM on December 4, 2016 [24 favorites]

So instead of nuking China, it'll actually be Sweden. We can't rule anything out

But where will I get my meatballs from? BibleThump
posted by Talez at 6:35 PM on December 4, 2016

>>Given how 2016 has played out, I extrapolate that not a single one of our predictions is going to be entirely correct but that something even more extraordinary happens, and is allowed to.

So instead of nuking China, it'll actually be Sweden. We can't rule anything out

Trump was assembling his IKEA furniture for the White House residential quarters, and those Swedish assholes forgot to include the gold leaf in the box! The fuck was he supposed to do, drive all the way back to College Park, MD and wait in line at the service desk? No way, José!
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 6:37 PM on December 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

it'll actually be Sweden. We can't rule anything out

I only hope that its just a spat between US and Sweden's Woman's Soccer that Ivanka gets upset at and provokes her da to have a trade spat with the country.

Stuff we can't predict like the dissolution (or more likely) ignorance-caused violations of trade agreements (with unexpected partner) and the (unexpected) partner getting vicious (and possibly winning, if only minds and hearts), leading to the crumbling of an important US supporting industry/product.
posted by porpoise at 6:38 PM on December 4, 2016

Look at Petrov, for example, or the way that James Blunt (yes, the singer) just flatly queried and played for time the order - directly from the NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, no less - to start a hot war with the Russian troops in Pristina until someone sane came on the radio.

jaduncan, can you link to a source for the James Blunt thing? Not because I don't believe you, but because I really really would like, at this moment, to read an account of sane humans intervening to stop a sudden crisis from blossoming into a catastrophe.
posted by tivalasvegas at 6:43 PM on December 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

Absolutely:

Singer James Blunt has told the BBC how he refused an order to attack Russian troops when he was a British soldier in Kosovo. Blunt said he was willing to risk a court martial by rejecting the order from a US General.
[...]he said: "I was given the direct command to overpower the 200 or so Russians who were [at Pristina airfield]. I was the lead officer with my troop of men behind us. The soldiers directly behind me were from the Parachute Regiment, so they're obviously game for the fight. The direct command [that] came in from Gen Wesley Clark was to overpower them. Various words were used that seemed unusual to us. Words such as 'destroy' came down the radio."

He said he had been "party to the conversation" between senior officers in which Gen Clark had ordered the attack.

"We had 200 Russians lined up pointing their weapons at us aggressively, which was... and you know we'd been told to reach the airfield and take a hold of it. And if we had a foothold there then it would make life much easier for the Nato forces in Pristina. So there was a political reason to take hold of this. And the practical consequences of that political reason would be then aggression against the Russians."

Asked if following the order would have risked starting World War III, Blunt, who was a 25-year-old cavalry officer at the time, replied: "Absolutely. And that's why we were querying our instruction from an American general.
"Fortunately, up on the radio came Gen Mike Jackson, whose exact words at the time were, 'I'm not going to have my soldiers be responsible for starting World War III', and told us why don't we sugar off down the road, you know, encircle the airfield instead.

[...]

If Gen Jackson had not blocked the order from Gen Clark, who as Nato Supreme Commander Europe was his superior officer, Blunt said he would still have declined to follow it, even at the risk of a court martial.

He said: "There are things that you do along the way that you know are right, and those that you absolutely feel are wrong, that I think it's morally important to stand up against, and that sense of moral judgement is drilled into us as soldiers in the British army."

Bonus: Wikipedia on the broader context of the Pristina action.
posted by jaduncan at 6:51 PM on December 4, 2016 [24 favorites]

Whoa, Wesley Clark?
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 6:52 PM on December 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

Taiwan City Planning a Makeover Says a Trump Agent Showed Interest

Investors are welcome, and on Sept. 8, a Taiwanese-American woman named Chen Siting, or Charlyne Chen, arrived, claiming to represent a very prominent businessman: Donald J. Trump. She had been referred to the Taoyuan mayor by Annette Lu, a former vice president of Taiwan, the mayor’s office said in a statement on its website.

“I told them: Isn’t Mr. Trump campaigning for president? Isn’t he very busy?” the mayor, Cheng Wen-tsan, said in a television interview that aired on Nov. 18, referring to Ms. Chen’s group. “They said she is a company representative. His company is still continuing to look for the world’s best real estate projects, and they very much understand Taiwan.”

“She had authorization documents issued by the Trump company,” he said, without specifying.
...
On Friday, Amanda Miller, a spokeswoman for the Trump Organization, said that there were “no plans for expansion into Taiwan” and that there had been no “authorized visits” to Taiwan to push for a development project.

Asked on Sunday for clarification about the company’s relationship with Ms. Chen and knowledge of her activity in Taiwan, Ms. Miller did not respond to specific questions. She instead repeated in a statement that there had been “no authorized visits to Taiwan on behalf of our brand for the purposes of development, nor are there any active conversations.”

Somebody is lying here, or at least stretched the English language well past its ability to rationally convey information.
posted by zachlipton at 6:52 PM on December 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

On a lighter note...

Some of you may remember that during the election, I invited Tim Kaine to busk with me on some harmonica/ukulele Replacements duets. After 9 November I sent him one of the signs I had in my tip jar, along with a note thanking him for his service, wishing him well, and inviting him to busk with me if he's ever in New England.

Yesterday I received a form letter from him, thanking me for my correspondence.

Initially I felt a little disappointed that I just received a form letter, especially after seeing some of the kind notes Hillary sent her supporters during the campaign, even though I realized how snotty and entitled that emotion was. The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that my attempt to busk with Tim Kaine was to my political activism what Dumbo's feather was to his attempt to fly. It led me to become more politically involved than I ever had been in my adult life. After the election I began reaching out to my elected officials in a way I might not have in years prior; I'm also donating all my busking tips to local charities and looking for others in my community who are doing similar work. Even though I didn't achieve my goal of busking with Tim Kaine, that effort inspired me to find ways to be more politically active. I view my attempt as a success, and I think America's Dad would be proud of me.
posted by pxe2000 at 6:54 PM on December 4, 2016 [59 favorites]

Somebody is lying here, or at least stretched the English language well past its ability to rationally convey information.

I just read that and I am very sure of who was lying and I will believe that it is the Rump camp until proven otherwise. Unlike the trumplethinskins, I am open to being proven wrong.
posted by futz at 6:56 PM on December 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

Even though I didn't achieve my goal of busking with Tim Kaine, that effort inspired me to find ways to be more politically active. I view my attempt as a success, and I think America's Dad would be proud of me.

Turned out Tim Kaine was busking inside your heart all along!
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 6:58 PM on December 4, 2016 [35 favorites]

Yep, that Wesley Clark. To your implied comment, yeah, very much idiotic. The utterly untrue representation made by Clark that 'the secretary general has told me you should fire' (he'd actually just been handed command) is a widely unreported but frankly excitingly dishonorable addendum to that order once he'd been politely refused the first time.

He didn't exactly cover himself in glory, unlike Blunt, who frankly earned himself a medal that will never be given for obvious reasons. His spiritual medal is that he didn't get in the shit for telling NATO SACE Clark to go fuck himself.

...and my apologies for the derail.
posted by jaduncan at 7:01 PM on December 4, 2016 [9 favorites]

Try going back to 1968 or 1981 and explaining what Twitter is and why the President Elect of the United States is probably going to start WWIII with it. Sometimes it really dawns on you that we're living in the future, which is basically a mashup of Snowcrash, 1984 and Dr. Strangelove.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:03 PM on December 4, 2016 [17 favorites]

trump's lies are interesting because they resemble the way that russian state propaganda works. this is described in some detail in nothing is true (pomerantsev). from a certain pov it's pretty neat - it gives them a lot of flexibility and control. i think you could also argue that it's a natural outcome of (response to) a more academic (game theory) approach to politics because it undermines the assumptions made there.

having said that, i think much comes naturally to him (i don't think he was coached by russia, for example!). but the above helps explain why it works. it also suggests there will be more, from others, in the future. and it's going to be interesting how it affects international relations. taiwan was, presumably, just the start.

[] (I like this!) is an opportunistic virus infecting a weakened body politic (including the 4th Estate). Our defense systems are not set up to deal with this sort of person in government, and so we are vulnerable. The system only works when the people in power have an incentive to fall somewhat within the norms. Now, anyone SHOULD have an incentive in the sense of "if we destroy everything I too will suffer," but apparently there's a kind of madness/blindness inherent in [] and many others that renders this ineffective.
posted by emjaybee at 7:19 PM on December 4, 2016 [6 favorites]

Singer James Blunt has told the BBC how he refused an order to attack Russian troops when he was a British soldier in Kosovo. Blunt said he was willing to risk a court martial by rejecting the order from a US General.
Well, if no one else will say it,
"James, for saving the human race, you're beautiful. You're beautiful. You're beautiful, it's true."
And I absolve you forever for that song.
posted by dannyboybell at 7:20 PM on December 4, 2016 [18 favorites]

and that there had been no “authorized visits” to Taiwan to push for a development project.

It doesn't even reach the subterfuge of the Cuban visits, when a mid-ranking employee calls it a work trip on Facebook and now has been Meredithed away when journalists seek comment.
posted by holgate at 7:21 PM on December 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

Nobody but nobody is going to think that first strike is a good idea, and people are going to try really quite impressively hard to prevent it. I don't have a super high opinion of Pence, but he isn't insane.

General Flynn, on the other hand, is exactly that crazy
posted by Ber at 7:41 PM on December 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

Everyone, such as Maggie Haberman here is trying to figure out what to make of the WaPo story re Taiwan. As I see it, they're either lying now by claiming it was a totally planned intentional effort months in the making, or they were lying when they said it's no big deal, just a quick congratulatory call, doesn't mean anything policy-wise. It can't be both no big deal and a months long deliberate policy shift at the same time.
posted by zachlipton at 7:43 PM on December 4, 2016 [7 favorites]

Trump Says He Doesn’t Want Military Interventions. So Did Bush.

Like George W. Bush 16 years ago, Donald Trump will take office having promised both a larger defense budget and a more-restrained attitude toward the use of military force. Like Bush, Trump seems to be in the process of surrounding himself with national-security advisors much more inclined to shoot and ask questions later.

What could go wrong?

posted by kirkaracha at 7:44 PM on December 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

Wisconsin recount observers cite broken warranty seals

“The seals were broken by the technician who came to install the modem in each machine after purchase,” wrote Reid Magney, public information officer for the Wisconsin Elections Commission. “The technician was supposed to replace the seals when he was finished, but neglected to do so.”

The label reads “removal of seal voids warranty.” It is unclear what impact, if any, the tearing of the seal would have on tabulating votes.

Probably a non story but can you imagine what an uproar this would cause in TrumpleTown if he had lost and this had happened?
posted by futz at 7:45 PM on December 4, 2016 [7 favorites]

KKK celebrates Trump victory with brazen parade

...News of the rally brought out hundreds of protesters at dozens of counter-demonstrations held elsewhere in the southern state, dwarfing the size of the KKK’s event.

...Many wore black shirts emblazoned with patches declaring their lifetime membership of the "Invisible Empire". They rode in vehicles sporting their insignia of a white cross on red background. The weather was too cold for a march, organisers said.

...Earlier in the day, Amanda Barker, one the organisers, said Mr Trump shared many of the values of the KKK. "We actually kind of have the same views. A lot of white Americans felt the same way about the wall, immigration, terrorism," she said.

...She brushed off accusations of racism, saying the group’s aim was in line with mainstream policy from the recent past, such as Operation Wetback in the 1950s to deport Mexican illegal immigrants, a policy later condemned for civil rights violations.

posted by futz at 8:04 PM on December 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

Craig Silverman has an analysis into how Pizzagate was spread

It all started with fake reports claiming that the NYPD and FBI linked Clinton to child sex crimes through Anthony Weiner's laptop, which were spread around by the usual suspects, including our new National Security Advisor, which primed the pump for people to pour through Wikileaks emails looking for "evidence," concluding that there are secret sex trafficking code words contained therein, and then we were off to the races.

To be clear, because there's been a bunch of confusion on Twitter, Flynn did not link a pizzagate story, but linked a True Pundit story (that Silverman discusses in his article), one that claims to have its own anonymous FBI and NYPD sources, that was part of the original wave of nonsense that started all this. Flynn's son (and former chief of staff), however, still seems to be sort of a believer (in follow-up tweets, he's all " I'm not suggesting anything did or didn't happen. Way to many coincidences however to ignore").
posted by zachlipton at 8:07 PM on December 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

trump's lies are interesting because they resemble the way that russian state propaganda works.

"Never believe that [liars] are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The [liars] have the right to play.

"They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past."

Sartre, in 1943, where "liars" above was actually "anti-semites".

All the conservative side has now is bullshit. Which is handy when you just want to implement your program and not have to have any intelligent debate about it.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 8:07 PM on December 4, 2016 [39 favorites]

Not to minimize the significance of the KKK's new confidence

Remember, the last time the Klan tried to have a resurgence, they were defeated by a comic book character!
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 8:16 PM on December 4, 2016

It's not the regular old KKK that just won a seat in the White House, it's the new brand of Nazis-are-trendy alt-right lead by actual supervillain Steve Bannon. I'd be a lot more sanguine about the 'alt-right' resurgence if it were just a local chapter with a larger parade than normal. Brietbart is not so quietly radicalizing white men across the nation that have never been to a Klan rally and wouldnt know or care to call up and find their local Grand Dragon. And that media outfit is set to become the de facto state run media branch of the US government.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:22 PM on December 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

Not to minimize the significance of the KKK's new confidence, but I'd hate to miss any chance to show these groups as the ineffectual small-potatoes bullies that they are. They're not making any kind of majestic comeback on a large scale. They're flailing, directionless, and they have stupid-ass nicknames.

Completely agree witchen! I had a much longer comment about what a farce it was but cut it way back due to the mods request to keep things brief. Damn you mods! The kkk is so thin skinned that they had (lol) to stay in their trucks because it was too cold to march...my sides hurt from guffawing.
posted by futz at 8:23 PM on December 4, 2016

Sartre is describing not just lies but trolling. And, reading his comment, I realized that the comments section of every news site is another place we've ceded to the liars.

Maybe it's time we reclaim that, too.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 8:24 PM on December 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

Why would there be a nuclear war?


Why would a country elect Donald Trump?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 8:25 PM on December 4, 2016 [11 favorites]

Everyone, such as Maggie Haberman here is trying to figure out what to make of the WaPo story re Taiwan.

There's now even less clarity about the intended meaning, and that matters. As Sen. Chris Murphy said, a new administration has broad latitude to adjust or even reverse foreign policy, but doing so amid competing narratives and court intrigue and an old man yelling through his tweeterphone is not how that should happen.

(In passing, the WSJ piece "The Last Diplomat" feels like an indictment of Comey's FBI as a bunch of blinkered desk jockeys who have no conception of how State does its work.)
posted by holgate at 8:27 PM on December 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

That WSJ piece is a giant public middle finger to Comey from the State Department, and it was really easy to start inserting the Clinton email narrative into it.
posted by zachlipton at 8:30 PM on December 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

It's not the regular old KKK that just won a seat in the White House, it's the new brand of Nazis-are-trendy alt-right lead by actual supervillain Steve Bannon. I'd be a lot more sanguine about the 'alt-right' resurgence if it were just a local chapter with a larger parade than normal. Brietbart is not so quietly radicalizing white men across the nation that have never been to a Klan rally and wouldnt know or care to call up and find their local Grand Dragon. And that media outfit is set to become the de facto state run media branch of the US government.

This is why it's so, so critical for anyone left of George HW Bush to think about what rhetoric is shown to actually work with respect to racism.

One of the things that drives me nuts on the left is our frequent insistence on saying things the most-emotionally-cathartic way even when it's counterproductive. We can't afford that. It doesn't matter if we think it's unfair or irrational that people hear certain messages in counterproductive ways; humans gonna human, and we have to approach people as they actually are, and not as we wish they would be.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 8:31 PM on December 4, 2016 [22 favorites]

*The Comet restaurant in DC, which was a target of a fake news story, was just the target of an attack where a SWAT team was called in to deal with a man who walked in with an assault rifle. (Twitter thread)

Whoa. I didn't realize that shots were fired.
posted by futz at 8:31 PM on December 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

Is there a nonpaywall version of the wsj last diplomat story? Google workaround is failing me.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 8:40 PM on December 4, 2016

Here's a couple of random frightening thoughts:

I recall when China and Japan get into fights over something like disputed islands in Senkaku or Yasukuni Shrine, there's suddenly an uptick of protests and even violence against Japanese owned businesses and Japan's consulates/embassies in Mainland China. If Donald keeps poking China, what prevents China to hit the US back (and also score some easy points domestically) by turning protests towards US businesses and embassies? Harass US students, businessmen, reporters? Also recall that during the Olympic torch relay/Tibetan protests there were lot of Chinese students and expats that counter-protested in the US too, so that's another possibility.

And in turn, what's to prevent President Donald from making life tougher on Mainland Chinese folks studying, doing business, investing, and making a living here? Remember, there's been a lot of property investment and tourism by Mainland Chinese folks here in Southern California. What if Donald were to some way put pressure on these folks (like how he was gonna freeze undocumented immigrants from sending money back home), making it harder for these liberal California cities, these sanctuary cities from collecting taxes and keeping their budgets stable?

Someone please tell me this is outlandish and impossible. Please?
posted by FJT at 8:41 PM on December 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

[ SecretAgentSockpuppet: try searching for the title in Twitter and clicking on the top links.]
posted by holgate at 8:42 PM on December 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

All the people who spread Pizzagate because they claimed they wanted to protect children came entirely too close to getting actual children shot today.

Of course, it looks like some of the pizzagate people now think this was a false flag operation, so we've got that to deal with now.
posted by zachlipton at 8:43 PM on December 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

And in turn, what's to prevent President Donald from making life tougher on Mainland Chinese folks studying, doing business, investing, and making a living here?

I don't have an answer for you here, but it reminded me of something. One of my best friends was born in China, and her parents happened to be here during Tienanmen Square because her dad was admitted to grad school in the US.

George H. W. Bush allowed Chinese students in the US to more easily get get green cards, first by executive order and later by law. Which meant her family had the option to stay here, and she's totally awesome, and America is better off for her and her parents' presence.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 8:48 PM on December 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

Yes, of course it was a false flag. All the evidence, of which there is a ton, points to that conclusion.
posted by rhizome at 8:48 PM on December 4, 2016

When a chunk of the family business relies upon the Chinese supply chain, you don't have to make it overt. You just have local officials get the memo that in an entirely plausible health-and-safety initiative, factory inspections and shipping bureaucracy are to be carried out to the letter and maybe that means a temporary shutdown or a bunch of containers have to go out on the next ship.
posted by holgate at 8:54 PM on December 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

I just look similar enough to them that most Americans can't tell the difference

When I hear the very real fears and vulnerabilities that you and other mefites express, I am brought to tears. I am so sorry.
posted by madamjujujive at 9:02 PM on December 4, 2016 [14 favorites]

So the son of the new National Security Advisor - and who's his chief of staff - still thinks there's something to Clinton being connected to a pizza parlor pedophilia ring.

@mflynnJR:
Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it'll remain a story. The left seems to forget #PodestaEmails and the many "coincidences" tied to it.
posted by chris24 at 9:10 PM on December 4, 2016

Remember, the last time the Klan tried to have a resurgence, they were defeated by a comic book character!

I was hoping it was Ziggy.
posted by mazola at 9:11 PM on December 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

Until #Pizzagate proven to be false

Ah yes, burden shifting. If you made the allegation, now make with the evidence.
posted by rhizome at 9:14 PM on December 4, 2016 [17 favorites]

Yes, of course it was a false flag. All the evidence, of which there is a ton, points to that conclusion.

Wait, so which part of it is a fake thing designed to discredit the anti-Clinton people?
posted by fleacircus at 9:14 PM on December 4, 2016

uh, didn't you learn in undergrad that 'proven to be false' is not a thing?
posted by j_curiouser at 9:17 PM on December 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

A good tweetstorm starts here on how issuing a single visa for someone to speak at their alma mater led to an international incident with China including them live firing missiles during impromptu military exercises off the Taiwan coast and the US sending two carrier battle groups to the Taiwan Straight.

@prchovanec:
1. As a little bit of context, it's worth reviewing what the 1995-96 Taiwan Straits Crisis was all about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Taiwan_Strait_Crisis
posted by chris24 at 9:22 PM on December 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

Now Flynn's son (and former chief of staff) is picking a fight with Jake Tapper, and another reporter has dug up what purports to be a review of Cernovich's by Flynn Jr. book that uses his dad's position.
posted by zachlipton at 9:54 PM on December 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

Tracking how many key positions Trump has filled so far

The Post and Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, are tracking these 662 executive branch appointments through the nomination process. These positions include Cabinet secretaries, deputy and assistant secretaries, chief financial officers, general counsel, heads of agencies, ambassadors and other critical leadership positions. All require Senate confirmation.

The Senate confirmation process can begin when the newly elected 115th Congress convenes on Jan. 3, 2017 — two weeks before Trump’s inauguration. The Senate can begin holding hearings to confirm Trump’s eventual nominees during this period.

651 awaiting announcement
11 nominee announced
0 confirmed

posted by kirkaracha at 10:51 PM on December 4, 2016 [8 favorites]

What are the odds that Flynn minor has a very active Reddit account that covers the full shitty spectrum of MRA / goobergob / [ ] interests? It feels very much as if the lower-tier players belong to a sphere that a relatively small number of internet venues helped vomit up over the past few years.
posted by holgate at 10:57 PM on December 4, 2016 [16 favorites]

@mflynnJR:
Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it'll remain a story. The left seems to forget #PodestaEmails and the many "coincidences" tied to it.

Until @mflynnJR PROVEN not to be involved in theft of #mymissingsock, he will remain my nemesis.
posted by jaduncan at 11:12 PM on December 4, 2016 [9 favorites]

God, Twitter is an open sewer.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 11:12 PM on December 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

What is going on here???

Breaking Report: Trump Campaign Allegedly Violated Constitutional Law to Alter Election Results. Penalties Include Prison Time if Charged.

HuffPo glitch in the matrix? Sensational click bait?
posted by futz at 11:30 PM on December 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

It's a HuffPo contributor story, so there's pretty limited review. There's plenty of reason to report on voter suppression, but that's an awful way to do it, and HuffPo's continued willingness to hand its name and platform over to just about anyone is troublesome.
posted by zachlipton at 11:39 PM on December 4, 2016 [7 favorites]

If we have entered the "Post-Truth" era, we are obligated to fight fire with fire.
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:41 PM on December 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

I called, asked for a speedy investigation. Let a judge decide whether a tarmac conversation with a former president has any relevance to the AG filing voter purge charges against [] and fellow conspiracists.
posted by riverlife at 11:43 PM on December 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

Yeah, it doesn't look like there's anything new, as such, in that article -- it looks to be a pretty fiercely-written piece tying voter suppression efforts to the Trump win.

Is it fighting fire with fire, or is it just sinking into the morass of blanket statements, fighty headlines and unsourced assertions of connections and conspiracies? I really don't know.

(on preview: I typed the phrase 'fighting fire with fire' before seeing oneswellfoop's above comment: this isn't a direct response to that comment.)
posted by tivalasvegas at 11:45 PM on December 4, 2016

Re-reading my comment from a few weeks ago:

Even if you choose to do your own thing, you'd be crazy to jump on a call like that without taking advantage of the information provided by the experts who do this for a living. Otherwise, you can easily "uh-huh" your way into agreeing with a dangerous or even deadly position.

Just look at how Bannon got Trump to change his positions live on his radio show through some shaping and suggestion. It's pretty to imagine the same process being carried out over the sovereignty of Ukraine or control of Taiwan or any number of things where an uninformed, unprepared, and uninterested President-elect can carry life-or-death implications.

Guys, I was basically being sarcastic about the control of Taiwan part! And it's been so much worse than I imagined. He uh-huh'd himself into an official visit to Pakistan and Duterte is claiming that Trump endorsed his death squads.

Even Trump's use of the phrase "President of Taiwan" in a tweet was major news in the papers there, and I'm pretty darn positive he had no idea what statement he was making using those words.
posted by zachlipton at 11:50 PM on December 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

I searched the thread and did not see this linked yet, but forgive me if someone posted it above and I missed it.

I just read a very interesting piece on Medium by Larry Lessig: The Equal Protection argument against “winner take all” in the Electoral College. I'm not a lawyer so I can't comment on the technicalities of his argument, but he made some points that struck home - it's a well considered argument.
posted by mosk at 11:50 PM on December 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

I mean, it's likely an eyes-closed last-minute 100-yard Hail Mary into the wind, but fuck it. Maybe we should all start calling the White House all day every day and saying, "Oh hell no!! The Crazyfication Percentage of our population is NOT getting its way!!! Do what you must. Unroll the secret 7.3rd Amendment, whatever ya need to. Discover the Secret Revelation of Joseph Smith that was intended for this time only. Break the L. Ron Hubbard 'In Case of National Fire' glass, release and play backwards the secret Manson/Unabomber opus they've been collaborating on all these years, whatever, any/all of this shit is preferable, DO NOT LET THIS STAND!!!"

(1st Amendment protected Art speech. Fuck you fascist haters.)
posted by riverlife at 11:56 PM on December 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

As much as I, too, want to imagine that there is some way to reverse the election results, to do so (whether by Electoral College machinations or any other quasi-legal petitioning thing) would have a nonzero chance of starting a civil war.
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:07 AM on December 5, 2016 [4 favorites]

Duterte is claiming that Trump endorsed his death squads.

Kerry did that six months ago, and gave Duterte $32 million.
posted by Coda Tronca at 12:17 AM on December 5, 2016 [4 favorites]

nonzero chance of starting a civil war

Agreed. I don't want war. I am beginning, unfortunately, to believe that consciously or not [] will bring it with him. If so, what is the best, or failing that, egad, least bad manner to prevent that happening? Is a horrific civil war in the U.S. preferable to the incineration of the species?

I can't even believe this shit is coming out of my mouth. I'm a pacifist, I won't be killing anyone, and yet here I am talking this way, calculating lives against lives.

This guy and these fucking people. I'm already tired of winning so much, so he can go home now.
posted by riverlife at 12:25 AM on December 5, 2016 [9 favorites]

There isn't enough time to argue out the Equal Protection thing, because (as he touches on briefly) if we're tossing out the current tradition, each state would have to deliberate on how they divvy up their votes. And I'm not sure the courts can simply order them to do so? Even if they'd filed it on Nov 10th there might not have been time.

It's worth arguing for next time, but I'd be worried about diluting the blue anchors of CA and NY; currently-red states have a lot of methods in place to avoid that dilution. (like, voter suppression, and no shame.) Politicians and generals and businessmen and people in general have a habit of figuring out how to win the previous battle, and learning lessons that don't necessarily work for the next one.
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 12:31 AM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

also anyone thinking hopefully about civil war (as I was a second ago) had better think hard about how close they'd be to the front lines.
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 12:32 AM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

I just read a very interesting piece on Medium by Larry Lessig: The Equal Protection argument against “winner take all” in the Electoral College. I'm not a lawyer so I can't comment on the technicalities of his argument, but he made some points that struck home - it's a well considered argument.

I saw that earlier (linked from Facebook, I think, not MeFi) but it seemed to be another quixotic electoral reform proposal which, while probably better than the system we have now, has no practical plan to get from where we are to where Lessig wants us to be.

And I'm also not a lawyer, but it seems to me that the outlined argument conflates one-person-one-vote on the national level with one-person-one-vote at the state level. It cites a Supreme Court ruling which states, in part:

And, if a State should provide that the votes of citizens in one part of the State should be given two times, or five times, or 10 times the weight of votes of citizens in another part of the State, it could hardly be contended that the right to vote of those residing in the disfavored areas had not been effectively diluted.

But this is not what is happening. Each vote does have an equal weight within the state election for President -- it's just a winner-take-all system where the electoral college delegation with the majority of votes takes their seats in the national electoral college meeting.

There's a better case to be made, I think, that the Electoral College itself is in violation of one-person-one-vote because of the disparity between the ratio of state population to number of electors among the states, but that's not the argument that's being made here.

The author anticipates this argument:

Of course the state could argue that there is a single slate of Electors is up for election. But therein lies the rub, the State is not free to disregard the one man one vote rule by arbitrarily framing the election of 16 Electors as though it is an election of a single office holder. That argument would be a pretext designed to deny any voice to the voters for the candidate not winning the plurality of the vote within the State, even though in reality multiple representatives are being selected to vote in a second election for a single candidate.

But that's not... a very convincing rebuttal. It amounts basically to an argument that the federal courts should intervene on what has traditionally been the very clear domain of the states to determine their own elections laws and procedures, subject only to explicit laws like the Voting Rights Act, and it comes close to begging the question. I could be wrong, but I think this would get laughed out of court.
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:35 AM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

Agreed. I don't want war. I am beginning, unfortunately, to believe that consciously or not [Trump] will bring it with him. If so, what is the best, or failing that, egad, least bad manner to prevent that happening? Is a horrific civil war in the U.S. preferable to the incineration of the species?

The breakdown of civil order in the US would not be good for the prospects of avoiding nuclear war, either. So I'll take the possibility of a war in the medium-term over the possibility of civil war next month.
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:43 AM on December 5, 2016 [3 favorites]

Tl;dr: really not seeing an actual nuclear strike for many reasons.

It would be wild if this was an elaborate Russian psyop to get the U.S. to unilaterally pursue nuclear disarmament, either because the outgoing Obama administration does a crash course in scaling back the ability of the POTUS to command nuclear strikes, or because Trump starts START III on behalf of the Kremlin. The ensuing world war then does not happen while he's in the White House, but maybe a presidency or two after him, after the U.S.'s atomic missile gap is sufficiently wide enough. Red Dawn 2027.
posted by Apocryphon at 1:20 AM on December 5, 2016

Hillary Clinton's lead hit 2.4 million and 2% today. 2%. Looks like she will have a bigger popular vote % lead than 11 elected Presidents after all. Everything is terrible.
posted by Justinian at 2:29 AM on December 5, 2016 [34 favorites]

Numbers from Lawyers, Guns, & Money: The Electology.org poll, part 1/3: how could Trump have won?
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:02 AM on December 5, 2016

Sorry for pedantry but 2.6m and 2%. You can see all the details state by state here.

Dave Wasserman of 538 and Cook Political Report maintains this and tweets the latest vote updates a few times daily.
posted by chris24 at 3:08 AM on December 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

I dunno, I'd be right on the front lines in a civil war, but maybe that would be preferable to, well, all of this. I'm just so, so scared, and I want more than anything to be back in Chicago, because at least that's in the bubble. I don't know how people are still like, walking around and doing things as if everything is okay.
posted by dogheart at 3:36 AM on December 5, 2016 [3 favorites]

November 15th:

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson has told President-elect Donald Trump that he isn't interested in serving as secretary of Health and Human Services, a Carson ally confirmed to The Hill on Tuesday. [...] "Dr. Carson feels he has no government experience, he's never run a federal agency. The last thing he would want to do was take a position that could cripple the presidency."

December 5th:

Trump Taps Ben Carson For Secretary Of Housing And Urban Development

(Also relevant: FiveThirtyEight: Stop Treating HUD Like a Second-Tier Department)
posted by Rhaomi at 3:46 AM on December 5, 2016 [8 favorites]

Trump to nominate Carson as HUD Sec'y [WaPo]:

President-elect Donald Trump intends to nominate retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development, an unconventional choice that underscores Trump’s willingness to forgo traditional policy expertise in some Cabinet positions to surround himself with allies.

posted by Westringia F. at 3:51 AM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

Trump’s Threat to the Constitution by Evan McMullin (NYT)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:05 AM on December 5, 2016 [10 favorites]

Y'know, Republican Electors, you could do a lot worse. *sighs a deep sigh*

Every time I read McMullin I am simultaneously inspired and disheartened, that we could have had a Republican nominee like that instead of the Orange Tyrant.
posted by corb at 5:23 AM on December 5, 2016 [18 favorites]

The horrible thing most likely to happen in the next four years is Trump starting a war with Iran. Flynn is obsessed with Iran and will do anything to make it happen.
posted by drezdn at 5:32 AM on December 5, 2016 [8 favorites]

We'll probably get another chance. I have a feeling Egg is going to primary Trump, if he's still in office, and will do his best to tear Trump down. If not egg himself, he'll be supporting someone out to do the same. I just hope he can keep finding more Republicans to stand with him.
posted by gusottertrout at 5:35 AM on December 5, 2016 [5 favorites]

we could have had a Republican nominee like that

I'm guessing that's exactly McMullin's strategy for 2020 or 2024—be the not-crazy R candidate waiting in the wings when Trump and Pence fail spectacularly. Not sure how valuable his brand will be by then—you have to have a republic to be the president of that republic, and who know what the USA will look like in four years—but at least somebody's still working the "fuck Trumpism" angle.
posted by Rykey at 5:37 AM on December 5, 2016 [7 favorites]

The horrible thing most likely to happen in the next four years is Trump starting a war with Iran. Flynn is obsessed with Iran and will do anything to make it happen.

That would be counter to Flynn's pal Putin's interests in the region.
posted by PenDevil at 5:37 AM on December 5, 2016

The horrible thing most likely to happen in the next four years is Trump starting a war with Iran. Flynn is obsessed with Iran and will do anything to make it happen.

War with Iran, trade/cyber war with China, Russia getting a free hand in Ukraine and other former Soviet states, tensions increasing between Pakistan and India, and a horribly disproportionate response to some act or acts of terrorism, not excluding the possibility of use of a nuclear weapon should it be traced, or "traced", to someplace like Yemen or another country without strong response capabilities or ties to US infrastructure needs.
posted by gusottertrout at 5:39 AM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

The Senate confirmation process can begin when the newly elected 115th Congress convenes on Jan. 3, 2017 — two weeks before Trump’s inauguration. The Senate can begin holding hearings to confirm Trump’s eventual nominees during this period.

651 awaiting announcement
11 nominee announced

I was going to make a joke about "at this rate, he should have the positions filled by three months after he leaves office", but does anyone have any information on how this compares to any other administration, Democrat or Republican?
posted by dannyboybell at 5:41 AM on December 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

It bothers me a lot when people bring up the possibility of civil war as a reason not to pursue legal political action. It's an example of what those articles about how to resist fascism are talking about when they warn you not to obey in advance - if there's a legitimate possibility of changing the outcome of the election, and we don't take it because we're scared of how the other side will act, then they've won, straight up. We've turned over the system to the worst of us, abandoned people who need us, and surrendered our rights because we are afraid.

The rabid Trump supporters love to swing their balls around and shout on social media about how they better get what they want because they're the ones with all the guns so we better give them what they want or here comes the uprising.

Okay, you armchair warriors, you want to reasonably talk to me about civil war? Talk to me about financial resources. Talk to me about the numbers on both sides. Talk to me about how you're going to take over the military. Talk to me about your plans to resist the surveillance state when you can't even keep your lunatic leader in line on Twitter. Talk to me about what this Donald Trump-led civil war would actually look like, because otherwise, you're just winning the argument by being the side that's willing to escalate to spit-flying crazy talk and shout death threats until all the reasonable people leave the room.

They're used to winning arguments that way, and we're used to letting them. But I will be good goddamned if I will avoid exercising my constitutional rights because of what I'm afraid of what the blowhards and the bullies on the other side will do. We've got to be better than this and tougher than this, you guys. Come on.
posted by pretentious illiterate at 5:46 AM on December 5, 2016 [110 favorites]

Pretentious Illiterate: yep. That unwritten rule of Dude Culture, wherein group decisions are made de facto by the guys who don't care about being seen as the assholes, and implicitly agreed to by the guys who do? That's no way to run a democracy, and fuck that shit.
posted by Rykey at 6:19 AM on December 5, 2016 [17 favorites]

It bothers me a lot when people bring up the possibility of civil war as a reason not to pursue legal political action.

I think a lot of people who bring that up are especially vulnerable to violence in their communities.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:34 AM on December 5, 2016 [7 favorites]

Last week I had the honor of shooting Dr. Ruth for a feature on how escaping the Holocaust led to her collecting dollhouses late in life. (It makes sense when you read the story.) If you don't know her history, after her father was taken by the Nazis on Kristallnacht, she was sent alone at the age of 10 on a Kindertransport train by her mother and grandmother to Switzerland in January 1939. She never saw any of her family again and found out in 1945 they all died, most likely at Auschwitz.

Anyway, in the course of shooting her, we talked a bit about the current situation and if she thought it could happen again. Her answer? "No, there are too many kind people in the world." Which honestly about made me cry, that someone who had gone through what she had would have such a favorable view of humanity, and because I really want to think so too, but this election has rattled that trust in the goodness of people. I hope she is right. What an amazing woman.*

*After the war, she emigrated to Palestine and became a sniper in the Haganah in the fight for Israeli independence and was injured in combat and couldn't walk for months.
posted by chris24 at 6:35 AM on December 5, 2016 [52 favorites]

Roomthreeseventeen: I respect that, I do. And I feel it. It's a scary time. But I think, then, it would be good to talk about that specifically: "I am afraid that if the outcome of the election changes, I will be the target of violence in my community."

Because that is something we can fight. That is something we can plan for in order to prevent. We can stand up and say, here are all the ways we are going to keep that from happening - and then talk about whether that level of protection is enough. But we need to talk about what's actually happening, and not let the other side's rhetoric infect us. And if those people who are subject to violence in their communities genuinely believe in the possibility of all-out civil war, then I definitely want to hear about it. They may well see something I don't. But I want to hear about it in concrete terms, that I can do something about, not simply as an echo of the other side's rhetoric of fear.
posted by pretentious illiterate at 6:50 AM on December 5, 2016 [7 favorites]

WaPo Under Trump, red states are finally going to be able to turn themselves into poor, unhealthy paradises

Basically the idea here is that the Blue States should increase their state taxes to equal the cuts in the Federal taxes and then use that money to improve education, healthcare, and safety nets.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:54 AM on December 5, 2016 [33 favorites]

It bothers me a lot when people bring up the possibility of civil war as a reason not to pursue legal political action.

Well, if the EC or some other mechanism selected a different president, could the governors of some states and other institutions declare that Trump is the one true president, make Youngstown, Ohio the new capital and rename it Trumpstown or Trumpograd or something like that, and direct their taxes and other resources there? If Texas went along and Russia recognized the Trumpograd government, they'd have oil and a seed of international recognition, plus with the right states involved they could have physical possession of a large number of ICBMs.

I don't think it would actually happen because just the economic strikes and counterstrikes, or maybe even merely the threat of them looming as everything began to take shape, would quickly spoil most people's enthusiasm. Well before any actual military stuff happened.
posted by XMLicious at 6:54 AM on December 5, 2016

pretentious illiterate, minorities have been talking about their fear in these threads, but maybe not in the explicit terms that roomthreeseventeen just used.

I really don't hear much listening to or organizing against those fears.
posted by zutalors! at 6:55 AM on December 5, 2016 [5 favorites]

HUD, which has been learning and figuring out that there were many ideas that were terrible (can anyone say Cabrini Green?). It is also terrifying as a social worker who has worked in HUD funded programs, I have more experience on housing policy than he does.

Housing policy is really delicate issues because there are many unintended consequences, socio economic factors and lots of human behavior involved.
posted by AlexiaSky at 6:55 AM on December 5, 2016 [7 favorites]

In the very immediate term, before [] is even prez, before any actual military action, many of us are quite likely to be dealing with this toxic dude culture face-to-face.

In the abstract I give a shit that I'm in the blast radius of something dropped on the capital, but I've already got actual American citizens wandering into pizza parlors in my city with semi-automatic rifles, apparently inspired by the most incoherent and tangential of conspiracies.

These fuckers are about to descend on us, and if we make it to Jan. 21, they're going to be sitting in RVs and tour buses and hotels all around the city nursing hangovers and rage boners about all those pissed-off liberals disrespecting them. And during the inauguration we'll be down there, doing precisely that. And the next day, and the next, looking all foreign and queer and X category they've decided ought to respect them.

I am trying to prepare myself to respond to violence with grace, but part of me really wants to cut and run.
posted by aspersioncast at 6:58 AM on December 5, 2016 [22 favorites]

Carson said a month ago he was unqualified to serve as Secretary and that was for HHS, a field he at least he at least has experience working in.
posted by PenDevil at 7:03 AM on December 5, 2016 [5 favorites]

Ha - from SLoG's link above:

As H.L. Mencken once put it, “Democracy is a theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it, good and hard.”
posted by Mchelly at 7:07 AM on December 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

> Trump: The Choice We Face by Masha Gessen, who wrote the Autocracy: Rules for Survival piece that's made the rounds and is already worth a reread, particularly Rule #1: "Believe the autocrat."

> trump's lies are interesting because they resemble the way that russian state propaganda works.

Masha Gessen and Kathryn Stoner on Vladimir Putin and Russia—A Renewed Enemy?

Masha Gessen: Why We Must Protest

Finally, protest is a powerful antidote to helplessness and confusion. Autocracies work by plunging citizens into a state of low-level dread. Most of the powers commandeered by the autocrat are ceded without a fight, and the power of imagination, the claim to a past and a future are the first to go. A person in a state of dread lives in a miserable forever present. A person in a state of dread is imminently controllable. The choice to protest, on the other hand, is the choice to take control of one’s body, one’s time, and one’s words, and in doing so to reclaim the ability to see a future.

also btw...
Martin Sandbu: What is populism? - "Which brings us to the fourth policy characteristic: populists are averse to rules-based policymaking and in favour of discretionary policymaking. Populism is impatient with constraints on politicians' ability to fix things now and blind to the long-term effect of making policy ad hoc rather than along principles enforced by institutions... The fact that a rules-based system outperforms any strongman over time is why even when populist movements win, they ultimately fail."
posted by kliuless at 7:07 AM on December 5, 2016 [12 favorites]

I honestly thought the Carson as HUD thing was a joke when it was being floated around. Is there any indication that he knows what the department of Housing and Urban Development does? Like, on a basic level?
posted by dinty_moore at 7:09 AM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

WaPo Under Trump, red states are finally going to be able to turn themselves into poor, unhealthy paradises

Basically the idea here is that the Blue States should increase their state taxes to equal the cuts in the Federal taxes and then use that money to improve education, healthcare, and safety nets.

That is harsh. And also a death spiral for both parties. Sitting on the edge of an impoverished, ignorant country filled with guns can never be a good thing. But I guess thats the way things will go.
posted by mumimor at 7:10 AM on December 5, 2016 [3 favorites]

I mean, Carson is unhinged in many ways, but he's clearly a smart guy, and he can figure out what HUD does. He's still completely unqualified, plus the thing where he's unhinged in many ways.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:11 AM on December 5, 2016 [8 favorites]

if those people who are subject to violence in their communities genuinely believe in the possibility of all-out civil war, then I definitely want to hear about it.

So I think part of the problem is that people who are closer to or a part of the immigrant communities here understand something that white, native-born Americans don't seem to be grasping very well - that there's a broad spectrum of what "civil war" means, and it's not always this kind of "all-out, two declared sides and formal governments" civil war that Americans are used to from the only civil war they have experienced.

I firmly believe in the possibility of civil - call it unrest, if you like, with violence. I firmly believe in the possibility of disruption of supplies, of small terrorist attacks that get bigger, of violence carried out against minority communities until they fight back, at which point it spirals outwards.

And it's one reason many of us are saying, hey people who have an entry ticket to the other side of ethnic violence, deal with your people and make them less angry, because if they start attacking, it's not you who are going to be dealing with the attacks.

Think less American Civil War, and more Kosovo.
posted by corb at 7:12 AM on December 5, 2016 [47 favorites]

I don't suppose there's some legalistic nuclear option by which the entire country could be reverted to the ownership and jurisdiction of indigenous peoples, like ultrasubstantive trans-temporal due process or something, is there?
posted by XMLicious at 7:15 AM on December 5, 2016 [3 favorites]

Texas moving forward with budget cuts for disabled kids' therapy services: Medicaid reimbursement rates are used to pay for pediatric therapy services provided to disabled babies and toddlers. Carrie Williams, spokeswoman for the state's Health and Human Services Commission, said that Texas will apply cuts on Medicaid rates on Dec. 15 in attempt to achieve savings directed by the Texas Legislature in 2015.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:21 AM on December 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

I honestly thought the Carson as HUD thing was a joke when it was being floated around. Is there any indication that he knows what the department of Housing and Urban Development does?


He understands it well enough to want to overturn laws banning housing discrimination.
posted by murphy slaw at 7:21 AM on December 5, 2016 [4 favorites]

I firmly believe in the possibility of civil - call it unrest, if you like, with violence. I firmly believe in the possibility of disruption of supplies, of small terrorist attacks that get bigger, of violence carried out against minority communities until they fight back, at which point it spirals outwards.

This has been happening since the last Civil War in the US, though. And it's largely being perpetrated by the exact same people who love to get up and the soapbox and tell the rest of us they'll stand up to tyranny and violence. For instance, the outcry over armed protesters "patrolling" mosques from 2nd Amendment types has been muted at best. That's straight-up denial of almost the entirety of the 1st Amendment, but none of the so-called "sane" gun owners are doing a got-damned thing about it. In fact, so far most of them that are speaking out are cheering it on with gusto, often while complaining about their "religious freedom" to deny other people their basic rights being taken away.
posted by zombieflanders at 7:38 AM on December 5, 2016 [5 favorites]

FYI, there has been some hopeful news that these cuts in Texas will be rolled back partially, we'll see. This frustrates me to no end, Early Childhood Intervention was a life saver to us after our son was born. Study after study has shown that such early help makes enormous differences later in life. I rarely post political items on Facebook, I understand my family will never change, but this pissed me off, so I put it up pointing the finger at the Texas conservative leadership. The responses were "We can't take care of our children because Obama is making us pay for Muslim children" and "Still better than Killary." Literally...and by that I mean literally literally not figuratively literally.

Programs like this, childhood healthcare, and good public education are essential to a functioning society. So of course we seem to be doing our best to dismantle them.
posted by beowulf573 at 7:39 AM on December 5, 2016 [10 favorites]

HUD:Carson::FEMA:Brown

being smart doesn't transfer disciplines mostly - at the expert level, which is what i expect from my cabinet secretaries. all you 'engineers-disease' people get that, right?
posted by j_curiouser at 7:40 AM on December 5, 2016 [8 favorites]

so you're saying we should expect a heckuva job.
posted by murphy slaw at 7:41 AM on December 5, 2016 [7 favorites]

I look forward to our new Grain Pyramids.
posted by kyrademon at 7:50 AM on December 5, 2016 [14 favorites]

And HUD has had it's share of public policy disasters, which is one of the reasons the laws are in place. HUD is still trying to actively undo policy initiatives from th 60s and 70s when the idea was "all housing is good housing so let's just find a cheap remote piece of land with little resources and place a bunch of people there."

It. Did. Not. Work. At. All.

Acorrding to NYT, Carson grew up in public housing. The intatives of then versus now are very different and for good reason. HUD has a ton of obstacles and
problems, from purchasing land, to overly strict background checks (or in Chicago's case, removing people from public housing for their grandkids behavior).
posted by AlexiaSky at 7:53 AM on December 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

seriously though is trump giving HUD to carson because he's the only black person he has in his phone
posted by murphy slaw at 7:58 AM on December 5, 2016 [35 favorites]

Murphy, I really hope at least Obama is in there as well.

But that's not much an improvement

(Though trump would say he's diversity metrics have risen by 200‰]
posted by AlexiaSky at 8:04 AM on December 5, 2016

Greg Sargent: Republicans are actively helping Trump weaken our democracy with his lies

Republicans have spent years pushing lies about voter fraud in order to justify vote suppression measures. But Donald Trump took these lies to another level entirely. He not only claimed in advance of the election that its outcome would be illegitimate if he lost. After winning the electoral college, he then falsely claimed that “millions” had voted illegally and that he’d actually won the popular vote, to dramatically inflate impressions of his popular support and mandate and, worse, apparently to continue eroding public confidence in our elections and democratic institutions.

Now two top Republicans have been given the opportunity to set the record straight about Trump’s claim that “millions” voted illegally. Both declined — making them complicit in Trump’s efforts to undermine that public confidence and, by extension, weaken our democracy.
[...]
All this should also be seen in another context as well. As I’ve argued, Trump’s continued suggestion of rampant voter fraud signals the possibility of a major wave of voting restrictions and vote suppression. That might include a refusal by the Department of Justice to enforce remaining provisions of the Voting Rights Act and an insistence on pursing bogus efforts to purge voter rolls in the name of fighting fraud, as well as a push from Congressional Republicans to nationalize voting restrictions. If this does come to pass, Trump’s efforts to undermine faith in our elections may well continue, from the pulpit of the presidency.

And more “responsible” Republicans will likely continue to countenance those efforts, even though they go farther than most Republicans have gone before — because they will serve a concrete, long term electoral purpose for the party. The potential long term cost to the civic health of our liberal democracy, needless to say, is apparently not a concern in the least.

********************************************************************

UPDATE: Here’s still more. Jennifer Rubin reports that Mike Pence, too, is subtly validating Trump’s lies about “millions” voting illegally. As Rubin notes, Pence is abandoning “any pretense of telling the truth.”

posted by zombieflanders at 8:10 AM on December 5, 2016 [19 favorites]

Greg Sargent: Republicans are actively helping Trump weaken our democracy with his lies

It doesn't matter because half the country doesn't care because it validates their views and internal biases.
posted by Talez at 8:34 AM on December 5, 2016 [6 favorites]

With all the think pieces rehashing the election and what went wrong, I'll just go with the Republican pollsters and campaign workers' take:

-- Policy didn’t matter. “What we missed was that nobody cared about solutions,” said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who managed Mike Huckabee’s campaign until he dropped out and then joined Trump’s operation as a consultant soon after. “They just wanted to burn it all down. They didn’t care about building it back up. They wanted to burn it to the ground and then figure out what to do with the ashes afterwards. There was no understanding of this electorate and the anger on the front end in terms of just how pissed off they were. You may have the best policy in the world to get every single American the best job they’ve ever had. Nobody cared.”

The whole piece is worth reading, if you can stomach it, as it pretty much says what people here have been guessing for a while, although in slightly more Trump voter friendly terms, slightly.
posted by gusottertrout at 8:37 AM on December 5, 2016 [26 favorites]

yep. again i say, 'forget winning the red people. we need to convert non-voters and inactive dems/progressives to democracy animals.'
posted by j_curiouser at 8:38 AM on December 5, 2016 [20 favorites]

I mean, look. Governors of red states seizing control and leading an armed resistance, or the U.S. descending into some kind of Balkanized low-grade civil war both seem unlikely to me, but I am not an expert; it's possible there is some non-zero chance of that happening. What I know is that here, in real life, people are experiencing violence as a result of an impending Trump presidency right now, our rights are being eroded right now, and a slate of policies are on the horizon that promise sickness and death for thousands of people without any kind of apocalyptic scenario needing to take place. That's the reality we are living in.

And while you can certainly speculate that an electoral college upset or a recount finding would trigger a civil war, you could have also speculated that the will of the people being ignored, time and time again, due to a deeply broken electoral college system might lead to civil war, or that trampling on people's first amendment rights might lead to civil war, or that any of ten thousand other scenarios in which people are oppressed, brutalized, and violated might lead to civil war. We're all free to speculate, and lord knows we're all free to be afraid. The problem is that when we take legal, peaceful options off the table because of our fear, we cede ground to the Trump supporters that we can't take back.

They say: if you resist, we'll hurt you, so don't even think about it and so we submit, and we stop talking about the things they don't want us to talk about, and so they feel even freer to hurt us right now. If we succeed in a recount, or if an electoral college upset is on the table, then it is totally reasonable to think about what the outcome will be and to make decisions (say, choosing a compromise Republican candidate) that will mitigate unrest. But stepping back from peaceful work because people are threatening violence seems very dangerous to me.
posted by pretentious illiterate at 8:42 AM on December 5, 2016 [38 favorites]

What sort of amazes about the WaPo argument, is that the other Republicans were and are aware of all this and still signed on with Trump. Trying to imagine what future they think comes from this that could benefit anyone other than the insanely wealthy is mind boggling. There will be no place safe on Earth for long if this attitude spreads, and they think the smart move is to supply butter knives.
posted by gusottertrout at 8:44 AM on December 5, 2016 [4 favorites]

again i say, 'forget winning the red people

Yep. Trump didn't win because he changed the Republican Party. He won because he IS the Republican Party. All those college educated white people who the Clinton campaign thought would vote Dem, or at least not vote Trump, who I thought were decent human beings who believed in democracy and rule of law and basic human rights for all, they all came home to the Republican Party and Trump and proved us wrong. Basic decency, basic competence, basic sanity all didn't matter as much as tribalism, hate and bigotry. Or the craven acceptance of those in pursuit of tax cuts. They are beyond help - or at least not worth the effort to convince the few who might have regrets - but they are not a majority. We don't need to convince or change them, we need to beat them.
posted by chris24 at 8:47 AM on December 5, 2016 [39 favorites]

I think a huge part of the problem was the 17 contenders on the Republican side splitting the vote and then no controls in the Republican Party to stop a man like Trump. And then once he got the nomination people were just too passive and partisan to not vote R.
posted by zutalors! at 8:54 AM on December 5, 2016 [3 favorites]

Trump’s Agents of Idiocracy (Charles Blow, NYT):

“Just wait and see.” “Give him a chance.” But what if what you’ve already seen is so beyond the pale that it’s irrevocable? What if Trump has already squandered more chances than most of us will ever have?

What if Trump has shown himself beyond doubt and with absolute certainty to be a demagogue and bigot and xenophobe and has given space and voice to concordant voices in the country and in his emerging Legion of Doom cabinet? In that reality, resistance isn’t about mindless obstruction by people blinded by the pain of ideological defeat or people gorging on sour grapes. To the contrary, resistance then is an act of radical, even revolutionary, patriotism. Resistance isn’t about damaging the country, but protecting it.

posted by FJT at 9:02 AM on December 5, 2016 [43 favorites]

Actually, what's really getting to me is that a big chunk of these voters are the same cohort who used to sneer at my friends for listening to punk rock and reading fancy schmancy books by Foucault, Baudrillard, Rorty and the like. Now they're the ones who want anarchy and accept things like facts are contextual and welcome the post-ideological age. I didn't know Cultural Studies programs had so successfully found their way into middle America. I guess my time studying then wasn't entirely wasted after all.
posted by gusottertrout at 9:05 AM on December 5, 2016 [23 favorites]

pretentious illiterate has it right.

As for how we live, rather than cower in fear, I would say: connect. Get out and meet your neighbors. Attend your church or other social group functions. Volunteer. It takes your focus off the vague horrible possibilities and makes you see this person, this need, in front of you. It's easy to think "It's pointless, we are doomed!" but at some point you have to move past that. Being with others and doing good helps more than you would believe.

Attendance is up at my little church, and we had a Standing Rock vigil yesterday and are looking at some other social justice actions. Donations to our Angel Tree and Mitten Tree charities are up from last year. We are having Christmas gatherings for those who don't have family they can be with. People need each other. Whatever light we have is with each other, not alone in our rooms waiting for the worst possibilities to happen.
posted by emjaybee at 9:12 AM on December 5, 2016 [14 favorites]

Flynn's son, who spreads conspiracy theories, has a government transition email account. If you email him or his father at their consulting firm, you get told to email their transition addresses instead.
posted by zachlipton at 9:14 AM on December 5, 2016

In a small piece of good news, it's been reported that North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory has conceded to Democrat Roy Cooper.
posted by Candleman at 9:15 AM on December 5, 2016 [32 favorites]

pretentious illiterate has it right.

As for how we live, rather than cower in fear, I would say: connect. Get out and meet your neighbors. Attend your church or other social group functions. Volunteer. It takes your focus off the vague horrible possibilities and makes you see this person, this need, in front of you. It's easy to think "It's pointless, we are doomed!" but at some point you have to move past that. Being with others and doing good helps more than you would believe.

I find it hard to connect with this sentiment given how little attention seems to have been paid to the actual fears people are having.
posted by zutalors! at 9:17 AM on December 5, 2016 [5 favorites]

In less good news, NC Gov. Calls Special Legislative Session, Setting Up Possibility of Court-Packing Power Grab
posted by zachlipton at 9:18 AM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

Breaking Report: Trump Campaign Allegedly Violated Constitutional Law to Alter Election Results. Penalties Include Prison Time if Charged.

HuffPo glitch in the matrix? Sensational click bait?

Just to follow-up, the story seems to have been taken down. I know I reported it last night as not living up to even HuffPo's editorial standards.
posted by zachlipton at 9:20 AM on December 5, 2016 [3 favorites]

Actually, what's really getting to me is that a big chunk of these voters are the same cohort who used to sneer at my friends for listening to punk rock and reading fancy schmancy books by Foucault, Baudrillard, Rorty and the like. Now they're the ones who want anarchy and accept things like facts are contextual and welcome the post-ideological age. I didn't know Cultural Studies programs had so successfully found their way into middle America.

The left invented this bullshit.

The right wing weaponized it.

Some of us, like yours truly, never liked it, cheered on Alan Sokal, and cite the right wing's adoption of post-truth snake oil as their particular reason for abandoning the right wing.
posted by ocschwar at 9:21 AM on December 5, 2016 [4 favorites]

In a small piece of good news, it's been reported that North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory has conceded to Democrat Roy Cooper.

Great! I mean, a nationwide HB2, or at the very least a decision at SCOTUS allowing states to get away with it, is almost assuredly on the docket. But just as long as the NC Legislature isn't following up on their promise to call a special legislative session to pack the--

In less good news, NC Gov. Calls Special Legislative Session, Setting Up Possibility of Court-Packing Power Grab

GOD FUCKING DAMMIT.
posted by zombieflanders at 9:23 AM on December 5, 2016 [8 favorites]

Some of us, like yours truly, never liked it, cheered on Alan Sokal, and cite the right wing's adoption of post-truth snake oil as their particular reason for abandoning the right wing.

It seems like "your truly" was the one who was completely wrong in the face of this election, and the critical theorists are the ones who had it right all along. The democratic party abandoning its boring, technocratic modernism and accepting the fact that they have to deal in narrative and subjectivity in order to win elections is probably the first step in actually doing so. Have fun smugly trotting out The Sokal Affair, though.
posted by codacorolla at 9:26 AM on December 5, 2016 [9 favorites]

I find it hard to connect with this sentiment given how little attention seems to have been paid to the actual fears people are having.

Fears is a wide category. I was responding to the category of general existential fear that this is the end of our country/democracy/future. That everything is already lost and we're just waiting for it to be finalized. Which is something I know I've had lot of.

Personal fear of being targeted is a different kind and I would not presume to give someone who faces that a pep talk. I'm sorry if that's what I appeared to be doing.
posted by emjaybee at 9:26 AM on December 5, 2016 [6 favorites]

I'm really sorry to burst your bubble, zombieflanders; I want you to have nice things too.

In further compare-and-contrast news this morning, the President-elect will be meeting with Laura Ingraham, while his daughter, who's supposed to be off running businesses and not part of the government, will be meeting with Al Gore to discuss climate change.
posted by zachlipton at 9:28 AM on December 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

It's just this is how these pep talks/suggestions of what to do have played out here in the last month:

Poster: "Talk to your neighbors! Understand the WWC! Engage! Educate!"

Other Poster: "What if people are scared of their neighbors because everyone is yelling TRUMP at minorities these days and getting told to "go home"

Poster: "Oh, well, I meant that advice for white people, sorry if you thought I was making a broader comment"

Other poster: "So, um, yes minorities have these real fears and..."

Poster: "NEXT TOPIC/I didn't like the way you phrased that so I'm going to respond to only one small part"

Other poster: "...."
posted by zutalors! at 9:31 AM on December 5, 2016 [11 favorites]

seriously though is trump giving HUD to carson because he's the only black person he has in his phone

Makes sense. A favorite Republican code word "Urban" is right there in the name.
posted by JackFlash at 9:34 AM on December 5, 2016 [13 favorites]

It seems like "your truly" was the one who was completely wrong in the face of this election, and the critical theorists are the ones who had it right all along.

Wrong how? I fully anticipated bullshit to win this election. Bullshit is a powerful weapon.

The democratic party abandoning its boring, technocratic modernism and accepting the fact that they have to deal in narrative and subjectivity in order to win elections is probably the first step in actually doing so.

No. What the Democratic Party did wrong was in not standing for boring technocratic modernism, and standing up for its importance in keeping the lights on and the water running.

Firing back with yet more "narrative and subjectivity" may be a necessity now, I'll grant you that. The avalanche has begun and it is too late for the snowflakes to hold another vote.
posted by ocschwar at 9:35 AM on December 5, 2016 [3 favorites]

The left invented this bullshit.

The right wing weaponized it.

Honestly, this happens over and over and over. Which is why some of us on the left try to encourage other people on the left to think about what they're doing every time they come up with a new rhetorical Excalibur.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 9:42 AM on December 5, 2016 [10 favorites]

It seems like "your truly" was the one who was completely wrong in the face of this election, and the critical theorists are the ones who had it right all along.

Wrong how? I fully anticipated bullshit to win this election. Bullshit is a powerful weapon.

Whoa now, let's not go off on a tangent here. I only mentioned it, first, because it amused me, and second, because there is a paradox in this, between prescription and prediction. Whether theorizing the post-modern condition helped create it or if it was describing a now realistic seeming outcome. Both are possible, neither is all that attractive, and the way forward is hazy.
posted by gusottertrout at 9:44 AM on December 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

Cultural Studies is to blame for Trump? That's a stretch.
posted by Coda Tronca at 9:50 AM on December 5, 2016 [3 favorites]

In an anti-recount filing, Trump’s lawyers say the election was ‘not tainted by fraud or mistake’

Have they met their boss? I guess the lawyers don't read Twitter.
posted by zachlipton at 9:56 AM on December 5, 2016 [8 favorites]

Whoa now, let's not go off on a tangent here. I only mentioned it, first, because it amused me, and second, because there is a paradox in this, between prescription and prediction. Whether theorizing the post-modern condition helped create it or if it was describing a now realistic seeming outcome.

When Cass Sunstein (Republic 2.0) and Neal Postman (several books that are all too worthwhile) theorized about the post-modern condition, they did so as a warning. So did Jane Jacobs (Dark Age Ahead) and Susan Jacoby (The Age of American Unreason.) So did Jim Kunstler. (The Long Emergency)

But Derrida, Baudrillard and company theorized about it in ways that legitimized the condition and normalized it. That's what Alan Sokal reacted against, and it's hardly "smug" to bring up his name. He. Was. Right. Now that we're rightly being called upon to speak out and say "this is not normal," it's a good time to show some respect to someone who as saying that before it was cool.

And boring tecnocratic modernism is right. The way we live today is an unsustainable engineering marvel. We have to choose between transitioning to a new, comfortable and sustainably engineered way of life for us all, or between watching what we have right now crumble away, and watching our plutocrat regime select scapegoats at whom to direct the people's rage.
posted by ocschwar at 9:58 AM on December 5, 2016 [9 favorites]

TPM: Sen. Collins Signals GOP Wall On Obamacare and Medicare Is Cracking

"Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) has "reservations" about privatizing Medicare, she told the Portland Press Herald.

“Suffice it to say I have a number of reservations,” Collins told the newspaper. “A complete upending of a program (Medicare) that by and large serves seniors well is not something that appeals to me.”

Collins' comments signals an early and significant departure from GOP unity on the issue, which will be needed to overhaul something like Medicare and will be essential to repealing and replacing Obamacare. If Republicans lose too many lawmakers on these topics, they won't be able to follow through with promises to gut Obamacare.

Collins said she had voted against similar proposals to voucherize Medicare in the past."
posted by chris24 at 10:03 AM on December 5, 2016 [28 favorites]

Now is a great time to revisit what Trump had to say about Carson just over a year ago.
posted by zachlipton at 10:05 AM on December 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

Cultural Studies is to blame for Trump? That's a stretch.

I think that's too reductive a reading of what's going on here. This is just one skirmish in a larger battle over the nature of historical truth that's been going on now for well over twenty years. It first played out in the disciplines of holocaust studies and historical theory, where it was pointed out that the denial of final historical truth promoted by a certain kind of "high" or hyper-relativist postmodern historical theory was rather close to the position on truth taken by self-styled holocaust revisionists. This caused some practitioners (most notably Hayden White) to roll back their positions on what we can and can't know about historical truth. Richard Evans discusses some of the fallout from these battles in In Defence of History.
posted by Sonny Jim at 10:12 AM on December 5, 2016 [12 favorites]

But you can't turn the clock back to a time when e.g. Derrida's theories of how narrative works (and contradicts itself) don't exist. We're all already breathing those concepts, much like Darwin and Freud's theories, and no amount of kicking the table 'I refute it thus-style' is going to change that. Critics like Frederic Jameson have been productively engaged with the political implications of narrative and deconstruction for decades. Ages ago there was Hegel!
posted by Coda Tronca at 10:17 AM on December 5, 2016 [4 favorites]

The fact is that the alt-reich is already targeting vulnerable people, and they are intent on doing that, no matter what approach we take.

If we do nothing, they will continue to pursue their policies of harming vulnerable people and will continually grow more bold in how they do so. If we fight back through peaceful and legal means, this may anger and provoke them into harming vulnerable people. If we reach the brink of violence, many vulnerable people will undoubtedly be harmed.

The alt-reich even threatened to get out their guns and hurt people if Hillary won in a landslide!

We've passed the point where there are any options that don't conceivably end with vulnerable people getting hurt.

It's terrifying and I'm terrified and I'm unbelievably depressed that this is the situation. But our only remaining option now is to figure out what course of action has the LEAST likelihood of ending in harm for vulnerable communities.
posted by the turtle's teeth at 10:18 AM on December 5, 2016 [15 favorites]

Cultural Studies is to blame for Trump? That's a stretch.
I think that's too reductive a reading of what's going on here.

Yeah, there are a lot of possible ways to go with this, which is why this probably isn't the place to do so. (Though it might make for an interesting separate thread.)

oschwar pointed to some of the different perspectives on the underlying issues with the people he mentioned, and from there we'd have to suss out who was contributing, who was predicting, and in what measures and accuracy, which isn't always as clear as naming names and slotting them on one side or the other since the language is dense, the theories often purposefully opaque, and, even more importantly, many of them were studied carefully by those involved in media production, further muddying the waters.
posted by gusottertrout at 10:21 AM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

@realDonaldTrump

If the press would cover me accurately & honorably, I would have far less reason to "tweet." Sadly, I don't know if that will ever happen!
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:22 AM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

is impeachment subject to 'double-jeopardy'? is there any reason House Dems shouldn't move to impeach based on emoluments every day of a session?
posted by j_curiouser at 10:25 AM on December 5, 2016

The fact that the press's primary reaction has been to wonder why "tweet" is in quotes either proves his point or indicates it's going to be a long 2017, depending on your ideological lens.
posted by zachlipton at 10:25 AM on December 5, 2016 [8 favorites]

You could write a whole book on Trump's use of the exclamation mark.
posted by Coda Tronca at 10:27 AM on December 5, 2016 [4 favorites]

This has been happening since the last Civil War in the US, though.

This kind of thing is precisely the sort of thing that makes me feel as though the concerns of myself and others are not being heard. There has been a massive uptick in racially- and politically-directed violence in just the last three weeks since Trump's election, which was in itself an increase from the previous increase of just his campaign. It in no way resembles, in scope or in kind, what was happening even just a year ago. People are being murdered, stabbed, having their houses and buildings burned down. Children and teachers are intimidating with racial slurs at schools and other children are terrified for their lives. This isn't "same as it ever was" by a long shot.
posted by corb at 10:27 AM on December 5, 2016 [52 favorites]

Dear Mr. Trump:

The nuclear codes are not the same as tweeting with a fancy keypad.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 10:29 AM on December 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

The alt-reich even threatened to get out their guns and hurt people if Hillary won in a landslide!

As recent incidents (especially the Comet Ping-Pong standoff) have shown, a lot of people with guns are threatening to hurt people even though Trump one. And it's not just the alt-right, either.
posted by zombieflanders at 10:31 AM on December 5, 2016 [6 favorites]

Has Trump produced a single example of how the press has harmed him? I think I remember him complaining that they didn't talk about all the great ideas in his rallies. And, they said he was going to lose. But what about the 2 billion or so in free coverage they gave him, this campaign, including televising many of those rallies? It seems like another cynical ploy to make his followers identify their sense of victimized entitlement with him, surprise.
posted by thelonius at 10:42 AM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

The North Carolina GOP Has a New Suppression Tactic: Voter Defamation

It’s hard to watch the current challenges, accompanied by GOP rhetoric about “massive” illegalities, without believing this strategy is about more than the McCrory-Cooper race, which the Republican is all but sure to lose in the end. Instead, the Republicans are beating the bushes for any evidence of “fraud” they can point to as a rationale for newly restrictive voting rules. Since taking control of the state legislature in 2011 and the governor’s office in 2013, North Carolina Republicans have used every tool in their box—redistricting, legislation, administrative action, litigation, voter challenges, and PR campaigns —to keep Democrats away from the polls, or dilute their influence, in this swing state. Now comes the next step: declaring, as Woodhouse did during our interview, that North Carolina’s expansive voting laws created “havoc and chaos” this year, which require remedying by the state legislature or the U.S. Supreme Court. New limits on ballot access would “restore confidence” in the system, Woodhouse told me—even as he admitted the distrust might be unwarranted. “Whether there’s widespread voter fraud or not,” he said, “the people believe there is.”

First you make people afraid of it, then you move in with your "solution" to the "problem." This guy is the head of the NC GOP, and he's remarkably candid about their strategy and how full of BS it is.
posted by zachlipton at 10:46 AM on December 5, 2016 [29 favorites]

Even the tools needed to assess whether or not the idea of subjectivity has somehow caused this problem* are those built by those eeeevil cultural theorists we're supposed to excoriate.

* I don't think it has, actually. If you don't have a term for rain the ignorance of the word doesn't prevent you from drowning.
posted by winna at 10:47 AM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

In UK culture war news, This guy offered to drive anyone who’s ‘offended by Christmas’ to the airport and instantly regretted it

His offer was: "I know this is early, Merry Christmas to all. We are a western Christian country. If this country loses its identity the rest is meaningless. And if people are offended by Christmas, I will personally drive them to the airport myself."

It turns out a surprising number of people are so offended that they really could use a free ride to the airport. I like the response who said, "there's 8 of us so you might need to hire a minibus. Cheers!"
posted by zachlipton at 10:50 AM on December 5, 2016 [32 favorites]

That sounds like the most 2016 tech startup ever.
posted by Sonny Jim at 10:58 AM on December 5, 2016 [7 favorites]

“Whether there’s widespread voter fraud or not,” he said, “the people believe there is.”

And where, exactly, did "the people" get the belief that there's widespread voter fraud? Ohhh, right.
posted by Rykey at 10:58 AM on December 5, 2016 [12 favorites]

This kind of thing is precisely the sort of thing that makes me feel as though the concerns of myself and others are not being heard. There has been a massive uptick in racially- and politically-directed violence in just the last three weeks since Trump's election, which was in itself an increase from the previous increase of just his campaign.

Let me repeat back the comment I was referring to:

I firmly believe in the possibility of civil - call it unrest, if you like, with violence. I firmly believe in the possibility of disruption of supplies, of small terrorist attacks that get bigger, of violence carried out against minority communities until they fight back, at which point it spirals outwards.

This, specifically, is what I was talking about. It's not just that it's been happening since 1865, or 1954, or 1968, or 2015. It's that the numbers have been massively going up for years now. The SPLC (who I assume is who you're talking about when referring to the uptick) pointed out in February that 2015 "brought more domestic political violence, both from the American radical right and from American jihadists, than the nation has seen in many years". That's a line that I'm pretty sure could be repeated for most of the years between 1992 and 2016, and especially since 2008.

It in no way resembles, in scope or in kind, what was happening even just a year ago. People are being murdered, stabbed, having their houses and buildings burned down. Children and teachers are intimidating with racial slurs at schools and other children are terrified for their lives. This isn't "same as it ever was" by a long shot.

As far as I can tell, just about the only thing that's true in that sentence is the hatred expressed at schools, which is indeed a problem. Of course, for kids and parents who aren't straight white Christian males, it's nothing new, but it certainly is increasing. However, to claim that the violence since the election is so far beyond either scope or kind to what was happening a year ago is ridiculous. How many threads have we had on white Americans killing PoC since Trayvon Martin? How many threads have we had on mass shootings? On police shootings, many of which were instigated by racist reporting? On anti-LGBTQ violence spurred by things like bathroom panic idiocy? On bigotry sanctioned by "states' rights" advocates in the government? On the rise of the whitewashing of the Confederacy? Maybe, after six years of having all of this violence explained to you over and over and over while you mostly handwaved it away, you're finally starting to get it. I don't know. But the reality is that this violence has existed in this scope and kind for years. I think that most of us here aren't just now being awakened to the massive amounts of violence unleashed on a daily basis that have occurred for those years, or decades.

But all of that is kind of a distraction from my real point: the people with the power to fight back remain silent. My example of the 2A crowd and mosques is just one of the more jarring examples, given the rhetoric and institutional support of the former and the powerlessness of the latter, as well as the chances of that ever changing being essentially zero. But it's just one of many examples.
posted by zombieflanders at 10:59 AM on December 5, 2016 [5 favorites]

John Pomfret, the Post's former China correspondent has a more nuanced take on the Taiwan call and subsequent events that's worth reading.
posted by zachlipton at 10:59 AM on December 5, 2016 [6 favorites]

The amount of hate crimes and racial tension increased during Obama's presidency, and it's not unreasonable to believe it would have increased during a Hillary Clinton's presidency as well. I have to imagine that this was a trend that began during Bill Clinton's time, with the militia movement and anti-government conspiracy theorists starting to become pseudo-mainstream. Forces of reaction lash out in anger when a liberal is in power, just as much as they revel in oppressive acts when one of theirs is in power.
posted by Apocryphon at 11:04 AM on December 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

zachlipton: "ohn Pomfret, the Post's former China correspondent has a more nuanced take on the Taiwan call and subsequent events that's worth reading."

This is the next 4 years: "Trump does a stupid thing, here's how Americans are wrong!" Maybe it's fair to say that this isn't "nuanced" so much as "massive Trump apologia".
posted by TypographicalError at 11:07 AM on December 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

And where, exactly, did "the people" get the belief that there's widespread voter fraud?

See also:
1. Spend millions of dollars and 25 years funding political attacks on climate science
2. Withhold funding for climate research, because it is too "politicized".
posted by thelonius at 11:07 AM on December 5, 2016 [15 favorites]

Trevor Norah's NYT op-ed Let’s Not Be Divided. Divided People Are Easier to Rule.

People are pretty upset about the "let's just all get along" aspects.
posted by zachlipton at 11:08 AM on December 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

China Really Isn’t Joking About Taiwan
I have lived in China for 13 years, and in that time I have talked with perhaps three mainlanders who thought that Taiwan had the right to determine its own future. Everyone else with whom I’ve discussed the issue, from ardent liberals to hardcore Marxists to the politically apathetic, has been fervently against the idea that Taiwan could ever be considered a country. It’s an idea as weird, taboo, and offensive to the majority of Chinese as proposing the restitution of slavery would be to Americans — not for its moral value but for going against everything they hold dear about their country.

Most of the time, when Beijing says something has “hurt the feelings of 1.3 billion Chinese,” it’s petulant bullshit; on Taiwanese issues it comes closer to the truth.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:12 AM on December 5, 2016 [11 favorites]

zachlipton: "ohn Pomfret, the Post's former China correspondent has a more nuanced take on the Taiwan call and subsequent events that's worth reading."


The problem isn't the phone call. If Obama had taken that phone call, we would trust that he had weighed the pros and cons of doing it, lost sleep the night before, and decided to go ahead.

If W had taken that phone call, we could trust that at least Powell went through the pros and cons and made the call.

When Trump took the phone call, all we can conclude is that his inner circle played him like a ukulele for their benefit, and God only fucking knows who gets to strum his strings next.
posted by ocschwar at 11:12 AM on December 5, 2016 [17 favorites]

Jesus Christ. Who died and made Trevor Noah the new David Brooks?
posted by thelonius at 11:12 AM on December 5, 2016 [4 favorites]

Jesus Christ. Who died and made Trevor Noah the new David Brooks?

Jon Stewart.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:13 AM on December 5, 2016 [27 favorites]

John Pomfret, the Post's former China correspondent has a more nuanced take on the Taiwan call and subsequent events that's worth reading.

The media overreacted because the president-elect didn't communicate to anyone before he decided to do this. Not the media, not the State Department, not the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and not even the CURRENT president. Pomfret should obviously know that when the president of the United States speaks, the world will shake a little in response.

And because Donald didn't go through a proper channels and make even a cursory announcement before talking to Taiwan, it actually makes things a little worse. Instead of formalizing and speaking with one voice that the US will actually be more supportive of Taiwan in the future, now everyone is wondering whether this was even a serious thing or just a way to drum up more business for the Trump Organization.
posted by FJT at 11:33 AM on December 5, 2016 [14 favorites]

I think the biggest issue is not the fact of the call with Taiwan, which could have been a real step if done with the kind of communication and coordination FJT describes, but rather the panicked response afterwards, which sends a clear signal to the world that he has no clue what he's doing and just got played by a bunch of thinktankers living out their biggest fantasy who told him "just do this; you'll be tough on China."
posted by zachlipton at 11:38 AM on December 5, 2016 [9 favorites]

oschwar pointed to some of the different perspectives on the underlying issues with the people he mentioned, and from there we'd have to suss out who was contributing, who was predicting, and in what measures and accuracy, which isn't always as clear as naming names and slotting them on one side or the other since the language is dense, the theories often purposefully opaque, and, even more importantly, many of them were studied carefully by those involved in media production, further muddying the waters.


I'm not going to spend too much effort try to distinguish between those who intended to normalize a post-truth condition (I'd say Derrida and Baudrillard belong on that side, while Habermas probably does not), and those whose writings were merely usable for that purpose, because I think that's a bit besides the point. All those people wrote from a perspective where they though they could live just fine in a post-truth world. Well, when your academic tenure and book royalties are an objective truth you can rely on, everything else might as well be an illusion.

But the rest of you Me-Fites?

The last three weeks have made you physically ill. This world is not to your liking. Please consider that.
posted by ocschwar at 11:39 AM on December 5, 2016

Trump adviser on Taiwan call: 'If China doesn't like it, screw 'em'

"We gotta stand by Taiwan, we see what's happening in China the way they're sabre rattling out there in the East, it's about time we do what Reagan did, we stand up to these bullies, we say we're not gonna let you do this, and we're gonna stand with our allies," Moore said.

"I love the fact that Trump did that. Too many mamby-pamby people in the foreign policy shop are saying 'oh my gosh we can't do this, we might insult the Chinese.' I don't care if we insult the Chinese!"
posted by futz at 11:40 AM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm far from the person to lecture Trevor Noah about South African history, but it's hard not to note the severe and prolonged violence that came along at the same time as Mandela's language.

In any case, I can't tell what Noah wants from us. The GOP came in with a plan on day one in 2008 to block everything President Obama wanted. How do you negotiate with that to look for truth in the middle? When one side keeps swinging ever rightward, how do you even find the middle? Doesn't that allow one side to define the middle by themselves by becoming more extreme? Does finding the middle mean privatizing a bunch of Social Security? What's the middle on "how can you nominate a man for a cabinet position when last year you were appalled he once tried to kill someone as a young man?" What's the middle on "should a guy who said he ran a platform for the alt-right, a movement created by an actual white neo-Nazi, be Chief White House Strategist?"
posted by zachlipton at 11:43 AM on December 5, 2016 [14 favorites]

"I love the fact that Trump did that. Too many mamby-pamby people in the foreign policy shop are saying 'oh my gosh we can't do this, we might insult the Chinese.' I don't care if we insult the Chinese!"

Good god one of Trump's economic advisers talks just like the crazy judge on Boston Legal.
posted by zachlipton at 11:46 AM on December 5, 2016 [9 favorites]

Do the Trump people realize it might be a bad idea for a country already involved in a handful of wars at the moment, to antagonize more countries?
posted by drezdn at 11:46 AM on December 5, 2016 [3 favorites]

Do the Trump people realize it might be a bad idea for a country already involved in a handful of wars at the moment, to antagonize more countries?

No.
posted by tivalasvegas at 11:47 AM on December 5, 2016 [13 favorites]

Google, democracy and the truth about internet search
posted by adamvasco at 11:47 AM on December 5, 2016

"We gotta stand by Taiwan, we see what's happening in China the way they're sabre rattling out there in the East, it's about time we do what Reagan did, we stand up to these bullies, we say we're not gonna let you do this, and we're gonna stand with our allies," Moore said.

Oh really? Are they gonna stand by for home democratic rule in Hong Kong? Are they gonna stand by for self-determination for Tibetans and Uighurs? Are they gonna stand by for labor rights, human rights, religious rights, and freedom of press in Mainland China?
posted by FJT at 11:48 AM on December 5, 2016 [15 favorites]

The WH has to be scrambling behind the scenes attempting to put out all these fires.

We are truly fucked. These people are unhinged.
posted by futz at 11:51 AM on December 5, 2016 [8 favorites]

Well, when your academic tenure and book royalties are an objective truth you can rely on, everything else might as well be an illusion.

Academia is at the cutting edge of bullshit globalisation (plenty of lecturers on zero hours), and I seriously doubt anyone apart from JK Rowling is getting much out of book royalties. Derrida is not the villain here compared to the Democrat establishment.
posted by Coda Tronca at 11:51 AM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

"...we might insult the Chinese.' I don't care if we insult the Chinese!"

frat boy bombast is not what the world needs. not at all. but i think that's all we are going to get for the foreseeable future.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 11:53 AM on December 5, 2016 [8 favorites]

Even if you believe a radical rethinking of our China policy is in order, this is still a horrible fuckup. The problem's not that the move is bold, it's that it's incoherent. Oh, so, we're recognizing Taiwan now? If I were to ask the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, or the State Department (which, quick reminder here, is still following the policy of the outgoing president for the next month and change), would that be what they say too? 'Cause those are standard channels through which the US develops its relations with other countries, and I don't think they're quite on board the Trump bus here. Add to that the minimizing and downplaying in the immediate wake of the gaffe, and it doesn't even look that bold. It looks like we have no god damn clue what we're doing and it's not looking like a cunning obfuscation to China so much as complete incompetence.
posted by jackbishop at 12:00 PM on December 5, 2016 [25 favorites]

When I saw that quote by Moore above, I knew it was Stephen Moore, who has been a belligerent, hostile presence on Fox News & Fox Business for years now. He's like the economics equivalent of John Bolton, except his only positions held until now have been think tanker and Fox pundit.

I think it's more than clear the guiding philosophy of the Trump administration is certainly not conservatism, but rather to become the party of assholes and sycophants. It's very much the case that this guidance flows downward from the very top, as Trump sets the tone, and seems to value loyalty above all other considerations, such as competence and experience.
posted by krinklyfig at 12:01 PM on December 5, 2016 [5 favorites]

It looks like we have no god damn clue what we're doing and it's not looking like a cunning obfuscation to China so much as complete incompetence.

China responded cautiously Monday to Donald Trump's latest diplomatic outburst but local media and some citizens mocked the President-elect for making "reckless remarks" and "running the country with Twitter."
posted by zombieflanders at 12:02 PM on December 5, 2016 [6 favorites]

"...we might insult the Chinese.' I don't care if we insult the Chinese!"


The worst of men must fight, and the best of men must die.
posted by ocschwar at 12:05 PM on December 5, 2016 [6 favorites]

The Supreme Court hears two cases today that could entrench Republican rule for a generation. Geography has become the enemy of democracy.

A pair of cases the Supreme Court will hear Monday could quietly hobble efforts to combat partisan gerrymandering — destroying, in the process, the Democratic Party’s hopes of undoing any legislation signed into law by President Trump.

posted by homunculus at 12:05 PM on December 5, 2016 [5 favorites]

If they are hearing arguments now, does that means that trump's pick, if confirmed, would sit out on the final decision?
posted by C'est la D.C. at 12:07 PM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

"I love the fact that Trump did that. Too many mamby-pamby people in the foreign policy shop are saying 'oh my gosh we can't do this, we might insult the Chinese.' I don't care if we insult the Chinese!"

Rules for Diplomacy with China
#1 DO NOT FUCK WITH CHINA RE: THE TAIWAN SITUATION
#2 Refer to rule #1 you dumb fuck.
posted by Talez at 12:09 PM on December 5, 2016 [11 favorites]

Other poster: "So, um, yes minorities have these real fears and..."

Poster: "NEXT TOPIC/I didn't like the way you phrased that so I'm going to respond to only one small part"

Other poster: "...."

I've taken part in these exchanges and I genuinely apologize for contributing to this feeling of not being heard. But I'm also at a loss as to how it would be best for those fears to be acknowledged. Stating that I acknowledge your fears, and that they are legitimate, seems like it's not enough. Should we be doing more in the way of action plans, setting up contingencies, that kind of thing?

This is what I suggest (to anyone, not just you but anyone who feel like they are majority/dominant culture) as a start:

- Don't write/say things that are only for white people and not say that explicitly.
- Try not to write/say things only for white people
- Read things written by minorities - all types from all race/class backgrounds, straight/cis and not. There's lots of levels of privilege to consider
- Ignore commentary by any white people that "Identity politics" lost Democrats the election. Seriously, toss that.
- Amplify minority voices, assert the same things they are saying.
- If a minority person has a particular fear, acknowledge it. Don't tell them it makes you cry to hear about it. Be strong about your reaction. Make it feel personal to you.
- If a minority person doesn't have a particular fear, don't tell them that they should. For example, I am not worried about being deported. I was born in the US to naturalized parents. Yes, all that could theoretically be overturned in courts. But white people telling me so is intimidating, and flattens privilege into "brown people are screwed" in a way that's not helpful.
- If a minority person pushes back on your complacency or dismissiveness, acknowledge that, and don't say things like "people are essentially tribal" (which is dismissive in itself and also, not all tribes are defined by skin color)
- Be careful about "action plans," the first step is to listen.
posted by zutalors! at 12:12 PM on December 5, 2016 [38 favorites]

they are hearing arguments now, does that means that trump's pick, if confirmed, would sit out on the final decision?

I don't think so. I think the fact they are hearing these cases now means the 4-4 court needs to sit on it.
posted by corb at 12:14 PM on December 5, 2016

zutalors!: - If a minority person has a particular fear, acknowledge it. Don't tell them it makes you cry to hear about it. Be strong about your reaction. Make it feel personal to you.

I think that people telling others that hearing about their fears is making them cry is
- a way to acknowledge that fear
- something that can happen when you make it feel personal to you
posted by Too-Ticky at 12:17 PM on December 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

I think the fact they are hearing these cases now means the 4-4 court needs to sit on it.

"Needs to", or "traditionally does as an incoming justice traditionally recuses themself"?
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:18 PM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

zutalors!: - If a minority person has a particular fear, acknowledge it. Don't tell them it makes you cry to hear about it. Be strong about your reaction. Make it feel personal to you.

I think that people telling others that hearing about their fears is making them cry is
- a way to acknowledge that fear
- something that can happen when you make it feel personal to you

Is it possible to cry on your own then?
posted by zutalors! at 12:20 PM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

"Needs to", or "traditionally does as an incoming justice traditionally recuses themself"?

Yeah, at this point the GOP has turned "only power is real" into their raison d'etre.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:20 PM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

> It in no way resembles, in scope or in kind, what was happening even just a year ago.

> But the reality is that this violence has existed in this scope and kind for years.

I see several different variables being conflated in these comments. I'm no expert on this stuff, but here's my mental model:

Intent of violence - is what we're seeing connected to the long tradition of such intimidation and violence carried out by dominant groups against marginalized groups aimed at retaining dominance, or is it a brand new kind of violence with some other goal?

Politicization of violence - irrespective of the intent of the perpetrators, to what degree is the violence being embraced, explicitly or tacitly, by mainstream political leaders?

Scope of violence - are the targets of this intimidation and violence the same groups of people as before, or has the scope of that violence widened to include new groups?

Scale of violence - is the frequency and severity of the intimidation and violence going up, going down, or remaining the same?

My answers are as follows:

Intent: the hate incidents we've seen post-election are directly connected to the long history of weaponized hate used with the intent of retaining dominance over marginalized groups, not some new campaign of violence carried out for some other purpose.

Politicization: mainstream elements of the Republican party have for decades used dog-whistle bigotry for political ends, with behind-the-scenes operatives engaging in more explicit bigotry to advance the cause. By embracing bigotry as a platform plank and surrounding himself with other bigots including Bannon, Flynn, Sessions, and Kobach, Trump has increased the politicization of hate.

Scope: I see no further expansion of the targeted groups with the election of Trump -- it's still PoC, Muslims, Jews, LGBTQ, etc. The Gamergate / MRA overlap with Trump supporters suggests the possibility of an escalation of violence against women as well, but this hasn't shown up in the incidents I've read about so far.

Scale: I don't think it's debatable that the number of reports on these incidents has gone up sharply since the election. Could some of that perceived increase be a result of more coverage and more people looking for and reporting these incidents now that Trump's election has put the issue front and center? Perhaps, but I feel that can only explain part of the apparent increase when we're talking about hundreds of such incidents over a couple weeks.

There are certainly other ways of looking at the problem, and some interdependence between these variables, but I think a more nuanced discussion is better than fighting over "same old same old" vs. "this is new".
posted by tonycpsu at 12:23 PM on December 5, 2016 [6 favorites]

"Needs to", or "traditionally does as an incoming justice traditionally recuses themself

I suddenly realize that I don't know the answer to that question, only what has happened before and has been assumed to know the future. That is indeed disconcerting.
posted by corb at 12:24 PM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

Mayor de Blasio is sending the White House a $35M bill for the cost to keep Trump Tower secure through Jan. 20
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:25 PM on December 5, 2016 [44 favorites]

I suddenly realize that I don't know the answer to that question, only what has happened before and has been assumed to know the future. That is indeed disconcerting.

My sentiment exactly.
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:26 PM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

TPM: Is He In? Allen West Meets With Pence, Flynn, McFarland At Trump Tower
posted by PenDevil at 12:28 PM on December 5, 2016

Here's a nonviolent protest I can get behind: Half Empty Arenas May Be Work of Anti-Trump Critics
posted by Mchelly at 12:36 PM on December 5, 2016 [8 favorites]

zutalors!: Is it possible to cry on your own then?

I don't know. I'm not one of the people who said that and I can't speak for them. But I can imagine that they said it because they wanted to express that they care about the fears that someone else expressed. (As always, I may be wrong.)

If a man were to tell me that the fears that I expressed as a woman make him cry, I would be fine with that as long as I didn't get the feeling that he wanted me to comfort him. Because that would be emotional labour that I wouldn't want to do.

I'm not sure whether that is an equivalent situation. But of course, even if it is, that doesn't mean we all have to respond the same way.
posted by Too-Ticky at 12:38 PM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

I mean, those were suggestions that I had to the question posed, and one of the reasons it's tiring to do that sort of thing is that people then pick it apart as an academic exercise ("I don't know, but talking about this different thing, I suppose that...")
posted by zutalors! at 12:40 PM on December 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

Here's a nonviolent protest I can get behind

Yeah, I got tickets to the New Orleans rally using a fake but plausible name and a throwaway email.

I don't know if it's all because of protesting, though, or if it's also because excitement is also waning a little.
posted by dinty_moore at 12:42 PM on December 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm trying to understand what you said, but if you don't feel like explaining further, that's fine. You certainly don't owe me any of your time and energy.
posted by Too-Ticky at 12:44 PM on December 5, 2016

I'm trying to understand what you said, but if you don't feel like explaining further, that's fine. You certainly don't owe me any of your time and energy.

The crying thing:

-- Seems intimidating, because usually I am not crying about something unless it is directly happening to me. It also does seem like you then have to comfort and be like 'no, my every day is not 24/hell!'

-- Seems performative, especially when compared to the rates at which people actually end up intervening/taking action/really listening. It reminds me of the Pantsuit Nation stuff in the few days after the election, when the majority white community would cry for anyone who commented about getting abuse, but got really angry about pushback against safety pins or other white displays of support.
posted by zutalors! at 12:51 PM on December 5, 2016 [8 favorites]

A good way of looking at how to support people who are telling their lived experiences in a post-[] world: comfort in, dump out: Circles of Support.

Saying that you're in tears would be dumping in, for example, instead of comforting in.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 12:56 PM on December 5, 2016 [9 favorites]

Slager case just ended in a mistrial. One white juror said he can’t ‘in good conscience’ convict Slager.

Because, you know, this is America where a cop can be on video carefully aiming and shooting an unarmed black man in the fucking back and still not get convicted.
posted by Talez at 12:56 PM on December 5, 2016 [35 favorites]

In which Carson's spokesman now says he is qualified (he did multiple interviews a couple weeks ago, to several different outlets and journalists, where he clearly said Carson wasn't), but that Carson would have preferred not to take the job, but Trump wanted him so that's what he has to do.

What kind of cabinet secretary goes around with a spokesman who claims he doesn't want the job at all?
posted by zachlipton at 1:20 PM on December 5, 2016 [5 favorites]

What kind of cabinet secretary goes around with a spokesman who claims he doesn't want the job at all?

With Trump it's all about playing hard to get!
posted by Talez at 1:26 PM on December 5, 2016 [5 favorites]

What kind of cabinet secretary goes around with a spokesman who claims he doesn't want the job at all?

The same kind who runs around saying that none of the signers of the Declaration of Independence had any experience in elected office, for one.
posted by holborne at 1:27 PM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm not 100% sure this can be chalked up to Trump, but I just found out that a veteran friend of mine and antiwar advocate just killed himself Friday because he didn't want to live in this world anymore.

Please people take care of yourselves, even if it seems bleak we need all of you.
posted by corb at 1:27 PM on December 5, 2016 [52 favorites]

I realized today that I'm reverting to the point where my big success for the day is making it through work without crying. This is it. This is my life now. The things I will accomplish today are "not literally crying in front of conservative coworkers" and "hopefully eating at least twice".

Seems performative, especially when compared to the rates at which people actually end up intervening/taking action/really listening.

I feel like this is a real issue in a long-term sort of way, but also fails to acknowledge something huge that's going on here: A lot of people who have depression and anxiety problems that are normally minor or basically under control are right now NOT OKAY, in blazing neon letters. Those people are not exclusively white. But there are white people among them. I don't know how to balance the obligations of self-care versus the obligations of being a good citizen, and I definitely don't think it's the responsibility of nonwhite people to reassure white people. This just seems to be veering heavily into the assumption that we're not dealing with multiple axes of problems right now.

The whole thing about "comfort in, dump out" assumes something like grieving a death where you who are further away from the problem are probably basically okay. A lot of people right now are not basically okay, because being further from one problem doesn't mean you're not right in the middle of another. I don't think there's a good solution for this except for people to try to make allowances for people who are not coping in optimal ways. If you know you're really basically okay, yeah, I mean, definitely don't dump on people who have less cope available than you. I just think now is a very bad time to be accusing people of performing their distress. There's more than enough real distress out there to go around.
posted by Sequence at 1:28 PM on December 5, 2016 [33 favorites]

This is interesting, and especially relevant - I don't think it's been linked to here, yet

Engineering away gerrymandering

(his website, covering each state and how it would work/look.)
posted by From Bklyn at 1:35 PM on December 5, 2016 [6 favorites]

From Bklyn that's a great idea.

But given what we now know about the cases currently about to come in front of the SC, and the reason WI decision, as well as how redistricting works and the history of trying to get rational, data-driven but still non-partisan redistricting reform, does anything like this have a snowball's chance in hell of ever getting passed?

My impression is no, but if anyone's working on it, I'd be interested in helping.
posted by aspersioncast at 1:52 PM on December 5, 2016

Last night a former Breitbart reporter claimed on Facebook he planted Clinton hecklers at her rallies... has since deleted the post.

Trump's Mirror, or just some guy claiming he did way more than he actually did? Wait, the second one is Trump's mirror too.
posted by zachlipton at 2:07 PM on December 5, 2016 [6 favorites]

The gerrymandering thing is obviously a big problem. People often point to the way it's done in parliamentary democracies outside the USA, like Australia and the UK: a non-partisan professional government body prepares the electoral boundaries after taking input from interested parties. That wouldn't translate well to the USA, though, because (a) government appointments are more partisan; and (b) the boundaries end up having weird shapes anyway because they are legally required to take semi-political things like racial concentration into account.

I don't know that there's a good solution to this.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:09 PM on December 5, 2016

I have to agree with Sequence above. This past week was especially hard for me emotionally because I got very deep into the issue of fetal remains in Texas and wading through that giant pile of misogyny just GOT to me and suddenly all the Trump crap felt 100% worse. There's a lot of nastiness out there happening on all kinds of levels from local/regional politics to incidents at schools and personal encounters and we're all potential targets in different ways.

I'm also trying to organize activism and action and participate in useful ways which is rubbing right up against my social anxiety, which ironically takes the primary form of real difficulty managing phone calls and electronic messages and I've got people messaging me all day on stuff.

So I think the one thing we can really do is try to be kind. To assume the best of any communication by our allies and make some allowances for everyone being freaked the hell out right now. We have to appreciate intersectionality and the fact that someone disabled and reliant on government benefits has just as valid a cause to be scared right now as the average POC. While of course ensuring that POC voices are heard and included in our communities and actions.
posted by threeturtles at 2:10 PM on December 5, 2016 [15 favorites]

My comment wasn't directed to any one person or meant to crowd out any other perspectives. It was pretty specific to what I feel is a constant refrain to be reaching out, except whenever POC tend to discuss their very specific concerns, they are minimized, maximized, criticized for not being inclusive enough, or ignored.
posted by zutalors! at 2:15 PM on December 5, 2016 [3 favorites]

Corb, I'm very sorry about your friend. It's a tragedy in any case.
posted by Superplin at 2:17 PM on December 5, 2016 [12 favorites]

That wouldn't translate well to the USA, though

California managed it, but California had reached a point (the 2008 budget crisis) where its legislature was dysfunctional in ways that affected all sides, and it had the proposition mechanism to make it happen. (Arizona now has a similar commission in place.)
posted by holgate at 2:33 PM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

The Pizzagate police report says that Welch said he was armed to help rescue child sex slaves and he surrendered upon not finding any. It's not clear why he fired.
posted by zachlipton at 2:33 PM on December 5, 2016

Sequence, I understand that the circles of support model is based on grieving, and yes, we're all grieving so it's not a perfect model for this situation. But when someone is saying repeatedly that their voice is being ignored, I don't know what could apply more strongly than when we do acknowledge their voice that it would be more helpful to express comfort and support, not "this is how you grief is affecting me." And there's a level of defensiveness that's occurring now that I think misses the point. I just think now is a very bad time to be accusing people of performing their distress is not a fair characterization of my comment, nor do I think it applies to anyone else's you're responding to. No one is doubting that people are truly upset to hear their fellow mefites are hurting.

There's room for everyone to express how they're affected by the presidential election but to continue some therapist-office speak, I wish there were more "I" statements instead of "we/you" statements when we're talking about it. For me, I'm getting sick of reading comments (not specifically at this exact moment) that boil down to "this sucks but we're mostly all going to be fine because look at how incompetent Trump and his people are" and totally ignore that the "we" in that sentence excludes a hell of a lot of people who are already not fine, such as PoC, LGBTQI folks, anyone disabled, non-Christians, women, etc.

I don't think this applies universally and there have been quite a bit of effort to be inclusive, but I'm not sure why there's defensiveness happening when someone like zutalors! is speaking up about their experience.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 2:34 PM on December 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

Engineering away gerrymandering

(his website, covering each state and how it would work/look.)

It doesn't engineer away gerrymandering. It's just the least terrible gerrymander.

If we wanted to end the process of gerrymandering we'd have seats elected statewide at-large using STV.
posted by Talez at 2:36 PM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's also frustrating that Sequence chose to ignore the second part of the comment I made:

It reminds me of the Pantsuit Nation stuff in the few days after the election, when the majority white community would cry for anyone who commented about getting abuse, but got really angry about pushback against safety pins or other white displays of support.

The anger and defensiveness is a huge part of the frustration.
posted by zutalors! at 2:37 PM on December 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

One of Trump's presidential electors from Texas has written a NYT op-ed: Why I Will Not Cast My Electoral Vote for Donald Trump
posted by zachlipton at 2:38 PM on December 5, 2016 [17 favorites]

Surely this...
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:41 PM on December 5, 2016 [3 favorites]

The Pizza shooter is a good counterexample to the thinkpieces asserting that we're in a post-fact world where facts don't matter. Facts absolutely matter. The Pizza shooter was in that restaurant because he thought he was helping children (apparently), not because he was nihilistically operating as a postmodernist untethered to objective reality. Our challenge is not getting people to care about facts. Our challenge is achieving consensus reality with people who radically disagree with us about which sources of information are credible. This divide is about to get deeper as .gov addresses start to become sources of propaganda and disinformation on a historic scale.
posted by prefpara at 2:42 PM on December 5, 2016 [15 favorites]

Sorry, for being dumb but what is 'STV'?
posted by From Bklyn at 2:42 PM on December 5, 2016

Single transferable vote
posted by zachlipton at 2:44 PM on December 5, 2016

The election of the next president is not yet a done deal. Electors of conscience can still do the right thing for the good of the country. Presidential electors have the legal right and a constitutional duty to vote their conscience. I believe electors should unify behind a Republican alternative, an honorable and qualified man or woman such as Gov. John Kasich of Ohio. I pray my fellow electors will do their job and join with me in discovering who that person should be.

Or you could unite behind the popular vote winner, you tribalist shit.
posted by TypographicalError at 2:49 PM on December 5, 2016 [23 favorites]

Mod note: Couple comments removed; this feels like it's kind of going in circles at this point and should go to an off-channel conversation if y'all want to keep at it.
posted by cortex (staff) at 2:52 PM on December 5, 2016

I don't know if there's any way to get proportional representation in the US because we're built on the core, core idea of a single specific person representing a specific place. If you start electing Representatives at-large, that's completely out the window.
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 2:56 PM on December 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

When I saw that quote by Moore above, I knew it was Stephen Moore, who has been a belligerent, hostile presence on Fox News & Fox Business for years now. He's like the economics equivalent of John Bolton, except his only positions held until now have been think tanker and Fox pundit.

on the plus side, the Steve quota of the Trump team is floating back up into more normal ranges
posted by indubitable at 2:57 PM on December 5, 2016 [9 favorites]

I don't know if there's any way to get proportional representation in the US because we're built on the core, core idea of a single specific person representing a specific place.

But not, relevantly, for the Electoral College. Maybe we need to remind people that the electors are their representatives?
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:01 PM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

CNN: Huckabee, who became a Trump surrogate after he dropped out of the 2016 Republican primary, tweeted on Monday, "Ben Carson is first HUD Sec to have actually lived in gov't housing. Fancy Nancy Pelosi says he's not qualified; is she racist or just dumb?"

I was once in a hospital to have my tonsils out. According to Huckabee that qualifies me as a surgeon.

And its rather ironic to hear Huckabee accuse Pelosi of being a dumb racist. He seems to have Trump Projection Disease.
posted by JackFlash at 3:08 PM on December 5, 2016 [14 favorites]

House G.O.P. Signals Break With Trump Over Tariff Threat

House Republican leaders — in a major policy break with President-elect Donald J. Trump — signaled on Monday that they would not support his threat to impose a heavy tax on companies that move jobs overseas, the first significant confrontation over conservative economic orthodoxy that Mr. Trump relishes trampling.

“I don’t want to get into some kind of trade war,” Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and majority leader, told reporters in response to Mr. Trump’s threats over the weekend to seek a 35 percent import tariff on goods sold by United States companies that move jobs overseas and displace American workers.

So Rep. McCarthy doesn't want to get into a trade war? McCarthy supported Trump. Back in May, Trump said "Who the hell cares if there's a trade war?"
posted by zachlipton at 3:09 PM on December 5, 2016 [12 favorites]

Fake News Purveyors and Trump’s Conspiracy Theorists Have Real World Consequences

Asked on Sunday night if Trump planned on taking time out of his busy schedule of fighting with Saturday Night Live cast members to condemn [Alex] Jones and caution his supporters against violence, officials for the transition did not respond.

posted by zachlipton at 3:20 PM on December 5, 2016 [11 favorites]

Mod note: The things I will accomplish today are 'not literally crying in front of conservative coworkers' and 'hopefully eating at least twice'

I work at home, so I don't have to worry about crying in front of coworkers (still try not to cry tho). I also need to keep on top of personal hygiene. sfw; Simpsons
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 3:21 PM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

BuzzFeed New York State Senator Will Try To Force Trump To Release Tax Returns Before 2020

State senator Brad Hoylman’s T.R.U.M.P. (Tax Returns Uniformly Made Public) Act, would force candidates for president to release five years of tax returns to the New York State board of elections no later than 50 days before the general election, which would in turn redact personal information and make the returns public. Failure to comply with the legislation should it become law would prohibit the state’s electors from voting for that candidate and the candidate’s name would not appear on the New York state ballot.

posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:38 PM on December 5, 2016 [38 favorites]

The historic communication — the first between leaders of the United States and Taiwan since 1979 — was the product of months of quiet preparations and deliberations among Trump’s advisers about a new strategy for engagement with Taiwan that began even before he became the GOP presidential nominee, according to people involved in or briefed on the talks.

This doesn't really scan - they were preparing for it before the millionaire sex offender got the GOP nominee?
posted by porpoise at 3:38 PM on December 5, 2016 [6 favorites]

House G.O.P. Signals Break With Trump Over Tariff Threat

Great topic for calls and letters to any GOP House reps who represent folks in this thread! A trade war with China doesn't just raise prices, it would disrupt our just-in-time supply chains in unpredictable ways. Who's the big employer in your district? Mention how much trouble they'd be in if this came to pass!
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 3:41 PM on December 5, 2016 [4 favorites]

Computer-generated districts are, technically speaking, a piece of cake. Most computer engineers could write a redistricting program in a couple of days. The trick is deciding what criteria for a good district looks like.

There are a lot of different ideas about the most important criteria: should we be aiming to make districts as compact as possible? To match local constituencies? What about putting minorities into their own majority district - does this increase their representation by allowing them a chance to pick their representative, or dilute it by concentrating them? Are we trying to make districts competitive, so both sides have a chance to win seats? What about overall representation - if we have 60% republicans and 40% democrats in a state, should we aim to have a 60/40 balance in congress (this often conflicts with competitive districts)?

A few states have worked on districting reform, but those have had mixed success. California and Arizona, for example, have essentially the same system: an independent commission is made up of an equal number of democrats, republicans, and neither, and they have to draw districts according to the following rules (from most to least important):

1. Population Equality: Districts must comply with the U.S. Constitution’s requirement of “one person, one vote”

2. Federal Voting Rights Act: Districts must ensure an equal opportunity for minorities to elect a candidate of their choice

3. Geographic Contiguity: All areas within a district must be connected to each other, except for the special case of islands

4. Geographic Integrity: Districts shall minimize the division of cities, counties, local neighborhoods and communities of interests to the extent possible, without violating previous criteria. A community of interest is a contiguous population which shares common social and economic interests that should be included within a single district for purposes of its effective and fair representation.

5. Geographic Compactness: To the extent practicable, and where this does not conflict with previous criteria, districts must not bypass nearby communities for more distant communities
Nesting: To the extent practicable, and where this does not conflict with previous criteria, each Senate district will be composed of two whole Assembly districts, Board of Equalization districts will be composed of 10 Senate districts.

Unfortunately, these kinds of rules don't do a great job of addressing the philosophical issues I mentioned above, leaving each group to have to wade through the mud on its own. But for sure, we can do better, and computers can help.
posted by zug at 3:41 PM on December 5, 2016 [8 favorites]

Some people (Mike Huckabee among them, follow-up) were claiming that of course Carson is qualified because he lived in public housing. Once living in public housing doesn't make Carson qualified to run HUD any more than living above a hair salon makes me qualified to oversee the Board of Cosmetology. Even so, Carson's spokesman says that despite earlier statements, Carson never lived in public housing.
posted by zachlipton at 3:44 PM on December 5, 2016 [10 favorites]

Failure to comply with the legislation should it become law would prohibit the state’s electors from voting for that candidate and the candidate’s name would not appear on the New York state ballot.

Man, Republican candidates for President must be shaking in their boots at the prospect of not winning New York State's electoral votes!
posted by Justinian at 3:44 PM on December 5, 2016 [5 favorites]

On the lighter side of redistricting: Business owners try to remove all voters from business district, but they forgot one college student.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 3:45 PM on December 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

CNN: Huckabee, who became a Trump surrogate after he dropped out of the 2016 Republican primary, tweeted on Monday, "Ben Carson is first HUD Sec to have actually lived in gov't housing. Fancy Nancy Pelosi says he's not qualified; is she racist or just dumb?"

@tripgabriel Carson spox Armstrong Williams tells me despite reports, & despite what Williams tld me earlier, @RealBenCarson never lived in pub housing

So did Huckabee just assume that Dr. Carson lived in public housing? If so that makes him both racist AND dumb for not checking first.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:47 PM on December 5, 2016 [26 favorites]

Damnit, zachlipton, I should have previewed. You and I have the same twitter feed I guess.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:49 PM on December 5, 2016

Manchuria... Tibetans... Uighurs...

Of course he will not be saying anything about this stuff, that would require a GED level of geopolitical / historical background knowledge. You want him to come out on these issues, you gotta talk about them on the teevee! Duh!
posted by Meatbomb at 3:49 PM on December 5, 2016

I feel like we all have the same twitter feed at this point.
posted by zachlipton at 3:50 PM on December 5, 2016 [7 favorites]

OK, I'm convinced. This alternate timeline where Trump won would be a total nightmare. Now how do I get back to the real timeline?
posted by kirkaracha at 3:51 PM on December 5, 2016 [27 favorites]

@kylegriffin1 Patty Murray says she'll likely oppose Carson as HUD Sec'y, says his past statements "suggest he rejects the essential functions of HUD":

At the twitter link is a copy of Senator Murray's statement. She is a Democrat so unfortunately it probably won't make a difference.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:54 PM on December 5, 2016 [3 favorites]

Dump Tower
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 4:03 PM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

DIAMOND JOE! Joe Biden predicts he will run for president in 2020, adds that he is not yet 'committed'
posted by zachlipton at 4:06 PM on December 5, 2016 [6 favorites]

She is a Democrat so unfortunately it probably won't make a difference.

The Dems have the filibuster and they might want to use it sparingly in order to retain it. So maybe at the end of the day all they can do is vote no.

However, all of these people also get confirmation hearings! They can get him and other Cabinet nominees on the record... being idiots. "Dr. Carson, what background and experience do you have that you would be bringing to this role?" "Dr. Carson, if your nomination is approved, will you be using public housing to store grain?"

DIAMOND JOE! Joe Biden predicts he will run for president in 2020, adds that he is not yet 'committed'

I love me some Joe Biden, but he's going to be 78 in 2020, and presidential campaigns are brutal.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 4:07 PM on December 5, 2016 [13 favorites]

Is that real? I honestly have no clue. It looks real, but I mean:

When asked what role he would run for, Biden responded: "For president. And also, what the hell man, anyway."

posted by zachlipton at 4:07 PM on December 5, 2016 [9 favorites]

Jeet Heer New Republic Democrats Need To Pick a Leader. Now.

The fragmented party needs a public face of unified opposition to Trump. Elizabeth Warren is the clear choice.

I honestly think Biden will be too old and too moderate. We need those young voters who sat this one out.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:10 PM on December 5, 2016 [3 favorites]

Yeah, 78 is pushing it. Get him on the Jack LaLanne diet, stat.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 4:11 PM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

Rogue electors brief Clinton camp on anti-Trump plan

Trump won the popular vote in states that constitute 306 electors — easily above the 270-vote threshold he needs to become president if all Republican electors support him. That’s why anti-Trump electors are working to persuade at least 37 Republican electors to ditch Trump, the minimum they’d need to prevent his election, and join them in support of a compromise candidate, which could send the final decision to the House of Representatives. Clinton won the popular vote in states that include a total of 232 electors. As of Monday, she led in the popular vote nationwide by more than 2.6 million votes.

At least eight Democratic electors are promising to defect from Clinton and support a Republican alternative to Trump.
...
The Democratic electors have already revealed that they’re close to a consensus pick for whom they will vote: Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

How does this figure? I don't see write-ins as legitimate and Kasich didn't get any electoral votes. If anyone is going to switch from Trump, they should vote for Clinton since she got electoral votes and won the popular vote.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:14 PM on December 5, 2016 [9 favorites]

The fragmented party needs a public face of unified opposition to Trump. Elizabeth Warren is the clear choice.

I honestly think Biden will be too old and too moderate. We need those young voters who sat this one out.

Senator-Elect Kamala Harris has been branding herself as a fighter and is on the presidential rumor list for 2020.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 4:16 PM on December 5, 2016 [7 favorites]

I stick by my gut feeling that anything that overturns the electoral vote will cause widespread civil unrest, if not actual war-like circumstances. That really scares me, though why I'm scared of it given the alternative is beyond me.
posted by mynameisluka at 4:17 PM on December 5, 2016 [5 favorites]

Kirsten Gillibrand is another Senator (New York, D) who has been making some noise about 2020.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 4:18 PM on December 5, 2016 [3 favorites]

How does this figure? I don't see write-ins as legitimate and Kasich didn't get any electoral votes. If anyone is going to switch from Trump, they should vote for Clinton since she got electoral votes and won the popular vote.

I think they're hoping to convince enough GOP electors to switch to Kasich (Clinton is gonna be a non-starter for those folks) to send it to the House, and hope the House goes for Kasich (which they can, because he will have received those EVs.

Or, option 2, if you get enough GOP electors to defect to Kasich, the HRC electors could defect en masse and voilà, John Kasich had better hurry up and pick some cabinet nominees.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 4:18 PM on December 5, 2016 [7 favorites]

I'd be happy with a President Harris, but given the misogyny and racism we saw this year I'm not sure how good her chances would be. Really it will depend on if the next 4 years see people rejecting Trumpism or embracing it.
posted by thefoxgod at 4:20 PM on December 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

If it gets thrown to the House, Trump wins. Short of him stroking out because snl makes fun of him, trump wins. This is the dark timeline of the alt-Reich, and we must plan for resistance.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 4:23 PM on December 5, 2016 [3 favorites]

If anyone is going to switch from Trump, they should vote for Clinton since she got electoral votes and won the popular vote.

That's simply not going to happen though. The Republicans aren't going to play "fair," but enough of them might agree to mitigate the damage that Trump would do.
posted by Candleman at 4:23 PM on December 5, 2016 [5 favorites]

WARREN/BOOKER 2020
BOOKER/WARREN 2020
I'm not picky.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 4:24 PM on December 5, 2016 [6 favorites]

I believe I've said this before but, given that we live in the worst of all timelines, the seven electors who vote for Kasich will be just enough to knock HRC below the 270 threshold after a mass defection of Republican electors.

Besides, does Kasich want to be president at this point? I feel like Clinton would do it because she knows the stakes, but even that is pushing it.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 4:24 PM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

I honestly think Biden will be too old and too moderate. We need those young voters who sat this one out.

Not necessarily. Biden would easily get the additional 60k combined votes in WI/PA/MI that would have delivered Clinton the Presidency. Plus he wouldn't have the mortal sin of beating Bernie Sanders like a pinata that so stained Clinton's soul in those young voters' eyes.

But, yeah, he's gonna be 78. That's not young. He obviously have my vote (as would anyone with a functioning brain against Donald Trump) but... 78.
posted by Justinian at 4:26 PM on December 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

In the hypothetical elector defection to Kasich, presumably Pence would still be VP?
posted by triggerfinger at 4:26 PM on December 5, 2016

I believe I've said this before but, given that we live in the worst of all timelines, the seven electors who vote for Kasich will be just enough to knock HRC below the 270 threshold after a mass defection of Republican electors.

Mass defection to Clinton? That's not the worst timeline, that's the absurd timeline in which an impossibility occurs. Any defections from Trump will not go to Clinton, they will go to Kasich, Romney, or McMullin.
posted by Justinian at 4:27 PM on December 5, 2016 [4 favorites]

> I'd be happy with a President Harris, but given the misogyny and racism we saw this year I'm not sure how good her chances would be. Really it will depend on if the next 4 years see people rejecting Trumpism or embracing it.

Fuck timid centrism and double fuck racists and misogynists, they can kick rocks. The popular vote for the last three elections running has gone to a black or female candidate.
posted by contraption at 4:28 PM on December 5, 2016 [32 favorites]

I'd be happy with a President Harris, but given the misogyny and racism we saw this year I'm not sure how good her chances would be. Really it will depend on if the next 4 years see people rejecting Trumpism or embracing it.

Remember, some of those same people who voted racism/misogyny in 2016 voted for the black guy with a Muslim father and an African name and, furthermore, the middle name Hussein in 2008, less than a decade after we invaded Iraq to depose a guy with the last name Hussein. And even in 2016, we lost narrowly in a handful of states. If she can get momentum, don't count her out just yet!

If it gets thrown to the House, Trump wins. Short of him stroking out because snl makes fun of him, trump wins.

Hey, 2016 isn't over yet. We could all catch super-ebola, or the moon could crash into the Earth between now and 12/31.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 4:29 PM on December 5, 2016

The popular vote for the last three elections running has gone to a black or female candidate.

Thats great, yes, but it doesn't actually matter, as this year shows. Electoral vote is still going to favor the bigots for a while.
posted by thefoxgod at 4:30 PM on December 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

In the hypothetical elector defection to Kasich, presumably Pence would still be VP?

Almost certainly. Even if the VP election is thrown to the Senate they can only pick from the top 2 candidates which would be Kaine or Pence. If the Dems had managed a Senate majority you'd have had a crazy situation where the Republican House voted for the President and the Democratic Senate voted for Kaine, so you'd have something like Trump/Kaine or Romney/Kaine or Kasich/Kaine.
posted by Justinian at 4:30 PM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

In the hypothetical elector defection to Kasich, presumably Pence would still be VP?

Technically the VP's only jobs are to break ties in the Senate and be the next-in-line to the presidency. In the part of the multiverse where the electors hand the presidency to Kasich, he could totally ignore Pence if he wants to. Or have a "dude, I don't want to work with you, so unless you want to resign, I'm going to send you on an important diplomatic mission to Antarctica" conversation if he so chooses.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 4:32 PM on December 5, 2016

I don't think Dems should hurry to pick a leader. They have leadership from Obama, Biden, Bernie, Warren and others. They should let new leadership rise naturally. Give Shumer and Ellison a chance.

I've really liked some things I've heard from Chris Murphy. He made some great comments on China and Taiwan regarding Taiwan and China.
posted by Golden Eternity at 4:32 PM on December 5, 2016 [7 favorites]

Four years of Trump and total GOP federal control is going to see a lot of hurdles put up between poor people and POC and their voting rights. Please, please, let's not expect them to clear those hurdles just to vote for another white dude who swears he has their interests at heart just so long as the WWC says it's ok.
posted by contraption at 4:37 PM on December 5, 2016 [10 favorites]

I think you perhaps overestimate the ideological distance between Pence and Kasich on some important matters.
posted by zachlipton at 4:38 PM on December 5, 2016 [6 favorites]

When we're fantasizing about Kasich as a sort of white-ish knight, I can't tell if we're in the bargaining phase or the depression phase. Is there a hallucinating phase?
posted by Joey Michaels at 4:41 PM on December 5, 2016 [38 favorites]

If it's Pence vs. Kasich in such a scenario I'd say Kasich is the better option, only because that way we're not all stuck agreeing with the lunatic evangelical fringe that President Pence is a miracle from God.
posted by contraption at 4:44 PM on December 5, 2016 [4 favorites]

New Yorker: The Year We Played Ourselves

It was about 10 p.m. on November 8th when I realized how thoroughly I had played myself. I had imagined that I inhabited such a safe and silly position, in a messily but steadily ameliorating world. I had assumed that Hillary Clinton would win the Presidency; I assumed that Donald Trump was fundamentally unelectable. I had tried to remind myself that cultural gains don’t translate to broad social consequences, and yet—perhaps because it served my position to do so—I had come to believe that they did. I had thought that, within my small life, I was credibly serving the future that I wanted: one in which we would have our first female President, one in which truth mattered, one in which Trump represented the death rattle of old prejudices rather than a vessel for those prejudices made hot-blooded and new. I allowed some sense of personal righteousness to satisfy me, and I suppose that’s the beginning of where I went wrong.

In 2016, I played myself, and it’s no comfort to me that I am not alone. Many of us played ourselves. The phenomenon goes all the way to the top. A number of reports, citing sources close to Trump, have suggested that Trump never really wanted to be President. Our President-elect appears to have played himself, and all of us, too.

posted by zachlipton at 4:44 PM on December 5, 2016 [25 favorites]

NBC: Sources familiar with Trump's thinking tell @Morning_Joe that Jon Huntsman is not in serious contention for Secretary of State and never was
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 4:45 PM on December 5, 2016 [3 favorites]

When we're fantasizing about Kasich as a sort of white-ish knight, I can't tell if we're in the bargaining phase or the depression phase.

Hey, at least any wars he starts will be on purpose!

Is there a hallucinating phase?

Personally, I'm halfway hoping that's what's been going on for the last 11 months or so. Maybe I had an emergency appendectomy, and my friends are whispering crazy shit in my ears to fuck with me while the anesthesia wears off...
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 4:46 PM on December 5, 2016 [4 favorites]

Not necessarily. Biden would easily get the additional 60k combined votes in WI/PA/MI that would have delivered Clinton the Presidency. Plus he wouldn't have the mortal sin of beating Bernie Sanders like a pinata that so stained Clinton's soul in those young voters' eyes.

But then, you repeat yourself.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 4:50 PM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

Maybe I had an emergency appendectomy, and my friends are whispering crazy shit in my ears to fuck with me while the anesthesia wears off...

Ever see the movie Brazil?
posted by Candleman at 4:54 PM on December 5, 2016 [4 favorites]

WaPo: Pentagon buries evidence of $125 billion in bureaucratic waste, Craig Whitlock and Bob Woodward. It's one of those stories.
posted by zachlipton at 5:00 PM on December 5, 2016 [4 favorites]

I've really liked some things I've heard from Chris Murphy.

I can't remember if we talked about them yet, but the Keepin' It 1600 guys really like Tom Perez and Jason Kander.
posted by triggerfinger at 5:27 PM on December 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

Egg McMuffin got an article about him in Slate
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 5:30 PM on December 5, 2016 [3 favorites]

Give Shumer and Ellison a chance.

Ellison yes. Schumer, fuck no. In what way is he new? He's been in Congress since 1981, and scheming for the party leader's chair since he got to the Senate in 1998. Well he finally got his wish to be the ShitKing of Shit Mountain, most Impotent of the weakest minority party in modern history. His hand was on every last one of the Wall Street approved Schumercrats that just completely wiped out, while he held down progressive challengers who maybe would have run real campaigns. McGinty. Murphy. Patty Judge. Strickland. All hand picked by Schumer over more progressive candidates, all underperformed even Hilary.

Schumer is horrible. He's everything wrong with the corporate wing of the Democratic party that's been calling the shots and just lost everything to Trump. We're stuck with him, but he's in no way the leader we need, or the voice of change, or in any way up to the task of rebuilding the party. Everything going forward will have to be done in spite of, not with or because of, Chuck Schumer.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:31 PM on December 5, 2016 [33 favorites]

> Soon enough trump will just admit he was pretending to be back on the set of Celebrity Apprentice when he was trolling everyone for cabinet picks.

He must have a camera crew in there with him, right? I'll be surprised if the footage doesn't end up getting released under one brand or another, he just needs to figure out whether it'll be more successful as a "The Apprentice" or a "The United States Government" production.
posted by contraption at 5:44 PM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

New popular vote numbers from @AP:

Clinton 65,383,628 (48.2%)
Trump 62,759,366 (46.3%)
Johnson 4,470,971 (3.3%)
Stein 1,439,297 (1.1%)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:52 PM on December 5, 2016 [12 favorites]

Embassy of Azerbaijan to co-host event at Trump's D.C. hotel

The Azerbaijani embassy will be co-hosting a Hanukkah party at President-elect Donald Trump’s Washington hotel later this month, marking the second report of a foreign nation hosting an event at the renovated Old Post Office Building. According to an invitation obtained by POLITICO, the party “celebrating religious freedom and diversity” will be co-hosted by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, a collection of national Jewish groups.
...
According to a financial disclosure form he filed as a candidate last May, Trump is listed as “director, chairman and president” of a venture in Baku. The Washington Post reported, Trump's partner in Azerbaijani capital is Anar Mammadov, 35. In 2009, The State Department labeled his father, who is also the nation's transportation minister, as "notoriously corrupt even for Azerbaijan," in a diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks.

Honestly, I expect the conflict of interest, but I'm pretty confused about the fact that the Azerbaijani embassy is co-hosting a Hanukkah party (yes, there are Jews in Azerbaijan).
posted by zachlipton at 5:54 PM on December 5, 2016 [12 favorites]

The AP updates their vote totals too slowly. I need to be outraged in real time.
posted by Justinian at 6:02 PM on December 5, 2016 [9 favorites]

Metafilter: I need to be outraged in real time.

You know it to be true.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:04 PM on December 5, 2016 [42 favorites]

I really like the headline of that Evan McMullin article in Slate: A Utah Republican Is Challenging Trump More Effectively Than 99 Percent of Democrats.

I'll tell you why. Like probably a lot of Democrats, I've been trying to get some of the more moderate conservative friends that I have to jump on the bandwagon of Republicans who stand up to Trump by sharing things with them showing all the prominent GOPers who have spoken out against Trump. To say the least, it hasn't been an easy task, even if they really, really dislike him. If I've learned anything about the GOP it's that they're steadfastly loyal and tribal, even in situations when they shouldn't be. So when I talk to them, or share articles with them about Justin Amash or George H.W. Bush or Evan McMullin or John McCain or even SARAH PALIN opposing Trump, I think, for the most part, what I tell them seems to fall on deaf ears.

Because even though they don't like Trump, they don't want to abandon the party, which they've idealized as the party of Lincoln (despite all the evidence to the contrary that has been piling up for the last few decades). I think part of them sees the GOPers who take a stand against the party as almost traitors, though that might be too strong a word for it. Especially given that some of the people who spoke out against Trump also outright endorsed Clinton, I got the impression that lots of Conservatives basically thought of them as having defected to the other side.

BUT, the headline of the article says A Utah Republican Is Challenging Trump More Effectively Than 99 Percent of Democrats. It struck me a little at first because I would have expected it to say more than 99% of Republicans, given that it so much of the criticism from the Democrats (and McMullin's popularity) is due to the GOP's silence in the face of a tyrant. By saying he's doing better at something than 99% of Democrats, the headline is still positioning him as being in direct opposition to Democrats, rather than just stating his criticisms, which opens him up to charges of being a RINO. It's totally a red meat headline. I'm not sure if that's intentional or not (though the whole article is positioned as WTF INCOMPETENT DEMS), but I love it. If painting liberals as incompetent guardians of liberty is the way to whip up opposition to Trump amongst Republicans, then GO TO FUCKING TOWN.
posted by triggerfinger at 6:12 PM on December 5, 2016 [28 favorites]

Fuck timid centrism and double fuck racists and misogynists, they can kick rocks. The popular vote for the last three elections running has gone to a black or female candidate.

Yup. I think one thing the past 3 presidents have shown is that "qualifications" (beyond bare constitutional eligibility) and "experience" don't matter. Bush v. Gore, Obama v. McCain, Trump v. Clinton - in each instance the candidate with substantially more federal government experience lost. Incumbency bias is so strong I don't feel like it's fair to count the incumbent elections, but Bush v. Kerry is arguably consistent with this, depending how you count 4 years as president vs a zillion years as senator.

Also, I think the old saw about "Democrats need to fall in love" has proved true lately. Anyone perceived as "boring" or having "baggage" just does not cut it, apparently. I think it is important to offer up fresh-faced candidates with minimal scandal and little history of republican attacks, who inspire people. That's just what seems to work on the democratic side. It obviously doesn't go both ways and that's not fair, but there it is.

At least Obama's election showed that being a minority is not a problem as long as these other requirements are met. I am obviously dispirited and devastated by the misogyny evident in Hilary's defeat, but I am somewhat optimistic that a woman could win if she was "more like Obama" or perceived more positively in some other way.
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 6:15 PM on December 5, 2016 [6 favorites]

Honestly, I expect the conflict of interest, but I'm pretty confused about the fact that the Azerbaijani embassy is co-hosting a Hanukkah party [...]

As you note, there's a surprising number of Azerbaijani Jews and I think that that, together with "we need an excuse to justify a party at Trump Tower, doesn't he have a Jewish son-in-law?" would ostensibly justify it.

It looks like Trump can easily be persuaded to start Tweeting about sensitive geopolitical issues, and Nagorno-Karabakh certainly qualifies. So if you see Trump tweeting about Armenia's disrespect for US trade (or whatever), it's going to be because the Azerbaijani embassy thought of a Hanukkah party before the Armenians did.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:16 PM on December 5, 2016 [8 favorites]

So I have been reading and thinking about the electoral college a bit.

The three-fifths compromise is a stain on the founding of this nation. The idea that the supreme law of the land counts some people as fractions of another is appalling. However, we should remember that even if slaves and Black people had been counted as whole people, they still would have been denied their right to vote. So being counted as a whole person would probably have been worse at that time, since their population would have influenced the apportionment of the House of Representatives to give the South more power at the federal level.

So my fantasy is that disenfranchised people, like people branded "felon", could sue their states to forbid themselves from being counted for apportionment. Make the legal argument that is is illegal for a state to use a person to accumulate headcount in the House, without affording that person the right to vote. Maybe you could go so far as to argue that poll taxes like ID requirements are also illegal. This would at least create a situation where states lose political influence as their local democratic processes become less and less legitimate.
posted by rustcrumb at 6:28 PM on December 5, 2016 [27 favorites]

It's totally a red meat headline. I'm not sure if that's intentional or not (though the whole article is positioned as WTF INCOMPETENT DEMS), but I love it. If painting liberals as incompetent guardians of liberty is the way to whip up opposition to Trump amongst Republicans, then GO TO FUCKING TOWN.

I think it also works well to make people say "WTF" to their Democratic representatives. "Are you going to let some Republican from Utah who sounds like a breakfast sandwich oppose Trump better than you???"
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 6:33 PM on December 5, 2016 [9 favorites]

This is frightening. New pro-Trump group takes form, with Kellyanne Conway possibly at the helm

Senior Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway said an interview Monday that she is considering leading a new group being formed that will provide “a surround-sound super structure” to bolster the new administration’s political and policy goals. The new entity, whose legal structure has not yet been determined, would serve as the outside hub to support President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda. Discussions about the formation of the group have been underway for several weeks.

People familiar with the planning said that the as-yet unnamed group has a working motto: "Unleash the Potential," a moniker likely to be used by Trump and his supporters in the coming weeks to describe the work of his administration and the Republican-led Congress in the first part of 2017. They are preparing to enact sweeping changes to the nation's tax, immigration and health-care policies.

This sounds kind of like the massive organizing operation that Organizing for America was supposed to be, something that never really took off and fizzled out after 2010 or so (more on that here).
posted by zachlipton at 6:41 PM on December 5, 2016 [4 favorites]

Donald Trump’s Message Sparks Anger in China

In which we find a new person to blame for Trump's call with Taiwan: Bob Dole!

I really hate this damn year.
posted by zachlipton at 6:46 PM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

[The mooted new pro-Trump group] sounds kind of like the massive organizing operation that Organizing for America was supposed to be [...]

It sounds more like Momentum, Jeremy Corbyn's support organisation in the UK.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:49 PM on December 5, 2016

Remember when Kellyanne Conway said that Trump wasn't going to his donor's heroes/villains party?

I knew he was going. Because she said he wasn't.
posted by Yowser at 6:50 PM on December 5, 2016 [5 favorites]

This sounds kind of like the massive organizing operation that Organizing for America was supposed to be

Or like a dark-money funded troll army targetted at vulnerable elected Dems, their families, and their email accounts.

Speaking of troll armies, Megyn Kelly was at a book event tonight and talked about requiring an armed guard for herself and her kids over the past sixteen months, and specifically called out Dan Scavino as the rabble-rouser.
posted by holgate at 6:51 PM on December 5, 2016 [5 favorites]

‘False flag’ planted at a pizza place? It’s just one more conspiracy to digest. (WaPo) because of course. I'm beginning to hate humanity.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 6:54 PM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

new group being formed that will provide “a surround-sound super structure” to bolster the new administration’s political and policy goals

the as-yet unnamed group

Department of Propaganda?
posted by chaoticgood at 6:54 PM on December 5, 2016 [10 favorites]

The CEO of United Technologies (Carrier's parent company) outright said in an interview, "I was born at night, but not last night. I also know that about 10 percent of our revenue comes from the U.S. government" about his jobs deal with Trump. This was blackmail.
posted by zachlipton at 6:54 PM on December 5, 2016 [9 favorites]

Department of Propaganda?

Ministry of Truth.
posted by tivalasvegas at 6:58 PM on December 5, 2016 [19 favorites]

Why hasn't Alex Jones been sued into the poorhouse? Is there no legal way of shutting him up?
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:01 PM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

Why Pat McCrory Lost and What It Means in Trump's America The dominant reason given for McCrory's defeat will be the unpopularity of HB2, and certainly that played an important role. ... But the seeds of McCrory's defeat really were planted by the Moral Monday movement in the summer of 2013, just months after McCrory took office. ... What happened in the summer of 2013 to make McCrory so permanently unpopular? He allowed himself to be associated with a bunch of unpopular legislation, and progressives hit back HARD, in a way that really caught voters' attention and resonated with them. McCrory spearheaded or went along with all of this. And he might have gotten away with it without much impact on his image. Most voters don't pay close attention to state government.

But the Moral Monday movement pushed back hard. Its constant visibility forced all of these issues to stay in the headlines. Its efforts ensured that voters in the state were educated about what was going on in Raleigh, and as voters became aware of what was going on, they got mad. All those people who had seen McCrory as a moderate, as a different kind of Republican, had those views quickly changed. ... Moral Mondays became a very rare thing- a popular protest movement. ...
Pushing back hard on McCrory worked. The seeds of his final defeat today were very much planted in the summer of 2013. And it's a lesson for progressives in dealing with Trump. Push back hard from day one. Be visible. Capture the public's attention, no matter what you have to do to do it. Don't count on the media to do it itself because the media will let you down. The protesters in North Carolina, by making news in their own right week after week after week, forced sustained coverage of what was going on in Raleigh. And even though it was certainly a long game, with plenty more frustration in between, those efforts led to change at the polls 42 months after they really started.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:07 PM on December 5, 2016 [45 favorites]

@Redistrict
Arizona certifies its results:
Trump 1,252,401 (48.7%),
Clinton 1,161,167 (45.1%),
Others 159,597 (6.2%).
Dems cut margin by 5.5% vs. '12.
posted by chris24 at 7:13 PM on December 5, 2016 [7 favorites]

Hey if you're in Austin there's a local Moral Monday. Thanks for posting that, TD, I've been thinking about whether we could start one here in Ft. Worth.
posted by emjaybee at 7:14 PM on December 5, 2016 [7 favorites]

Some great stuff in here: Here’s (some of) the best political journalism of 2016.
posted by triggerfinger at 7:26 PM on December 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

A prominent Harvard University law professor is teaming with a California-based law firm to offer legal support for any members of the Electoral College seeking to oppose President-elect Donald Trump in violation of state law.

Larry Lessig says his new effort, which he calls “The Electors Trust,” will provide free counsel to electors, provided by the midsize firm, Durie Tangri, whose partner Mark Lemley is a longtime associate of Lessig’s.

More significantly, Lessig said, the Trust will offer a platform – with guaranteed anonymity – for electors to strategize about stopping Trump from taking the White House. It’s a platform, he said, that could help electors coordinate to determine whether they’ve gathered enough support to stop Trump from winning the presidency.
posted by futz at 7:27 PM on December 5, 2016 [26 favorites]

So I thought AZ would go for Hillary.

Arizona certifies its results:
Trump 1,252,401 (48.7%),
Clinton 1,161,167 (45.1%),

TTTTTTTTTTTTCCCCCCCCCCC <--- Clinton loses
TTTTTTTTTTTCCCCCCCCCCCC <--- Clinton wins
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 7:41 PM on December 5, 2016

Heywood Mogroot III: So I thought AZ would go for Hillary.

We tried really hard.
We're not giving up.
posted by Superplin at 7:45 PM on December 5, 2016 [19 favorites]

NBC: Sources familiar with Trump's thinking tell @Morning_Joe that Jon Huntsman is not in serious contention for Secretary of State and never was

it's been gary busey all along

that's got a nice ring to it, "Secretary of State Gary Busey"
posted by indubitable at 7:52 PM on December 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

Sources: LeBron James among Cavs not staying at Donald Trump-branded hotel in New York

Other members of the team's traveling party will stay at the 46-story luxury building opened in 2010 and branded through a licensing agreement with President-elect Donald Trump, as the Cavs have a contract with the establishment.
posted by futz at 7:54 PM on December 5, 2016 [10 favorites]

that's got a nice ring to it, "Secretary of State Gary Busey"

I was hanging out for Scott "Charles in Charge" Baio.

No?
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:57 PM on December 5, 2016

Clinton getting only about 3% from winning Arizona is pretty amazing. Isn't it usually 10 points or more for the Republican usually?
posted by R343L at 8:13 PM on December 5, 2016 [7 favorites]

@ElectProject:
AZ's turnout rate was 56.2%, below the national rate of 59.1%. Looks to be a legitimate future battleground with Dem investment
posted by chris24 at 8:14 PM on December 5, 2016 [16 favorites]

Oh fuck.

Muslim woman pushed down NYC stairs, called "terrorist"
posted by futz at 8:19 PM on December 5, 2016

Jake Tapper had a DM conversation with Flynn's son last night (Tapper: "It is not the site of a satnic pedophilia cult. It is a fucking pizzeria") which Trump folks are using to attack Tapper (in fact, they're accusing Tapper of being a pedophile now), but for my money, and I hate to say nice things about anyone on CNN, Jake Tapper spent his evening being basically the only person who's actually trying to do something about the problem.
posted by zachlipton at 8:21 PM on December 5, 2016 [37 favorites]

The problem with Arizona is it's not worth enough compared to the loss of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Dems would still need to win Florida, or win back Michigan + Pennsylvania on top of winning Arizona. With a 100k> margin in the 3 rust belt states combined, getting over that 3% hump in Arizona is still a stretch goal compared to finding a way to make up a comparatively tiny amount of votes in the midwest. Arizona alone gets you nothing. It's the same reason people questioned going after Arizona this time, the prize is not big enough to be worth selling out for, or really even pulling much resources from other states that actually provide a winning margin.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:30 PM on December 5, 2016

You all know this because you can read, but I feel like it just needs to be stated outright for the absurdity of it: One of CNN's most senior anchors spent a chunk of his evening trying to privately convince the son and former chief of staff of the future National Security Advisor (who has an official government email for some unknown reason) that a pizza shop is not the site of a satanic pedophilia cult.

2016, boy, I don't know.
posted by zachlipton at 8:32 PM on December 5, 2016 [82 favorites]

Is Tapper prohibited from decimating stories on, you know, the major cable network show he anchors?
posted by rhizome at 8:56 PM on December 5, 2016 [7 favorites]

I don't know who the fuck Jack Posobiec is or who's paying him, but I do know that he's utter fucking filth, and has the ear of people with the power to harm other people's lives. This is where we are.
posted by holgate at 8:58 PM on December 5, 2016 [3 favorites]

the prize is not big enough to be worth selling out for

That feels a bit like a whack at a straw man. Hindsight's a fine enough thing, but the 2016 electorate is done and dusted. What the Dems need to ensure is that 2016 AZ Dem voters aren't treated as done and dusted, starting right now.
posted by holgate at 9:06 PM on December 5, 2016 [10 favorites]

that's got a nice ring to it, "Secretary of State Gary Busey"

Secretary of Busey, Gary Busey
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:32 PM on December 5, 2016 [4 favorites]

Your worst nightmare, butthorn
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:33 PM on December 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

Dude! As a former AZ resident I resent the implication that it is necessary to "sell out" to win that state. There are a lot of people trying really hard in Arizona and they're closer than they've ever been before. Show some love.

And I mean, Raul Grijalva. Enough said.
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 9:35 PM on December 5, 2016 [21 favorites]

Arizona alone gets you nothing. It's the same reason people questioned going after Arizona this time, the prize is not big enough to be worth selling out for, or really even pulling much resources from other states that actually provide a winning margin.

And sometimes all the money in the world poured into the midwest states isn't going to get you anything when they're white as fucking snow. What the Democrats need to be focusing on isn't where Democrats USED to win and now aren't, but where they used to lose and are now closer than ever. Trendlines and shit. Arizona and Texas were closer than they've been in modern political history to electing a Democrat. If they put even a fraction of the effort into Texas they do into Ohio, for instance, I think you'd see some serious results. Meanwhile there are districts in Texas that voted for Clinton where the Democrats didn't even run a candidate for the House. I've never voted for a state legislator that was a Democrat because there's never been one on the ballot.

Maybe we need a little less prioritizing and a little more "Well fuckit, let's try."
posted by threeturtles at 10:01 PM on December 5, 2016 [32 favorites]

So apparently in Michigan a ton of precincts can't match the number of votes counted with the number of ballots issued? And the law says that if thats the case you don't recount? Seems like a policy without possibility of error!
posted by Justinian at 10:12 PM on December 5, 2016 [5 favorites]

That's an absurd law if that's the case. I imagine it might result in some lawsuits. Sigh. It should not be so hard to have reliable elections. :(
posted by R343L at 10:21 PM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

Trendlines and shit. Arizona and Texas were closer than they've been in modern political history to electing a Democrat. If they put even a fraction of the effort into Texas they do into Ohio, for instance, I think you'd see some serious results.

Sure, but we're talking about 100k votes, in states Obama won twice, not even counting Ohio, which is moving the opposite direction from the country and probably a lost cause now. Just winning the same percentage of the same demographics in 2020 would flip WI, PA and MI back. That's where the election is won or lost, not Arizona's 11 EVs.

4 years the map will be different yes, but it will still run through Florida and the midwest. I'm all for the 50 state strategy in the House and Senate, which is why Schumer and the current DNC leadership need to go, and why Obama has been derelict in his role as leader of the party for the last 8 years. But presidential resources this time especially were wasted tilting at Arizona while the midwest burned the world down.
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:36 PM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

But presidential resources this time especially were wasted tilting at Arizona while the midwest burned the world down.

You could say the same thing about NC which was lost by a very similar margin, though at least it got rid of McCrory. Are we to treat all the attention that state was given over the course of the campaign as a frivolous waste of resources? It didn't feel that way. This is just a delicious platter of hindsight you're serving up, and it specifically feels like an east coast jab at the idea of schlepping out west.
posted by holgate at 10:59 PM on December 5, 2016 [6 favorites]

In further compare-and-contrast news this morning, the President-elect will be meeting with Laura Ingraham, while his daughter, who's supposed to be off running businesses and not part of the government, will be meeting with Al Gore to discuss climate change.

I imagine this discussion will be Al Gore frankly telling her that if they don't change course it's quite possibly going to result in millions to conceivably billions of deaths. Possibly with begging.
posted by jaduncan at 11:01 PM on December 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

Could even devalue many Trump properties or eliminate many potential clients.
posted by mazola at 11:05 PM on December 5, 2016 [5 favorites]

Something tells me Al Gore can handle Ivanka just fine. I doubt begging will be a part of the conversation.
posted by rhizome at 11:20 PM on December 5, 2016 [7 favorites]

"Mar a Lago means 'Sea to Lake,' right? Be a shame if you had to change the name to just 'Mar,' huh?"
posted by rhizome at 11:23 PM on December 5, 2016 [13 favorites]

News reports say that looks both trump and Ivanka met with Gore today. They are not even pretending to keep conflicts of interest on the down low. Other news says that Ivanka and her husband are moving to DC. Wonder why ;)

I hope they keep fucking up like this.
posted by futz at 11:30 PM on December 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

So which offices are Ivanka and Jared going to run for? My bet is Senate for Ivanka, Mayor of New York for Kushner.
posted by PenDevil at 11:35 PM on December 5, 2016

NYT Editorial: Why Does Donald Trump Lie About Voter Fraud?
posted by zachlipton at 11:37 PM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

Seems like a huge waste of time for Kushner since NYC despises Trump, and Kushner doesn't seem charismatic enough to get past that enormous handicap. Ivanka might get a seat if she can put up with some red state long enough to satisfy residency.
posted by honestcoyote at 11:38 PM on December 5, 2016

I doubt they they are interested in running for anything other than to the bank with insider information.
posted by futz at 11:41 PM on December 5, 2016 [27 favorites]

So which offices are Ivanka and Jared going to run for? My bet is Senate for Ivanka, Mayor of New York for Kushner.

New York voted for Clinton by 21 points and 1.6million votes. I don't think they are gonna put a Trump in the Senate just because she puts a pretty face on her awfulness.
posted by Justinian at 11:46 PM on December 5, 2016 [7 favorites]

New York voted for Clinton by 21 points and 1.6million votes.

It also elected Guiliani and Bloomberg (who switched to Republican to run).
posted by PenDevil at 11:52 PM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

AVClub: Adult Swim cancels alt-right sketch show Million Dollar Extreme
posted by PenDevil at 12:19 AM on December 6, 2016 [13 favorites]

Sigh. It should not be so hard to have reliable elections. :(

It isn't. Here in Australia we have no problem counting all of our ballots by hand (even though we don't have first past the post to make the counting easy), and since we have compulsory* voting the system is set up with enough polling places so that every citizen can vote.

*We call it "compulsory" voting, but we a have a secret ballot so if you really don't want to vote there's nothing stopping you from submitting a blank ballot.
posted by Proofs and Refutations at 12:51 AM on December 6, 2016 [4 favorites]

In 2016, I played myself, and it’s no comfort to me that I am not alone. Many of us played ourselves.

Jesus, enough with the hand wringing already. The analogy proposed, once again, does not hold. Not even within the article itself. The author goes to pains to describe what "playing myself" means, giving examples from rap music and life, but in each case the narrative is that the person involved acted in ways damaging to themselves by focusing on a mistaken item of desire. I don't know about y'all, but I voted for the candidate I wanted to be president, would be thrilled if that candidate did become president, and am experiencing no regret at my decision or my belief.

I didn't "play myself" into thinking Clinton would be the best choice, she was the best choice. She lost not due me fooling myself or convincing myself of something that couldn't be reality, she lost because Trump won the electoral college, because voters were disenfranchised, and because a lot of other people actually wanted Trump to win. Did those people play themselves? Possibly, though they seem pretty content with the notion of burning everything down, so we'll see how they feel when all that's left are ashes, if we get that far.

To write this article though from the perspective of a Clinton supporter is just silly. This kind of nonsense is counter-productive as it keeps pointing back to it somehow being Clinton and her supporters that are wrong, that made the mistakes, and don't know what they're doing, when it's Trump and his supporters that should be the focus of everyone's concerns. There is some use, I'm sure, for the party and the next candidate to look back and try to figure out what they can do next time in order to win, but there is little need for the rest of us to keep trying to find new people to blame, as if we'll find "one true cause" for Clinton's loss within our own cohort. It's a cheap and easy way to get article clicks since so many on the left like to endlessly analyse everything, even when there is little to gain by doing so.

If you voted for someone other than Clinton, thinking Clinton would win and therefore you could be all strategic-like in your voting, then, yeah, you played yourself. Other than that, supporting the candidate you want, even if they lose, isn't playing yourself since losing alone doesn't fit that concept. It's only in tricking yourself into believing something as being true and important when it is not and acting on that belief and then finding yourself harmed that becomes playing yourself. Oh, and if you need an example of how that works the author does provide one, his own damn article trying to explain how we all played ourselves.
posted by gusottertrout at 1:04 AM on December 6, 2016 [48 favorites]

Well, the United States was founded on the principles of "NOT everybody votes and NOT every vote counts equally" although there are different theories on why that came about (Tom Tomorrow cartoon).
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:06 AM on December 6, 2016 [12 favorites]

Trump is so much like my ignorant uncle, it would be comic if it weren't so tragic and scary. He is so stuck in the 1970's, fighting fights that were significant then, and which their side lost. Taiwan, Cuba, Iran - the world has moved on, but not your crazy uncles including uncle Trump. If he really is like my uncle, that would be the reason he doesn't want security briefings. If you confront my uncle with the facts proving that the world has changed since that time when he was a cool guy with hair and a convertible, he'll pretend he has gone deaf. He just doesn't want to hear.
He is angry that things haven't turned out the way he imagined they would, but he also doesn't want to accept responsibility for the things he actually did, so he stays in his bubble of ignorance, surrounded by enablers.
posted by mumimor at 5:05 AM on December 6, 2016 [20 favorites]

I had this weird moment where the personal and the political came together in a big rush of anxiety.

I left one of the burners on overnight a few days ago, I admit to my great shame. In my defense, we have these weird-ass electric burners and I'm used to working with gas and I know it was horrible and I'm sorry. But luckily, I didn't burn the damn building down. The smoke detector didn't even go off. I just went in the kitchen in the morning and was all *oh shit*

And now with regards to the world writ large I have this feeling that there are all these burners that are on and going untended and there are no fucking adults in the room to be all *WHO LEFT THE FUCKING STOVE ON GODDAMNIT*and turning shit off and saving us from waking up as half a charred husk.
posted by angrycat at 5:08 AM on December 6, 2016 [13 favorites]

Morning Joe thinks Trump foreign policy is shaping up to be brilliant
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:14 AM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

So apparently in Michigan a ton of precincts can't match the number of votes counted with the number of ballots issued? And the law says that if thats the case you don't recount? Seems like a policy without possibility of error!

Hi - I trained as a recount observer in Michigan and this is true but a little misleading. During a recount, you are only counting votes that you are absolutely sure have not been tampered with. If there are any signs of tampering - broken seals, or mismatches between number of ballots and votes counted - the votes from those precincts are considered suspect, and therefore cannot be counted. So it's not like they're all - hey, a tiny procedural error, let's throw all these votes in the garbage and move on - tossing a precinct's votes away suggests that the precinct has been compromised, and it's a very big deal.

Can you link to the place you got that info?
posted by pretentious illiterate at 5:28 AM on December 6, 2016 [5 favorites]

Well, the United States was founded on the principles of "NOT everybody votes and NOT every vote counts equally" although there are different theories on why that came about (Tom Tomorrow cartoon).

The lost Schoolhouse Rock explanation of how the Electoral College was intended to work, as a small 'r' republican check, suggests the Founders foresaw the possibility of a Trump-like candidate with "[t]alents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity" - but not the capture of all branches of government by one ideologically driven party that would go along with him for short-term gains.
posted by Doktor Zed at 5:28 AM on December 6, 2016 [15 favorites]

Compulsory voting in the US would mean the end of our time honored tradition of suppressing the votes of minorities. There's nothing less American than the idea that everyone's vote must be heard, much less weighed equally.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:38 AM on December 6, 2016 [35 favorites]

Hey, so, I found the links to the articles about the mismatched votes in Michigan, and I think they are exaggerating the problem a bit. It sounds like the precincts they've identified are off by one or two votes, almost certainly because of human error, and they are still considering whether or not to make special allowances for the recounts in those precincts. It's a little disturbing that these precincts are in Detroit, which is heavily Democratic compared to the rest of the state, and one consequence of the policy is that it may punish busier urban districts more than well-staffed, quieter rural ones, but Detroit is one of only a handful of precincts that got underway yesterday - most start today - so this amount of small-scale human error may well even itself out over the course of the next two weeks, affecting both candidates equally.

Overall, since the Michigan recount will only result in a changed outcome if there's evidence of consistent machine error or willful human tampering across multiple precincts, I don't think it's worth getting worked up over a handful of disqualified precincts one way or another - Trump has the state unless there's a dramatic upset; nothing that's happened so far points in that direction.

It would still be better if we had a more error-proof voting system, though!
posted by pretentious illiterate at 5:38 AM on December 6, 2016 [3 favorites]

I am trying to prepare myself to respond to violence with grace, but part of me really wants to cut and run.

To be entirely fair to ourselves and our shared history of humanity, it would be nice if we could acknowledge the reality that "cutting and running" is exactly what the vast majority of humanity has in fact done and why we are where we are. The USA was founded by people who ran away. It's the classic immigrant versus expat argument too – expats: ooh white people globetrotting! immigrants: ooh dirty poor people running away. (I'm saying this as the granddaughter of "dirty poor people", they may have been white but their ethnic farmin' and carpenterin' ways meant they had to change the family name to sound English in order to find work.) Realizing we're all in the same bag helps combat the stereotyped rhetoric that has shifted the balance in favor of white supremacy: if "running away" is bad, then just what are we saying about immigrants who've done just that? How can we claim to support refugees and immigrants if we ourselves make appeals to cowardice when we think we could have a better life elsewhere? Likewise, what does it say when we don't see rich white folk going wherever they want without a second thought as some sort of escapism?

As for cultural studies, Derrida et compagnie, I got through a BA in French and a Masters in comparative literature without ever reading a word of Derrida. During my Bachelors, my main prof was from a family of intellectual German refugees. He came as a young teen during WWII, and eventually became a French literature prof who mainly taught Habermas when it came to philosophy, as well as his own thinking. He had a major influence on me and is a huge reason I refuse to claim any one thinker as intellectual ancestry. When we do that, we forfeit our own unique life experiences as well as those of others. We forfeit a measure of creativity as well, when variations arise that require different responses than people in the past. When I got to Masters studies, my thesis advisor (PhD with top honors from the Sorbonne and head of the literature & languages faculty) was delighted I'd never read Derrida since he was, to quote her, "a rotten paternalist to the core. His work is infused with his ideas of patriarchal superiority." She asked that if I ever read him, to only do so in small doses and never forget all the rest I'd learned. So there is that. Still haven't read him. Don't see any need to. Plenty of patriarchy to deal with as is. Oh gee look who's president-elect.

Going back and re-watching "Century of the Self" about the father of propaganda public relations would be good for background too. He was American: Edward Bernays.
posted by fraula at 5:42 AM on December 6, 2016 [13 favorites]

You know, if several states were to pass laws that you could not be on the ballots in the primaries unless you released tax returns (at least six weeks prior to the primaries? before the ballots were finalized), that would make a difference.
Would a candidate be willing to give up delegates in California, New York, etc.? And, it would reward candidates who were forthright.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 5:53 AM on December 6, 2016 [9 favorites]

"...party to thank millionaire donors..." Sounds like either she's never going to try to lead a coalition including the working class again, or she learned nothing from the defeat.
posted by Coventry at 6:10 AM on December 6, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'm starting to think Paul Ryan and Mike Huckabee either don't know all of what HUD does or don't care.
posted by drezdn at 6:17 AM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

She's almost 70 and just suffered the most humiliating defeat since McGovern. Her career is over, so if she wants to hang out with her real friends, or hike around the woods for a couple months, whatever. Do you. If we're relying on the Clintons to "lead a coalition" after this, we might as well not even try.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:18 AM on December 6, 2016 [65 favorites]

Sounds like either she's never going to try to lead a coalition including the working class again, or she learned nothing from the defeat.

Yeah, because the working class have been shown to be turned off by billionaires. Oh wait... And people who voted based on the economy didn't choose her. Oh wait... And the poor and lower middle class didn't choose her. Oh wait...

Anywho...

The Dangerous Myth That Hillary Clinton Ignored the Working Class
To many white Trump voters, the problem wasn’t her economic stance, but the larger vision—a multi-ethnic social democracy—that it was a part of.
posted by chris24 at 6:19 AM on December 6, 2016 [76 favorites]

frat boy bombast is not what the world needs. not at all. but i think that's all we are going to get for the foreseeable future.

PHI GAMMA DELTA!

I wonder how the brothers are feeling?
posted by srboisvert at 6:21 AM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

This election was lost at least as much by the people who didn't vote as the people who did.

And Trump was a billionaire, but he presented the impression that he would serve his voters, not corporate donors.
posted by Coventry at 6:23 AM on December 6, 2016

Clinton's back out of the woods! She's doing a thank-you event December 15th!

She's done a few appearances since her loss, but let's focus on a snarky few paragraphs in Page Six.
posted by zutalors! at 6:28 AM on December 6, 2016 [11 favorites]

And Trump was a billionaire, but he presented the impression that he would serve his voters, not corporate donors.

Nah, he presented the reality that he was an incompetent racist fascist buffoon who was solely interested in enriching himself. His voters ignored this because he presented the impression he would serve his voters by preserving their white supremacy.

I think a lot of people vote against their interests, but I think people are pretty damn good at voting for what's most important to them. And that wasn't reality or economics, it was white nationalism. They sacrificed their better good in many ways for that.
posted by chris24 at 6:37 AM on December 6, 2016 [31 favorites]

> I'm starting to think Paul Ryan and Mike Huckabee either don't know all of what HUD does or don't care.

Both, and willfully.
posted by Westringia F. at 6:38 AM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

She's almost 70 and just suffered the most humiliating defeat since McGovern.

By what measure? She received more EVs than Romney in 2012, McCain in 2008, Dole in 1996, GHWBush in 1992, Dukakis in 1988, Mondale in 1984 (who only got 13 EVs), and Carter in 1980 (49 EVs). In terms of Electoral Votes, this election was closer than 7 of the previous 10 since Nixon-McGovern.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 6:42 AM on December 6, 2016 [16 favorites]

@realDonaldTrump Boeing is building a brand new 747 Air Force One for future presidents, but costs are out of control, more than $4 billion. Cancel order!

So I'm sure Boeing is pissed. This is a long standing order and either Trump is just posturing for his supporters or he is trying to cut one of his famous "deals" (i.e. take $3.5 billion or nothing.)
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:43 AM on December 6, 2016 [12 favorites]

She's almost 70 and just suffered the most humiliating defeat since McGovern.

By what measure?

And she won the popular vote by a higher percentage than 7 men elected president. This is the basically the best performance in an electoral college loss in history. *

* I'm excluding 1824 and 1876 since they were famously corrupt electoral college decisions.
posted by chris24 at 6:44 AM on December 6, 2016 [26 favorites]

I think it's Clinton rules in effect, you can just say whatever hyperbolic thing you want about HRC with no back up.
posted by zutalors! at 6:48 AM on December 6, 2016 [33 favorites]

And Trump was a billionaire, but he presented the impression that he would serve his voters, not corporate donors.

... then immediately turned around and appointed billionaires as secretaries of education, commerce, and the treasury.

Team Trump might as well just start referring to its voters as 'the rubes' or 'the marks'. Wouldn't make a damn bit of difference at this point.

Of course, as a smug Canadian I can say the above knowing we're about the last place that would succumb to fascism's siren song... but maybe we'll give it a listen.
posted by hangashore at 6:48 AM on December 6, 2016 [4 favorites]

So I'm sure Boeing is pissed.

I think one plane order is unlikely to affect the world's second largest defence contractor. Sounds like a good move by Trump.
posted by Coda Tronca at 6:48 AM on December 6, 2016

By the measure that she couldn't beat the worst opponent ever nominated when the fate of the country was on the line. Metrics don't really apply.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:51 AM on December 6, 2016 [12 favorites]

By what measure?

When you have news anchors so shocked they are basically in tears, that's a decent measure.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:51 AM on December 6, 2016 [9 favorites]

Pizzagate is spreadinmg to other businesses...

WaPo ‘We’re going to put a bullet in your head’: #PizzaGate threats terrorize D.C. shop owners

A few days before the election, Ousmaal noticed a disturbing Google review of the restaurant. It alleged that they, too, were involved in the sex-abuse plot. More online accusations quickly followed.

They suspected that the online mob may have targeted them because of a photo on Terasol’s website that showed Ousmaal and her daughter posing with Clinton, who had eaten there three or four years ago.

Our nation has lost the plot.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:53 AM on December 6, 2016 [40 favorites]

So I'm sure Boeing is pissed. This is a long standing order and either Trump is just posturing for his supporters or he is trying to cut one of his famous "deals" (i.e. take $3.5 billion or nothing.)

He's going to make the taxpayer buy his own plane, refurbish and bring it up to snuff security wise, then buy it back for some ridiculous discount when his term is over.
posted by PenDevil at 6:53 AM on December 6, 2016 [15 favorites]

Wait until Trump learns that Lockheed and Boeing are planning to move the assembly of the F-16 and F/A-18 to India.
posted by peeedro at 6:55 AM on December 6, 2016 [4 favorites]

Life in Obamacare’s Dead Zone: Excluded from the Affordable Care Act because of politics, thousands of poor Americans grapple with the toll — physical and psychological — of being uninsured.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:55 AM on December 6, 2016 [5 favorites]

By the measure that she couldn't beat the worst opponent ever nominated when the fate of the country was on the line. Metrics don't really apply.

Yep, and that is clearly all on Clinton. Not the media, not Comey, not the FBI, not Wikileaks, not Russia, not Trump voters, not Jill Stein, not Bernie or Busters, not the pollsters. It's on the woman. Let's humiliate her.
posted by chris24 at 6:57 AM on December 6, 2016 [59 favorites]

When the fate of the country was on the line, people shouldn't have gone all whatevs and checked the box for the orange racist who has only worked for his own family company.
posted by zutalors! at 7:02 AM on December 6, 2016 [10 favorites]

Here is some good news. Angela Merkel has been re-elected as leader of Germany's main conservative party, the Christian Democratic Union.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:03 AM on December 6, 2016 [40 favorites]

Let's settle for out of the the official party structure and out of the business of picking the next round of candidates. The Clintons and Schumers and Wassermans of the party had their turn at dictating the slate, and lost everything. To the extent they have to be humiliated to get their hands off shaping the next round, we need to do that. Or they could quietly walk away and turn over the party to someone else. Anyone else.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:05 AM on December 6, 2016 [6 favorites]

No, I don't think we "need to humiliate the Clintons. For what? Do we need to promote the kind of bloodsport they're doing on the right?

I'm all for clearing out the leadership but "we need to humiliate" is ridiculous to me.
posted by zutalors! at 7:07 AM on December 6, 2016 [23 favorites]

Also, the only way they'd be doing anything "quietly" is if Democrats stop paying attention sometime in the new year, which is likely.
posted by zutalors! at 7:08 AM on December 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

Matthew Walden read Michael Flynn's recent book so you don't have to. It's as racist and insane as you'd imagine. For the Greens and others who thought Trump was the less hawkish candidate, the tweetstorm includes these gems from his choice for National Security advisor.

8. The natural state of humans is war. Peace is abnormal, and he says we need to wake up from this false mind state

9. To enable this constant war the executive branch needs even broader war powers w/ less oversight so they can act quickly against threats
posted by chris24 at 7:08 AM on December 6, 2016 [21 favorites]

Here is some good news. Angela Merkel has been re-elected as leader of Germany's main conservative party, the Christian Democratic Union.
I've been wondering if Trump is planning to refer to world leaders by insulting nicknames, like he did with his opponents in the campaign. "Scary old lady Angela" and the like
posted by thelonius at 7:10 AM on December 6, 2016 [3 favorites]

I think one plane order is unlikely to affect the world's second largest defence contractor. Sounds like a good move by Trump.

Explain to me how this is "good."

Boeing makes the Air Force one here with American workers. If Trump does cancel this deal I'm sure Boeing has standing for a lawsuit, but even if they just take the hit (or settle for less money) it isn't Boeing who is going to swallow this loss-- it is their workforce. Plus I'm sure there are very good reasons why Air Force One is being replaced-- POTUS like it or not is the most important person in America and the USSS must be ever vigilant to protect his ass. What if they decide that the plane being used right now is in some way not perfectly safe? Do they prevent POTUS from flying?

I really don't pretend to understand DJT or his motives for doing or saying anything. I do wish someone would remind him that as the figurehead for all of the USA there is a giant target on his back.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 7:14 AM on December 6, 2016 [11 favorites]

I'm starting to think Paul Ryan and Mike Huckabee either don't know all of what HUD does or don't care.

In all the discussion about Carson and HUD, not a peep about FANNIE and FREDDIE, which underpin middle class wealth building over the past 75 years, and are now at risk if going wholly private. But we've heard a lot about urban projects and decay and the need for reform. Gah. The grift is gonna be historic.
posted by notyou at 7:17 AM on December 6, 2016 [11 favorites]

Mod note: One deleted. The word "hysteria" applied to this situation guarantees you will look like you're trolling; stop it right now. Also, folks, maybe let's not jump right in to another round of "Clinton: bad or worst", it's repetitive and introduces a nasty dynamic to these conversations that never leads anywhere positive.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 7:26 AM on December 6, 2016 [25 favorites]

for the love of god, DNC, do not run joe biden in 2020
posted by beerperson at 7:29 AM on December 6, 2016 [14 favorites]

for the love of god, DNC, do not run joe biden in 2020

Eh, who else has the name recognition and chutzpah? Most of the negatives of Joe Biden (prone to gaffes, old, busing-views) are negatives of Trump as well.
posted by drezdn at 7:34 AM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

I agree. Immediate talk should be about recounts and audits, Foster Campbell, how to thwart Trump's appointments, and if we want - the Hamilton Electors.

Biden also has the negatives of Clinton - too "establishment" and wrote the AUMF for Iraq.
posted by asteria at 7:34 AM on December 6, 2016 [4 favorites]

4 years is a long time and we're still in the shock and interregnum period. I highly doubt the Biden talk is serious or anything more than a Biden-ism or Joe expressing regrets he didn't try harder to get in this time.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:38 AM on December 6, 2016 [4 favorites]

Trump transition officials say @realDonaldTrump began his day with the intel PDB, presidential daily briefing

It's now news when the PEOTUS agrees to an intelligence briefing.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:39 AM on December 6, 2016 [37 favorites]

one chance to save SCOTUS...anybody have an informed opinion on this? to my mind, in the few minutes of action, B.O. could withdraw, then nominate a proper liberal. then, biden drives to the net.
posted by j_curiouser at 7:42 AM on December 6, 2016 [3 favorites]

WNYC: What Should You Do if You Witness a Bias Attack?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:48 AM on December 6, 2016 [4 favorites]

Biden fucking wrote the warrantless wiretapping and 'secret evidence' shit that became the Patriot Act

is that a gaffe or just an elderly thing
posted by beerperson at 7:49 AM on December 6, 2016 [8 favorites]

zombie eugene v debs for president 2020
posted by entropicamericana at 7:51 AM on December 6, 2016 [10 favorites]

Biden fucking wrote the warrantless wiretapping and 'secret evidence' shit that became the Patriot Act

He is also partially responsible for the shift in this country's view of marriage equality. People contain multitudes.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:51 AM on December 6, 2016 [13 favorites]

one chance to save SCOTUS...anybody have an informed opinion on this

It would require ironclad party discipline by 34 Senate Democrats, many of whom are up for reelection in two years. And it's the kind of parliamentary fuckery that Obama (and Democrats in general) have eschewed. And Garland doesn't strike me as the kind of person who wants the job so badly that he's willing to be confirmed via procedural shenanigans.

As much as I think Democrats need to start using every tactic available to them short of fraud or force to resist Trump, I don't think it will happen.
posted by jedicus at 8:01 AM on December 6, 2016 [6 favorites]

one chance to save SCOTUS...anybody have an informed opinion on this? to my mind, in the few minutes of action, B.O. could withdraw, then nominate a proper liberal. then, biden drives to the net.

My uninformed opinion is, my heart cannot handle this kind of fan-fiction. "Hope deferred makes the heart sick"
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 8:02 AM on December 6, 2016 [13 favorites]

Re: one chance to save SCOTUS

The complete article title is: "Senate Democrats Have One Shot At Saving SCOTUS - Will They?"

The answer is no. It doesn't matter that it's possible. There's no way they're doing it.

on preview what everyone else said.
posted by aspersioncast at 8:05 AM on December 6, 2016 [5 favorites]

Trump's favorable treatment by the media during the primary was partially due to the Clinton campaign's Pied Piper strategy, chris24. It's unsurprising that media attention paid to a successful-ish reality TV star would snowball and continue during the general. Jill Stein is insignificant by comparison.

Donald Trump didn’t flip working-class white voters. Hillary Clinton lost them.

Those voters learn about policy indirectly though other people's interpretations. They stayed home because they never heard anything inspiring enough about Clinton. They never heard anything inspiring because too few credible loud lefties were inspired by Clinton.

As an example, a candidate like Clinton who flip flops from supporting to opposing TPP mid primary simply cannot inspire much from people who worry about these reprehensible trade agreements. Yes, Clinton said the right things eventually, but too few people believe you by that point. That's especially true if you've supported awful trade deal so strongly in the past, and continue to do so privately.

Trump did not convert many Obama. In particular he did not sell them his trade ideas. Trump inspired rich whites, earning over $100k in the rust belt, partially by claiming that his trade ideas would benefit their communities. These voters would never vote for Bernie or Clinton, doing so might acknowledge that their lifestyle is part of the problem, but they likely stayed home for Romney.

Nancy Pelosi's victory shows House Democrats don't think they need to change to win

American can only have two political parties due to first-past-the-post elections, and no parliament, but there are many possible constituencies from which you can win office. It's the Democratic party's choice who they wish to be their constituents, limited only by who they inspire to run.

Right now, the Democrats are still playing their dangerous game, in which they need not do anything progressive, but merely point out the wickedness in the Republican party. It allows them all the corporate money while concentrating the power into relatively few and relatively controllable hands. This is never going to be a winning strategy because the Republicans can always adapt to the real demographics.

We should blame the Democrats for loosing the Presidency and Senate this year, as well as for loosing the House year after year. If they want to win, they need to inspire progressives, not corporate donors. I think right now the neo-liberals in the Democratic party prefer to loose than to be replaced by progressives who'd undermine their corporate client's interests.
posted by jeffburdges at 8:09 AM on December 6, 2016 [15 favorites]

I think one plane order is unlikely to affect the world's second largest defence contractor. Sounds like a good move by Trump.

Boeing is one of the few places where it's still a union shop and the workers make a living wage ($30+/hr in Seattle). That is why a plane costs $4 billion.

This is what people don't get. "Inefficiencies" in employment (government or otherwise) aren't just your typical DMV worker not working at 110% all day every day suckling at the government teat, it's decent wages and healthcare that they want to strip out. Your garbageman used to earn the equivalent of twenty-something bucks an hour plus health insurance and a pension. Allied Waste pays their workers barely $20/hr and deducts $5/hr for health insurance.

That's the inefficiency you strip out of government and it's what Trump wants Boeing to strip from their workers.

If you keep stripping away at costs instead of profits you just have a race to the bottom. You have less money flowing through the economy, you have more liquidity issues as the economic engine seizes from time to time, you get into dangerous levels deflation, more economic stagnation and it all goes to hell in a handbasket quickly.
posted by Talez at 8:11 AM on December 6, 2016 [79 favorites]

"I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat." Will Rogers
posted by kirkaracha at 8:12 AM on December 6, 2016 [6 favorites]

We should blame the Democrats for loosing the Presidency and Senate this year, as well as for loosing the House year after year. If they want to win, they need to inspire progressives, not corporate donors. I think right now the neo-liberals in the Democratic party prefer to loose than to be replaced by progressives who'd undermine their corporate client's interests.

I'd take this more seriously if the left showed up to primaries little alone mid-term elections. It's not like this shit is preordained. The DINO libertarian wannabes in Silicon Valley took down a long standing progressive congressman for shits and giggles.

You want to change things? Show up every time it counts not every four years.
posted by Talez at 8:14 AM on December 6, 2016 [24 favorites]

They stayed home because they never heard anything inspiring enough about Clinton. They never heard anything inspiring because too few credible loud lefties were inspired by Clinton.

And yet Hillary won the group making less than 50k and won working-class POC.

Wonder why they didn't need to be ~inspired~.
posted by asteria at 8:14 AM on December 6, 2016 [34 favorites]

This is what people don't get. "Inefficiencies" in employment (government or otherwise) aren't just your typical DMV worker not working at 110% all day every day suckling at the government teat, it's decent wages and healthcare that they want to strip out. Your garbageman used to earn the equivalent of twenty-something bucks an hour plus health insurance and a pension. Allied Waste pays their workers barely $20/hr and deducts $5/hr for health insurance.

Talez, I could have quoted your whole comment since I can't favorite it a million times. "Inefficiency" is code for decent pay. Business owners and politicians who imagine that 3rd world conditions are a sane policy should be confined.

I just wrote a 200 word comment full of anger and then deleted it. It'll have to wait till my anxiety is down a bit
posted by mumimor at 8:23 AM on December 6, 2016 [24 favorites]

Hillary won the group making less than 50k and won working-class POC.

It only works like that if voting is compulsory.

Voter turnout was the lowest in 20 years.
posted by Coventry at 8:24 AM on December 6, 2016

They never heard anything inspiring because too few credible loud lefties were inspired by Clinton.

If "loud lefties" are so inspiring, maybe they should actually do the tough job of running for president instead of standing at the sidelines and complaining.
posted by FJT at 8:24 AM on December 6, 2016 [11 favorites]

I find it hard to apply the term "progressive" to people who want to sit around and wait to be inspired enough to contribute to the political life of their country.
posted by zutalors! at 8:26 AM on December 6, 2016 [46 favorites]

That is why a plane costs $4 billion.

First, please don't accept and repeat Trump's numbers here. It's two planes we're paying for, not one. There's no source for the $4B number other than Trump's tweet. This big pdf from the GAO puts a decade of costs and operation at 3.2 billion, that includes $2 billion in R&D costs.

Second, it's not union wages that make the planes so expensive:

Loren Thompson, a defense consultant, said that “Air Force One has unique communications, safety and self-protection features so that the president can function under the most trying circumstances — like nuclear war.” The price tag, he said, “is driven by the demands of the mission.”

If there's anything to be upset about it's the constant mission creep within the military acquisition system.
posted by peeedro at 8:26 AM on December 6, 2016 [41 favorites]

Yep, and that is clearly all on Clinton. Not the media, not Comey, not the FBI, not Wikileaks, not Russia, not Trump voters, not Jill Stein, not Bernie or Busters, not the pollsters. It's on the woman.

If we're going to blame people, can't we blame the shitty jerkwad white people who would vote for a rutabaga if it promised pain to brown people?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:28 AM on December 6, 2016 [25 favorites]

If "loud lefties" are so inspiring, maybe they should actually do the tough job of running for president

I know, right? Pusillanimous cowards, the lot of them.
posted by Coventry at 8:28 AM on December 6, 2016 [3 favorites]

I hope at some point we'll be able to have a serious discussion about the errors she and her campaign made without the conversation devolving into exaggerations and accusations.

To what end? Seriously, she's done. She didn't win and next time the Democrats will run someone different who'll have their own set of strengths and weaknesses. Any rehash that's gone on and would go on, is going to be mostly conjecture based primarily on what people felt about Clinton running themselves. The same people will attack her, the same people will defend her, Bernie will come up, everyone will get annoyed with each other and weaken the sense of unity needed for next time when this will actually matter.

I mean, sure, it's fine to play let's imagine and try to recast this last election armchair candidate style, but it's empty and we aren't going to get much out of it beyond the satisfaction of righteousness for validating our own opinions. Clinton lost for a number of reasons, any of which, had they gone differently, could have changed the outcome, but none did. Another candidate may have won, or not. We'll never know and pretending we will or that we can claim so is ridiculous and counter-productive. So my vote is let's not, but I know people will anyway because that's how us too frickin' smart lefties fly.
posted by gusottertrout at 8:28 AM on December 6, 2016 [49 favorites]

Trumpgrets: A compendium of tweets expressing regret for voting for trump.
posted by Coventry at 8:29 AM on December 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

2016 was a higher turnout election than 2012. 58.8% ('16) of the voting eligible population vs 58.6% ('12). Likely will go a bit higher.
posted by melissasaurus at 8:30 AM on December 6, 2016 [21 favorites]

Clinton's campaign probably should have trusted the polls less though, of course, if she had focused on shoring up Wisconsin and Michigan and won we'd probably be complaining now about why the Dems didn't try for Texas so...

Those last two months did campaign almost exclusively in OH, FL, PA, IA , NC, and VA with a few stops in some Southwestern states and I think Wisconsin thrown in, if I recall correctly. But the above six were the main focus.

She lost all but VA. I think a lot of that could be due to increased voter suppression after the gutting of the VRA combined with apathy as 'everyone knew Hillary was going to win' so I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people stayed home.

Beyond focusing more on MI, WI, and PA, I'm not sure what she could have done. And I'm not sure how much that would have helped in the end when you realize the other problems would have still been there.

She can't control the DNC despite what some believe or else I think she would have at least won PA and probably run better options in FL and OH for the Senate races. She can't control the media. Comey was Obama's boneheaded move. The Dems as a whole decided to let the VRA die without a fight and she couldn't do anything about OH, NC, MI, WI all having Republican governors. And while removing Dean and replacing him with DWS was a bad move, I'm not sure removing DWS while we were in the middle of an election was much smarter.
posted by asteria at 8:31 AM on December 6, 2016 [12 favorites]

First, please don't accept and repeat Trump's numbers here. It's two planes we're paying for, not one. There's no source for the $4B number other than Trump's tweet. This big pdf from the GAO puts a decade of costs and operation at 3.2 billion, that includes $2 billion in R&D costs.

I didn't have numbers but yes, you are 100% correct. The rhetorical point was that Boeing does (for varying definitions of "does") treat its employees with a modicum of respect and pays them well and I don't think it's any less valid when Trump calls for costs to come down whatever they are.
posted by Talez at 8:31 AM on December 6, 2016 [4 favorites]

You want to change things? Show up every time it counts not every four years.

That's great advice for those who only show up every four years, but are participants in this thread members of that group? I vote in every election/primary and participate in my local party, but I don't believe that I'm changing anything.
posted by Radiophonic Oddity at 8:31 AM on December 6, 2016 [3 favorites]

Maybe next time the lefty could not waste time trying to win fucking Iowa when New Hampshire is all but guaranteed for them and could actually try to win the South instead of whining about having to do so?

Or just not campaign like it's 1996. That would work too.
posted by asteria at 8:34 AM on December 6, 2016 [3 favorites]

That's great advice for those who only show up every four years, but are participants in this thread members of that group? I vote in every election and participate in my local party, but I don't believe that I'm changing anything.

A lot of people are but I did end the process at step 1.

The second part is organizing. Getting like-minded people together and out there pushing the party to the left in the primary stages and rolling the dice. Especially in places like California where you can run two D candidates against each other.

The third is accepting the consensus of the electorate once the primary is over knowing everyone who wanted a say had their say. Taking your ball and going home if you lost is just destructive.

This is what Republicans do in spades to drag their party to the right. They pick a target, they come out in force, primary the hell out of the target, and then their local group points at the incumbent and says "you're next if you don't fall into line". Then they come out and vote an R ticket every time no matter which shithead pulled the nomination.
posted by Talez at 8:35 AM on December 6, 2016 [7 favorites]

Thanks, melissasaurus. It doesn't really change my argument, though.
posted by Coventry at 8:35 AM on December 6, 2016

Is 2012 not within the past 20 years?
posted by asteria at 8:38 AM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

Trumpgrets: A compendium of tweets expressing regret for voting for trump.

WAIT WAIT SCORPION Y U STING ME?!
posted by tocts at 8:38 AM on December 6, 2016 [5 favorites]

> Thanks, melissasaurus. It doesn't really change my argument, though.

It directly refutes the only evidence you supplied for that argument, so I'd say it affects how that argument's going to be received.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:39 AM on December 6, 2016 [12 favorites]

It is absurd Trump tweeted about Boeing, but, judging from the small sample of people I was around when it came on the news, it had an outsized effect. After days of not hearing anyone say much one way or the other about Trump, this sparked animated conversation between strangers. So, if that was the desired effect, it seemed to work better than one might have guessed.
posted by gusottertrout at 8:39 AM on December 6, 2016

could actually try to win the South instead of whining about having to do so?

Yeah, and part of this is having the lefty not insist that economic justice will fix racial injustice. Lefties can't win that way. Why was there no handwringing about that?
posted by zutalors! at 8:39 AM on December 6, 2016 [4 favorites]

Flynn's son's transition email has been shut down (CNN)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:41 AM on December 6, 2016 [5 favorites]

It is absurd Trump tweeted about Boeing, but, judging from the small sample of people I was around when it came on the news, it had an outsized effect. After days of not hearing anyone say much one way or the other about Trump, this sparked animated conversation between strangers. So, if that was the desired effect, it seemed to work better than one might have guessed.

This is how he's going to control the message. He may not hold a press conference or send out a briefing his entire time in office, and the only time we'll hear from him will be rallies and through tweets where he can throw out a totally false one liner and the press will jump all over it from being so starved for any word from the president. They learned from the campaign, don't put him in extemporaneous situations outside of his Nazi rallies.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:43 AM on December 6, 2016 [6 favorites]

so starved for any word from the president

I literally can't imagine this scenario.
posted by zutalors! at 8:45 AM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

This is how he's going to control the message. He may not hold a press conference or send out a briefing his entire time in office, and the only time we'll hear from him will be rallies and through tweets where he can throw out a totally false one liner and the press will jump all over it from being so starved for any word from the president. They learned from the campaign, don't put him in extemporaneous situations outside of his Nazi rallies.

Yes, Trump is a grandmaster at one dimensional chess. And I don't mean that as a joke exactly. His strength is in spouting radically condensed information without any context and letting people take it where they will, doing all the leg work for him, and then adding rejoinders over any excess he doesn't like later to keep the process rolling until the next subject. It's sad that it works, but with how little people know about the office and governing in general and with how horrid the news media is at context, work it does.
posted by gusottertrout at 8:48 AM on December 6, 2016 [22 favorites]

The Atlantic: President Trump’s Perpetual Campaign: Talking to Falk and a dozen others at the rally, I got the sense they would do exactly what they’d done throughout the campaign: follow Trump wherever he led, rationalizing his lapses and believing his claims of triumph, facts be damned.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:49 AM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

I literally can't imagine this scenario.

Look how they jump when he tweets now, he hasn't been on TV, or given a conference or an interview, or talked to the transition pool. They only get the barest information about his movements. I'm sure he'll go on FOX and when Brietbart State TV is up and running, but they already talked about not even having a press pool, denying WaPo and the NYT access, whether to continue the daily briefing, etc. The primary way he's interacting with the media is through 140 characters of raving lunacy, and they're forced/eager to dissect each one in the absence of traditional correspondence channels.

They're smart enough to know he doesn't come off well when exposed to a broad audience for any period of time, and can't respond to detailed or knowledgeable questioning in any coherent fashion. So they won't ever subject him to that. He'll give the couple required speeches. He'll hold Nazi rallies where he can preach to the brownshirts. He'll do a few tightly controlled appearances with allied and state-run media outlets like FOX and Brietbart. And that's all. Except tweet.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:54 AM on December 6, 2016 [16 favorites]

So do we think that trump is somehow going to skip the State of the Union speeches, the press conferences when heads of state visit, all the typical presidential stuff where they generally have a bit of a speech and/or a press conference? Surely he can't skip all of it. Though, I guess he could since we are now fully in bizarro world.
posted by not that mimi at 8:57 AM on December 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

they jump when he tweets any time.
posted by zutalors! at 8:58 AM on December 6, 2016

Not that NH really has an incredible number of electoral votes at stake, but it's generally a pretty close state, and a number of NH elections are really, really easily flippable back and forth between republicans and democrats.


As someone who volunteered for the campaign in NH: Yup. We flipped a Senate and a House seat from R to D here, and Clinton won, but they were all close.

HRC won by less than 3,000 votes; Senate was less than 2,000, the house seat by less than 5,000. It was not guaranteed.
posted by damayanti at 8:58 AM on December 6, 2016 [12 favorites]

It's sad that it works, but with how little people know about the office and governing in general and with how horrid the news media is at context, work it does.

It's policy debate stemming from the utterances of a shitlord oracle who gets his visions via the smears at the bottom of a taco bowl and RealPatriotEagleFlagNews dot com.
posted by holgate at 9:00 AM on December 6, 2016

Look how they jump when he tweets now, he hasn't been on TV, or given a conference or an interview, or talked to the transition pool. They only get the barest information about his movements. I'm sure he'll go on FOX and when Brietbart State TV is up and running, but they already talked about not even having a press pool, denying WaPo and the NYT access, whether to continue the daily briefing, etc. The primary way he's interacting with the media is through 140 characters of raving lunacy, and they're forced/eager to dissect each one in the absence of traditional correspondence channels.

Wait. If they're not going to have a daily briefing what's Conway supposed to do?
posted by Talez at 9:00 AM on December 6, 2016

Yes. I think he won't give many speeches at all. He'll hold closed door meetings with heads of state and the staged photo ops. No questions from the press. He'll give the required SoTU, and that really might be it as far as speeches.

I don't expect there to be any press conferences with trump, period. His people know he'll just start calling everyone names and it will be a total shitfest. One sided brietbart "news" briefings, one on one interviews with toadies, and tweets from here on out.

Exactly this. He won't ever face actual questioning.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:00 AM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

The President has to give the State of the Union to Congress per the Constitution, but it doesn't have to be yearly and we don't have to know what's in it.
posted by zutalors! at 9:01 AM on December 6, 2016 [3 favorites]

If they're not going to have a daily briefing what's Conway supposed to do?

Conway wasn't the name floated for press secretary. That's Laura Ingram. Really.

Conway is creating his permanent campaign structure. Really. She'll just keep doing what she's been doing, campaigning and going on CNN.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:02 AM on December 6, 2016

it's the kind of parliamentary fuckery that Obama (and Democrats in general) have eschewed

too true. i would say that conditions have evolved. dems should be asking, "in the same situation, would the Rs do it?" i think the answer is yes. and i think if its legal, and parliamentary-ly do-able...they should do it. it would be a terrific opening salvo, and certainly wake up everyone to the fact that the left is fighting.
posted by j_curiouser at 9:04 AM on December 6, 2016 [13 favorites]

The President has to give the State of the Union to Congress per the Constitution, but it doesn't have to be yearly and we don't have to know what's in it.

And there's no requirement for it to be greater than 140 characters in length.
posted by peeedro at 9:04 AM on December 6, 2016 [24 favorites]

That's great advice for those who only show up every four years, but are participants in this thread members of that group? I vote in every election/primary and participate in my local party, but I don't believe that I'm changing anything.

Do you know other people who don't bother to vote? Can you try to convince them?

Getting good information about local races can be difficult because the reporting can be sketchy and underfunded, but on the other hand, the stuff you learn is more likely to be the direct if sort of petty information that can get people to vote in the first place. And sometimes it's just 'this person is responsible for your roads not being plowed', but other times it's about how the police treat people, what the judges believe, or someone is under indictment or puts a staple through their opponent's forehead and they still win because nobody else is paying attention.
posted by dinty_moore at 9:08 AM on December 6, 2016

If "loud lefties" are so inspiring, maybe they should actually do the tough job of running for president instead of standing at the sidelines and complaining.

or even Congress
posted by thelonius at 9:12 AM on December 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'd put even odds on Trump wanting to take the moment to grandstand rather than fob it off to some writers, though.

"Ladies and gentlemen, my fellow Americans, the state of our union is great. Believe me, it's so great. It's so great... you can't imagine. And we're making it greater of course. Every day, huge steps. Every day we're making... taking... just huge steps. Really huge. Big league. Believe me, it's so great you're not going to believe it."

... probably followed by that weird snake poem and half an hour of riffing on the latest head of state who returned his phone call.
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 9:17 AM on December 6, 2016 [12 favorites]

TPM: Flynn's Son, 'Pizzagate' Promoter, Is No Longer On Trump Transition Team

That fact was already posted upthread. What's new is that Pence went on Morning Joe this morning and said “General Flynn’s son has no involvement in the transition whatsoever." A bit later:

Hours later, Trump communications director Jason Miller said in a phone call with reporters that Michael G. Flynn “was helping his father with some administration and scheduling duties early on in the transition process and he is no longer involved with transition efforts.” He did not specify when Flynn's involvement in the transition had ended.

Do we now get into a Bill Clinton-level semantic debate over whether "has" means "currently possesses" or "does not now nor has he ever possessed?"
posted by zachlipton at 9:21 AM on December 6, 2016 [8 favorites]

@realDonaldTrump: SOTU: America not great again yet, still working on it, see U next year #BYE
posted by Bringer Tom at 9:24 AM on December 6, 2016 [15 favorites]

Politico: Trump Tower is advertising Secret Service protection as a hot new amenity: Less than a week after Trump was elected, prominent New York real estate agency Douglas Elliman blasted out an e-mail with the subject: “Fifth Avenue Buyers Interested in Secret Service Protection?” to advertise a $2.1 million, 1,052-square-foot condo in the tower on 721 Fifth Avenue.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:33 AM on December 6, 2016 [19 favorites]

Re one-dimensional chess and [] controlling the message:

I'm not going to link the first full-text result here, but there are free copies of the title essay from George Saunders's The Braindead Megaphone floating around on the internet, and I think he unknowingly predicted the effect twitter could have on discourse (the book was published in 2007, but I doubt Saunders was aware of twitter when he wrote the essay).
posted by aspersioncast at 9:35 AM on December 6, 2016

Do you know other people who don't bother to vote? Can you try to convince them?

Today, for example, I tried to suggest voting or any participation in the political system to my sister, but she's not interested, even though these political decisions have affected her life deeply over the past few decades. This is a conversation I have with her several times per year. She doesn't seem swayed by anything I mention, by any evidence that connects her present condition to decisions of the elected representatives.

I've been working on the non-voters in my social circle and family for years or decades. At what point do you accept that non-voters who sat out every presidential election of the past 30 years, plus every other election that affects them, aren't interested in your arguments for voting?
posted by Radiophonic Oddity at 9:37 AM on December 6, 2016 [6 favorites]

Thiel could gain from Trump transition. Thiel won't even say if he's signed the ethics agreement.
posted by zachlipton at 9:38 AM on December 6, 2016

Less than a week after Trump was elected, prominent New York real estate agency Douglas Elliman blasted out an e-mail with the subject: “Fifth Avenue Buyers Interested in Secret Service Protection?” to advertise a $2.1 million, 1,052-square-foot condo in the tower on 721 Fifth Avenue.

Oh for fuck's sake.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 9:40 AM on December 6, 2016 [33 favorites]

Mod note: One deleted. Sorry, the fake southern accent thing is a problem folks have asked us to nudge back on; fine to make your point without that derailing aspect.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:46 AM on December 6, 2016 [9 favorites]

Since it's relevant, Boeing/U.S. is already in a trade dispute at the WTO with Airbus/E.U. over tax incentives Washington state gave to Boeing for manufacturing the 777X (Boeing says the incentives are less than the subsidized loans EU countries gave Airbus, which is also in dispute and over which the US has threatened sanctions).
posted by melissasaurus at 9:57 AM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

I've been working on the non-voters in my social circle and family for years or decades. At what point do you accept that non-voters who sat out every presidential election of the past 30 years, plus every other election that affects them, aren't interested in your arguments for voting?

It's not going to work for everyone, and in the specific case I was responding to, it was about people who did vote in Presidential elections, but not in midterms. But we have a tendency to treat nonvoters as a binary in general - once they decide to not vote, they'll never vote again. Candidates tend to write them off as nonexistent or impossible. And this is simply not true. There are going to be people who don't vote no matter what, but there are also the people who will vote with the right incentive, if they believe that there's a candidate out there that will help them out. And then there are a ton of people who just forget to register to vote for midterms, because there's a lot fewer PSA's reminding them that the deadline is coming up. And then there are the ones that don't even realize who is up for reelection during a midterm.

We don't have to get all of the nonvoters, but there's this huge pool of essentially undeclared voters to go after. One of the things we can do is try.
posted by dinty_moore at 10:01 AM on December 6, 2016 [3 favorites]

Can you link to the place you got that info?

broken machines could throw Michigan recount into chaos.

I mean, it's the Guardian... sooo...
posted by Justinian at 10:04 AM on December 6, 2016 [3 favorites]

Trump's favorable treatment by the media during the primary was partially due to the Clinton campaign's Pied Piper strategy, chris24.

As I've said before, the Pied Piper strategy was to tie the extreme beliefs and actions of the more marginal candidates to the party as a whole to damage the other candidates, like had been done to Romney. It was not exclusive to Trump, and it was mentioned once briefly in all the leaked emails. You can read the entirety of it below. If you think they're encouraging favorable coverage from the press, I don't know what to tell you. They're clearly wanting negative coverage of the craziness so it can be tied to other candidates and the party as a whole. The goal is to let people know about the underlying extremism - rather than the press ignoring it because it's just Trump, or Cruz or Carson - so as to damage the party and candidates.

Operationalizing the Strategy

Pied Piper Candidates

There are two ways to approach the strategies mentioned above. The first is to use the field as a whole to inflict damage on itself similar to what happened to Mitt Romney in 2012. The variety of candidates is a positive here, and many of the lesser known can serve as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to the right. In this scenario, we don't want to marginalize the more extreme candidates, but make them more "Pied Piper" candidates who actually represent the mainstream of the Republican Party. Pied Piper candidates include, but aren't limited to:

• Ted Cruz • Donald Trump • Ben Carson

We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to them seriously.

posted by chris24 at 10:04 AM on December 6, 2016 [14 favorites]

Do NOT believe Trump sold his stocks in June w/o documents proving it. He told me that precise lie - proven false by SEC filings -- in 1987.

--@kurteichenwald

In fairness, I can believe Trump sold some stocks in June to raise funds for the campaign, but it's weird they randomly decided to tell the press about it today, and as the Post points out, the real question is where all the money went, and he doesn't have to file another financial disclosure until May 2018.
posted by zachlipton at 10:08 AM on December 6, 2016 [10 favorites]

Mod note: One comment deleted. Please don't go back to the Pied Piper thing. We've been over it and over it, and have asked you specifically to drop it, jeffburdges.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 10:09 AM on December 6, 2016 [8 favorites]

Case in point, my father in law who at 61 never voted once in his life until this year when he specifically went and registered to vote for Hillary Clinton and against Donald Trump. And he's the fabled WWC man with a high school education who lost his good paying manufacturing job when the paper mill shut down. He knows a fucking clown when he sees one.

Unfortunately it happened the year he moved to MA from NH to be closer to the grandkids, but I'll take every vote we can get.
posted by lydhre at 10:11 AM on December 6, 2016 [13 favorites]

Those last two months did campaign almost exclusively in OH, FL, PA, IA , NC, and VA with a few stops in some Southwestern states and I think Wisconsin thrown in, if I recall correctly. But the above six were the main focus.

You recall incorrectly.
posted by DynamiteToast at 10:12 AM on December 6, 2016 [4 favorites]

And that wasn't reality or economics, it was white nationalism. They sacrificed their better good in many ways for that.

When I think of why I can't talk to my Trump-voting sister right now it boils down to "You blew up my kid's (and your kids'! And your grandkids'!) futures because you missed being able to say the n-word and tell the racist jokes you loved when you were a teenager. WAY TO GO. WELL DONE."

At this point I consider racism an addiction for white people. Some people can refuse it and not indulge, but there's a big subsection that can't live without it and lash out when you threaten it. Trump got them shitfaced on it and they made some really bad decisions and now they're in total denial.
posted by emjaybee at 10:24 AM on December 6, 2016 [43 favorites]

I think one plane order is unlikely to affect the world's second largest defence contractor. Sounds like a good move by Trump.

This kind of rhetoric would be amazingly short-sighted and stupid coming from anyone, but it's really disheartening to see it coming from people who are trying to claim the mantle of leftism, and doubly so when they aren't even employed in the country with the potential affected companies. There are probably hundreds of thousands of companies that work either as contractors or partners with the government, the overwhelming number of which are small- to medium-sized businesses. The vast majority of them are important if not crucial to aspects of government operations for stuff that isn't related to bombing or spying, and for whom a single contract is a pretty big fucking deal. Now all of these companies have to worry about every little thing they say that could set off an unpredictable, vindictive man, even if it's not directly related to him. And that's without getting into the power he'll get his appointees will wield, or his army of digital brownshirts passing on doxxed info from employees. Sure, you get to stick your thumb in Boeing's eye, but they're more likely to be the canary in the coal mine for many more employees of companies that are likely to be affected, if not eliminated entirely.
posted by zombieflanders at 10:24 AM on December 6, 2016 [44 favorites]

So Trump has indicated that he's not going to pay a contractor for something that's already been contracted? I'm so surprised.
posted by triggerfinger at 10:37 AM on December 6, 2016 [16 favorites]

Even true-believer elected GOPers who rail against government waste and inefficiency will shovel money to military contractors as a combination of corporate welfare and local pork. Sure, it'd be nice to have fewer giant holiday holes like the F-35, and it's money that could be better spent on other things, but it's not like it would be spent on other things.

As zombieflanders says, having the fucking Lord of Misrule in charge of the Feast of Fools means that nobody can plan for anything. It's a recipe for stagnation because any strategic decisions about investment have to go through rounds of second-guessing about cronyism and sycophancy.
posted by holgate at 10:38 AM on December 6, 2016 [9 favorites]

Group Sues to Demand Florida Election Recount

TL;DR - the suit claims a bunch of potential shenanigans, most of which are unlikely and/or currently unsupported by evidence (e.g., hacking), but they might have a legit question re the 233% increase in "deemed invalid" ballots (Clinton would have to win nearly all of these deemed-invalid ballots to flip the state, but IMO, it's a worthwhile exercise to pull back the curtain and examine how these "invalidation" decisions are made, especially since we're likely to see an increase in this kind of thing going forward).
posted by melissasaurus at 10:40 AM on December 6, 2016 [28 favorites]

Does Trump think that Boeing will just be like the piano shop or the carpet shop or any of the small vendors he ripped off and just take it? I'm pretty sure they'd say "we have a contract" and walk right into federal court.
posted by zachlipton at 10:42 AM on December 6, 2016 [13 favorites]

I think one plane order is even more unlikely to affect the world's largest budget than this will affect Boeing's budget, but it seems a lot of people eat up this kind of penny-ante bullshit.
posted by Green With You at 10:46 AM on December 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

I seriously don't get the thing in Michigan where the vote totals will stand without a recount in precincts where the number of ballots to be recounted doesn't match the number issued on election day - the reporting makes it seem like they just throw their hands up in the air at that point, but that should be the point where a very serious investigation starts. How is a mismatch in those numbers not evidence of possible fraud that needs to be looked into ASAP?
posted by jason_steakums at 10:46 AM on December 6, 2016 [6 favorites]

I see some discussion of HRC allowing her electors to vote for the McMuffin.
Then it would not take many GOP electors defecting to do the same.

Result: the dumpster fire is extinguished, and Paul Ryan is not the president.

I am so hoping for this.
posted by ocschwar at 10:47 AM on December 6, 2016 [4 favorites]

The AF1 thing is also weird because according to the guy NPR was interviewing as I drove into the office today, the current AF1 will be over 30 years old by the time the new one rolls out of the hangar. We need a new plane with up-to-date security measures in place.

You would think Trump would recognize that, unless he thinks he can keep flying his own plane and charge the US for the privilege? Is that the plan? (Also probably shorting Boeing stock...)
posted by suelac at 10:48 AM on December 6, 2016 [4 favorites]

MetaFilter: a lot of people eat up this kind of penny-ante bullshit.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:48 AM on December 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

Those Trumpgretful people... man. I just can't imagine inhabiting a headspace where I could ignore all the pre-election blaring air-raid sirens of warning that Trump is a constantly-lying, clueless demagogue—and yet can see the deception and incompetence so clearly now.

I expected that site to be full of WHATTAYA MEAN YOU CAN'T KILL HILLARY RAWR, but most of these people are citing paying-attention-to-headlines reasons for their turning against Trump (Taiwan, appointing Goldman execs, DeVos, etc.). I mean, what were your thoughts about the headlines before you voted for the guy?
posted by Rykey at 10:49 AM on December 6, 2016 [20 favorites]

The NYT has produced detailed charts on who Trump has insulted on Twitter over time.
posted by zachlipton at 10:50 AM on December 6, 2016

Let's see $30/hour for a 4 billion dollar plane. The workers are to blame because it takes 130,000,000 man hours to make the plane. ($100,000,000 left over for incidentals). That's 14,840 years or 100 years if 148 people are constantly working on the plane day and night. Come to think of it, they should get over time.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 10:51 AM on December 6, 2016

In which we find a new person to blame for Trump's call with Taiwan: Bob Dole!

Follow-up: Bob Dole’s Law Firm Was Paid $20,000 A Month To Lobby For Taiwan

The man was literally a paid foreign agent. Every former Republican nominee skipped the RNC except one man: Bob Dole. And the delegates cheered Dole and he endorsed Trump. It turns out his influence was for sale.
posted by zachlipton at 10:55 AM on December 6, 2016 [35 favorites]

Does Trump think that Boeing will just be like the piano shop or the carpet shop or any of the small vendors he ripped off and just take it? I'm pretty sure they'd say "we have a contract" and walk right into federal court.

Also, Boeing is the only manufacturer that even submitted a proposal for the new planes (it's not an official bid/contract for manufacture yet, it's still in the engineering and design phase). The only other suitable plane in existence is made by Airbus in France and is therefore not eligible. They literally cannot get an AF1 plane somewhere else.
posted by melissasaurus at 10:56 AM on December 6, 2016 [9 favorites]

McCain just now: "I'm not talking about Trump. I'm not talking about Trump. I'm not talking about Trump. I'm not talking about Trump."

--@mkraju

What a joke.
posted by zachlipton at 10:57 AM on December 6, 2016 [8 favorites]

Some details on Pizzagate:

I live in DC. I have been to Comet Ping Pong. There are none of the claimed symbols on the walls, there is no kill room, there of course, is none of that.

So I met a guy who works there last week. Another friend ran into him the day of the assault rifle thingie and he said this is what happened: A 19-year old was at the door when the guy came in and went straight to the back. The 19-year old saw the gun and got everyone out of the building, except for one employee, who was dropping a deuce in the restroom. He comes out and there is no one in the restaurant but the guy with the gun. The guy with the rifle fires two shots at a lock on the storage closet and tries to open it to free the "trapped kids." The employee who was in the bathroom beats a quick exit out of the place and the police surround it.

I have been to this place a lot of times and they have a lot of punk shows there. Its also favored by families and something could have happened. Dudes on the internet who have never been there are making outlandish claims that are completely divorced from reality. Insane.
posted by Ironmouth at 10:58 AM on December 6, 2016 [53 favorites]

He doesn't want a new AF1, he wants to use his own plane and make the US Government pay for the upgrades and the maintenance. And he gets to tell the uninformed masses how he saved the US money by cutting excessive liberal spending while lining his fancy pockets.

Self-dealing is the one area he truly excels at.
posted by lydhre at 10:59 AM on December 6, 2016 [28 favorites]

unless he thinks he can keep flying his own plane and charge the US for the privilege?

He thinks he has the best plane. He thinks he has the best tower. He's already turning the Tower of Doom into a secure presidential residence at taxpayer expense. What else should we assume?
posted by holgate at 11:03 AM on December 6, 2016 [4 favorites]

He doesn't want a new AF1, he wants to use his own plane and make the US Government pay for the upgrades and the maintenance. And he gets to tell the uninformed masses how he saved the US money by cutting excessive liberal spending while lining his fancy pockets.

Yep. We're counting down to him tweeting: "I'm going to use my old plane (not the fancy one Obama ordered); saving #HardworkingAmericans $4 billion!" And the press reporting it as a "victory."

I hate everything.
posted by melissasaurus at 11:03 AM on December 6, 2016 [22 favorites]

Hmm... Two weeks apart.

The Daily 202: Rust Belt Dems broke for Trump because they thought Clinton cared more about bathrooms than jobs

The Daily 202: How bathroom bill backlash cost North Carolina’s Republican governor his job
posted by chris24 at 11:05 AM on December 6, 2016 [14 favorites]

And I don't even see it as calculated self-dealing so much as [ ] wants the entire presidency retrofitted to suit his own lifestyle.
posted by holgate at 11:05 AM on December 6, 2016 [3 favorites]

Those Trumpgretful people... man.

This is my favorite comment on that particular situation.
posted by Dormant Gorilla at 11:06 AM on December 6, 2016 [9 favorites]

His own plane is entirely unsuitable for the purpose, especially for international trips. Even if the Air Force was willing to use it, and there's no way that they are, retrofitting it with aerial refueling capability, IR countermeasures, communications equipment, and whatever secret stuff they've got on there would take years, if such things are even possible, and cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
posted by zachlipton at 11:06 AM on December 6, 2016 [6 favorites]

He is himself entirely unsuitable for the purpose of the presidency, but that hasn't stopped him or anyone else yet.

Alas.
posted by lydhre at 11:09 AM on December 6, 2016 [20 favorites]

And yet Hillary won the group making less than 50k and won working-class POC.

Focusing only on people making less than 50K is a really flawed metric of "what is working class". In today's economy, as someone said one or two threads ago, even people making 70k are still struggling to live a "traditional middle class life." They don't feel secure, and it's because they're not secure.

For just one example - daycare for one kid is roughly 1000$ a month. Multiply that by 3 and you have 36K a year. That instantly - without doing anything else - takes that 70K salary down to a 34K salary, if you have a family. That's without taking in healthcare costs, etc.

If Democrats are choosing to focus only on people making less than 50k, they're going to be ignoring a large, large part of the economic anxiety going on in this country right now.

And there is no reason they have to choose between helping minorities and helping at least offer options to alleviate that economic anxiety. Because if they don't offer options to alleviate the economic anxiety, the fascists sure as fuck will. Ignored voter segments are prime targets for this kind of thing.
posted by corb at 11:10 AM on December 6, 2016 [7 favorites]

His own plane is entirely unsuitable for the purpose, especially for international trips. Even if the Air Force was willing to use it, and there's no way that they are, retrofitting it with aerial refueling capability, IR countermeasures, communications equipment, and whatever secret stuff they've got on there would take years, if such things are even possible, and cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

I mean, I agree with you, but I don't think Trump cares, and I don't know that anyone can/will stop him.
posted by melissasaurus at 11:11 AM on December 6, 2016 [3 favorites]

I don't know if this falls under previous discussion; I would prefer it if people copy-pasted the text of tweets as well as a link to them. This is mostly because my computer and mobile are both old and carpy, but at least for me, individual tweets just aren't worth the time it takes to open them.
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 11:18 AM on December 6, 2016 [21 favorites]

Massive increase in profile.

And massive increase in operating costs, maintenance costs, depreciation costs, fuel costs, personnel costs, ground crew costs, ...
posted by porpoise at 11:21 AM on December 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

AF1 doesn't have weapons of its own, does it? I imagine that's a pretty crucial feature for making diplomatic visits.
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 11:23 AM on December 6, 2016

AF1 doesn't have weapons of its own, does it?

It has "security features" that are classified.
posted by peeedro at 11:25 AM on December 6, 2016 [3 favorites]

His tweet caused a 2% stock drop, $1.4b in market cap. Boeing is in the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average. That affects millions who own Boeing or any index funds through their 401k, IRAs or pension funds.
posted by chris24 at 11:25 AM on December 6, 2016 [37 favorites]

I'm obviously not a presidential security expert, but I don't see how even a massive escort can truly protect against the same kinds of threats as Airforce 1's countermeasures. How is it going to help against a bunch of missiles launched from the back of a pickup just outside the runway security perimiter? The plane has that massive self-defense system for a reason. From within the Trump distortion bubble it may seem reasonable to forgo that unnecessary expense, but this is the kind of thinking that leads to a fall from grace as great and unexpected as the ascent to victory was when a bug gets up his ear about visiting the troops overseas like GWB on Thanksgiving and suddenly this idea that it's the gold plating that actually matters is tested in a reality where even defended military aircraft are downed with some regularity.
posted by feloniousmonk at 11:26 AM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

It has "security features" that are classified.

It likely has countermeasures to protect it from missiles.
posted by Fleebnork at 11:26 AM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

How is it going to help against a bunch of missiles

Burhanistan mentioned EW aircraft where EW = electronic warfare (?) that includes a lot of electronic countermeasures.

Won't really help against dumb missiles/rockets, but maybe they have a minitaure Phalanx-type antimissile system installed.
posted by porpoise at 11:30 AM on December 6, 2016

No Real 'Murican President will be fully respected until AF1 is just a AC-130U in blue-and-white trim.
posted by zombieflanders at 11:31 AM on December 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

It almost certainly has flares to use vs heat seeking missiles, and chaff to use vs radar guided ones. The other stuff we just have to guess at.
posted by Fleebnork at 11:33 AM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

surely this is just his lead-in to having AF1 replaced with a S.H.I.E.L.D. style helicarrier
posted by murphy slaw at 11:33 AM on December 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

His tweet caused a 2% stock drop, $1.4b in market cap. Boeing is in the S&P 500 and the Dow Jone Industrial Average. That affects millions who own Boeing or any index funds through their 401k, IRAs or pension funds.

Terrifying. But on the other hand, this is actually one thing that could cause institutional support/normalization of Trump to actually break down a bit. House reps with Boeing (or whatever future tweet) employees in their districts now have a vested interested in splitting with Trump on this issue. Institutional investors may start getting nervous and throwing their weight around. It's the closest we're going to get to reinstating earmarks, which is the last time House Rs gave a shit about the effect of federal policies on their constituents.
posted by melissasaurus at 11:33 AM on December 6, 2016 [13 favorites]

I know this makes me a bad person, but I can't manage to get myself excited about Trump's hubris deliberately sabotaging his own security.
posted by corb at 11:35 AM on December 6, 2016 [16 favorites]

Trump again hires foreign workers for Mar-a-Lago — little change in pay

President-elect Donald Trump is driving a hard bargain for the foreign workers who will staff The Mar-a-Lago Club this winter.
He’s paying some of them less than they made last year, and most get just a 1 percent raise.

A month before he was elected president, Trump won approval to hire 64 foreign workers through the federal government’s H-2B visa program, according to newly released data from the U.S. Labor Department. Last year, Trump was allowed to hire 69 foreign workers at Mar-a-Lago.

A local nonprofit placement agency says they have hundreds of qualified candidates for hospitality positions.
posted by zachlipton at 11:36 AM on December 6, 2016 [10 favorites]

I can't manage to get myself excited about Trump's hubris deliberately sabotaging his own security.


But there would be other people on the plane. Including his pilot, the stewards, the SS folks. If his plane gets taken down, they all die, and we get Pence. (Ptooie.)

And whattaya want to bet Mike Pence will absolutely be flying on AF2.
posted by suelac at 11:37 AM on December 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

zachlipton, I really should stop being surprised by how brazenly he flaunts his hypocrisy but somehow, somehow, it still hits me in the gut that most of his supporters won't give two fucking shits about it.
posted by lydhre at 11:39 AM on December 6, 2016 [7 favorites]

A scheme where Trump/family short a stock, plan a tweet to crash it would be a sure-fire way to cash in. We'd never know if they're doing it


Well, 1% on this tweet. So it's not the most lucrative way to cash in compared to all the things the Trump Cartel is already doing.
posted by ocschwar at 11:40 AM on December 6, 2016

as long as the hypocrisy/incompetence/etc is making liberals sad and angry, Trump supporters are getting what they signed up for and are satisfied
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:41 AM on December 6, 2016 [34 favorites]

Well, 1% on this tweet. So it's not the most lucrative way to cash in compared to all the things the Trump Cartel is already doing.

This was just talk of one plane. Imagine he tweets he's going to put a 35% tariff on all Apple products made in China.
posted by chris24 at 11:42 AM on December 6, 2016

Forget countermeasures, AF1 says THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA on it. Trump's plane says TRUMP. He was elected President, not Emperor.

Plus, if you put all that crap on it, you have to take it off again down the road.
posted by snuffleupagus at 11:42 AM on December 6, 2016 [5 favorites]

His own plane is entirely unsuitable for the purpose, especially for international trips. Even if the Air Force was willing to use it, and there's no way that they are, retrofitting it with aerial refueling capability, IR countermeasures, communications equipment, and whatever secret stuff they've got on there would take years, if such things are even possible, and cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

He could order it nonetheless. He will be commander in chief.
posted by Ironmouth at 11:42 AM on December 6, 2016

I guess we are going to find out at what point (is there one?) the military/security apparatus can say "Yeah, sorry Mr. President, this is what we are doing now, for your safety. Deal."

I never really considered that as a thing, because I always assumed POTUS would be a person who understood security/threats against them enough to want to be protected. It's a job that comes with a target on your back. Most people don't want to die! I had not accounted for delusion/ignorance overwhelming that basic truth.

And if something happens to [] in a foreign country, welp, we're at war, with Pence at the helm and his bloodthirsty friends howling for vengeance. Can't hope for that.

If [] were to come to grief, a million conspiracy theories would bloom, so therefore the only scenario I would not be scared by is him slipping on the soap in the shower/heart attack. And even then, there would be screaming tinfoil hatters all over the airwaves.
posted by emjaybee at 11:43 AM on December 6, 2016 [4 favorites]

He could order it nonetheless. He will be commander in chief.

By that logic, he could also order the Army Corps of Engineers to build him hotels.
posted by snuffleupagus at 11:45 AM on December 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

By that logic, he could also order the Army Corps of Engineers to build him hotels.

For fuck's sake don't give him any more ideas
posted by OverlappingElvis at 11:46 AM on December 6, 2016 [46 favorites]

Megan McArdle says that couldn't happen because the SEC would notice the pattern

The same SEC that investigated Bernie Madoff five times and found no evidence of actionable misconduct?
posted by melissasaurus at 11:46 AM on December 6, 2016 [6 favorites]

Have they just folded up entirely and are banking on being able to scavenge pieces from trump's collosal fuckup in four years? Hashtag winning or some shit.

Hey, no cheating off the DNCs paper
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 11:52 AM on December 6, 2016 [5 favorites]

Also, who appoints the SEC chair and has pardon power?
posted by tonycpsu at 11:54 AM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

By that logic, he could also order the Army Corps of Engineers to build him hotels

No. Congress would sue stating that it was not part of his function as commander in chief and they would win. They must first authorize that money. He can use parts of the Pentagon Budget as he pleases.
posted by Ironmouth at 11:54 AM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

Yeah, so remember that movie Being There, where the gardener said just simple things that didn't make a lot of sense but seen through what people wanted to hear sounded like they contained a deeper meaning, and he became more and more powerful until he was in line for the Presidency? Yeah.
posted by Mchelly at 11:55 AM on December 6, 2016 [5 favorites]

Also, who appoints the SEC head and has pardon power?

The President does, but the term of the Chair is not up until 2019.
posted by Ironmouth at 11:57 AM on December 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

AF1 doesn't have weapons of its own, does it?

—It has "security features" that are classified.

——It likely has countermeasures to protect it from missiles.

It also has an escape pod, according to a documentary I once saw called Escape From New York.
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:58 AM on December 6, 2016 [18 favorites]

.@SenJohnMcCain says he'll support Jeff Sessions for AG after meeting with him. [tweet w screencap of full statement]

McCain's office numbers are:
DC [phone]
Tucson [phone]
Prescott [phone]
Phoenix [phone]
posted by melissasaurus at 11:58 AM on December 6, 2016 [14 favorites]

there would be other people on the plane. Including his pilot, the stewards, the SS folks.

You make a fair point and it's important for me to remember that. I just find the fact that he will actually be our president in seven weeks to be highly agitating.
posted by corb at 11:59 AM on December 6, 2016 [7 favorites]

Yeah, I've found McCain's office to be even less responsive than Flake's. At least with the latter I can usually speak to a bored-sounding staffer. With McCain, it's hard to get through even to voicemail to leave a message. I haven't managed to speak to a human since a couple days after the election.
posted by Superplin at 12:00 PM on December 6, 2016

> The President does, but the term of the Chair is not up until 2019.

Yes, which is why I mentioned pardons. Everything we know about him says that norms are out the window at this point.
posted by tonycpsu at 12:00 PM on December 6, 2016

He could order it nonetheless. He will be commander in chief.

I rather doubt that any existing appropriation covers the use of private transport for presidential air travel.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 12:01 PM on December 6, 2016

From The Weather Channel:
Note to Breitbart: Earth Is Not Cooling, Climate Change Is Real and Please Stop Using Our Video to Mislead Americans [autoplay vid]
posted by melissasaurus at 12:04 PM on December 6, 2016 [36 favorites]

I rather doubt that any existing appropriation covers the use of private transport for presidential air travel.

The first Trump/Ryan budget will be so chock damn full of deplorable horror that no one will notice the minor line outsourcing this to the Trump Organization.
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:05 PM on December 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

Mary Jo White, the current chair of the SEC, is stepping down soon and thus giving Trump the ability to nominate whatever bootlicker he fancies for that position.
posted by not that mimi at 12:05 PM on December 6, 2016

Mary Jo White, the current chair of the SEC, is stepping down soon and thus giving Trump the ability to nominate whatever bootlicker he fancies for that position.

I just figured out why Jamie Dimon decided not to push for Treasury Secretary
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:07 PM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

An op-ed in Kushner's newspaper: Comey’s FBI Needs to Investigate Violent Democratic Tantrums

He cites his earlier column in which he calls Robert Creamer a "a political terrorist" and invokes Kristalnacht and now he demands that the FBI investigate protesters.
posted by zachlipton at 12:19 PM on December 6, 2016

> Here is some good news. Angela Merkel has been re-elected as leader of Germany's main conservative party, the Christian Democratic Union.

On the other hand, some not so good news.
posted by tonycpsu at 12:19 PM on December 6, 2016

Trump's Boeing tweet was posted twenty minutes after the Boeing CEO criticized him.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 12:21 PM on December 6, 2016 [13 favorites]

Fiona Apple sings a new holiday classic "Trump's Nuts Roasting on an Open Fire" a capella.
posted by melissasaurus at 12:22 PM on December 6, 2016 [6 favorites]

Trump's Boeing tweet was posted twenty minutes after the Boeing CEO criticized him.

1. Offer mild criticism of something the President said

2. President tweets

3. Your company loses 1% of its stock price

I hope Wall Street is collectively shitting themselves. They should be, if they're wise. But I suspect they have more brains than wisdom, and think they can cozy up to the fascist tiger instead.
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:31 PM on December 6, 2016 [31 favorites]

I haven't seen this posted yet: Trump bitches about Air Force One upgrade he won't get to enjoy, lies about costs

Key points:
- The two Air Force One planes currently in use, highly modified Boeing 747-200B airliners known as VC-25s, are close to reaching the end of their 30-year life expectancy, and both require significant maintenance to stay in the air.
- It’s unclear where Trump is getting the $4 billion number from, as it’s being widely reported that the Air Force budgeted $1.65 billion for the new planes between 2015 and 2019.
- Trump’s tweet about Boeing came shortly after Chicago Tribune published a piece in which Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg commented on Trump’s trade policies
posted by obliquity of the ecliptic at 12:36 PM on December 6, 2016 [6 favorites]

I imagine we're about to see a lot of the golden child/scapegoat/triangulation pattern that emerges in families with abusive narcissists. Only the abusive narcissist is the president of the United States and the "children" competing for golden child status are our major domestic employers.
posted by melissasaurus at 12:40 PM on December 6, 2016 [25 favorites]

This is what people don't get. "Inefficiencies" in employment (government or otherwise) aren't just your typical DMV worker not working at 110% all day every day suckling at the government teat, it's decent wages and healthcare that they want to strip out. Your garbageman used to earn the equivalent of twenty-something bucks an hour plus health insurance and a pension. Allied Waste pays their workers barely $20/hr and deducts $5/hr for health insurance.

Talez, I could have quoted your whole comment since I can't favorite it a million times. "Inefficiency" is code for decent pay. Business owners and politicians who imagine that 3rd world conditions are a sane policy should be confined.

I just wrote a 200 word comment full of anger and then deleted it. It'll have to wait till my anxiety is down a bit
posted by mumimor at 11:23 AM on December 6

This reminded me of something that I have been mad about for days. From a Washington Post article I linked 4 days ago: Many Trump supporters willing to let him pick and choose what promises to fulfill

“At least he put forth the effort,” she said. “And he might not be able to do that with everybody. . . . But I want us to start producing things again. I want to buy a clothes item that’s made in the good ol’ U.S.A. I want to buy a sweeper that comes from the U.S.A. We don’t produce, and that really bothers me.”

You CAN buy clothes made in America but they will cost more. You can right now buy fruits and vegetables at your local Farmer's Market, crafts from a craft show, handmade soap at the flea market, etc. They all cost more than the stuff from WalMart because Americans cannot survive on developing world-level wages. So I would honestly like someone who is a fan of Trump's plans to bring manufacturing back to America to tell me if they are willing to pay more for items Made in America. And also if they are willing to pay 35% more for everything made outside of America.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 12:46 PM on December 6, 2016 [36 favorites]

posted by obliquity of the ecliptic

The part where I went "Ah HAH" was this: The latest version of the Air Force One won’t carry a president until 2024. If Trump doesn’t get to use it, well, why should he give a fuck?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 12:52 PM on December 6, 2016 [17 favorites]

So the future president is retaliating against his detractors to the point of causing a major American employer's stock drop 2% in one day.

Great day, folks.
posted by samthemander at 1:02 PM on December 6, 2016 [22 favorites]

‘He got up there and lied his a– off': Carrier union leader on Trump’s big deal

Jones, president of the United Steelworkers 1999, which represents Carrier employees, felt optimistic when Trump announced last week that he’d reached a deal with the factory’s parent company, United Technologies, to preserve 1,100 of the Indianapolis jobs — until the union leader heard from Carrier that only 730 of the production jobs would stay and 550 of his members would lose their livelihoods, after all.
...
“Trump and Pence, they pulled a dog and pony show on the numbers,” said Jones, who voted for Hillary Clinton but called her "the better of two evils." “I almost threw up in my mouth.”

posted by zachlipton at 1:05 PM on December 6, 2016 [35 favorites]

"Better of two evils" is a nice turn of phrase. It'll be useful in future elections, at the very least.
posted by Apocryphon at 1:08 PM on December 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

I look forward to the day when we no longer feel the need to extend these concessions of "evilness" when we talk about the candidates we're voting for, even if we're not super enthused about them, for whatever purposeless face-saving such asinine incantations serve.
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:12 PM on December 6, 2016 [13 favorites]

Washington Post: Trump sold all shares in companies in June, spokesperson says.

What in the ever-loving fuck? Why hasn't this been mentioned WHATSOEVER until now? This stinks like a turd.
posted by mynameisluka at 1:12 PM on December 6, 2016 [7 favorites]

Because it's probably not true and he's offered no proof
posted by DynamiteToast at 1:13 PM on December 6, 2016 [34 favorites]

ocschwar: "A scheme where Trump/family short a stock, plan a tweet to crash it would be a sure-fire way to cash in. We'd never know if they're doing it


Well, 1% on this tweet. So it's not the most lucrative way to cash in compared to all the things the Trump Cartel is already doing."

Let's imagine Trump or surrogates can tank 1 stock per week to the tune of 2% on average. (This seems like an *extremely* low bar to me.) Further let's imagine that all of those stocks are shorted by an insider. 2% compounded weekly over the course of a year is about 270%, which is to say that you might be able to quadruple your money in a year.

1% is gigantic in the finance world.
posted by TypographicalError at 1:13 PM on December 6, 2016 [12 favorites]

I don't know why we should believe that. Journalists need to demand documentation.
posted by emjaybee at 1:14 PM on December 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

Washington Post: Trump sold all shares in companies in June, spokesperson says.

Folks are pointing out that there's 0 reason to trust him: he just invented the price for the AF1 contract, not to mention lied about the Carrier jobs. He should have to prove everything.
posted by zachlipton at 1:14 PM on December 6, 2016 [15 favorites]

When/if he sells his stock he's gonna have Meredith backdate the transaction to 6/1/16 in QuickBooks. Foolproof
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:15 PM on December 6, 2016 [23 favorites]

You don't even have to short the stock itself. You can have a basket of synthetic options that replicate shorting/buying the stock so there's no record of you "owning" stock in any of the companies (though you still own a position based on the value of that stock).
posted by melissasaurus at 1:17 PM on December 6, 2016 [3 favorites]

Hey WaPo: Can you please stop repeating the euphemism that refers to your home city as a "swamp?"
posted by schmod at 1:17 PM on December 6, 2016

In Congressional news, Republicans are trying to attach a waiver allowing Mattis to serve in the cabinet (retired officers are barred from the office for a number of years) to the must-pass continuing resolution to keep the government open. Dems want hearings and a discussion on civilian control of the military.
posted by zachlipton at 1:18 PM on December 6, 2016 [21 favorites]

I look forward to the day when we no longer feel the need to extend these concessions of "evilness" when we talk about the candidates we're voting for, even if we're not super enthused about them, for whatever purposeless face-saving such asinine incantations serve.

That's why balancing it out with "better" is a moderate move towards optimism from the pit of cynicism.
posted by Apocryphon at 1:18 PM on December 6, 2016

You don't even have to short the stock itself. You can have a basket of synthetic options that replicate shorting/buying the stock so there's no record of you "owning" stock in any of the companies (though you still own a position based on the value of that stock).

So very true. I was just going for the base level, any-idiot-can-do-it level financial malfeasance. If you have 1) no morals, 2) financial acumen, and 3) a nationally-televised idiot that you can manipulate, your pockets basically have no bottom.
posted by TypographicalError at 1:19 PM on December 6, 2016

Market analysts are studying Trump's tweets to try to get a jump on trades

There's now a market for realtime transcription of cable news linked to algo trading of companies attacked by Trump tweets.
posted by T.D. Strange at 1:25 PM on December 6, 2016 [11 favorites]

Hey WaPo: Can you please stop repeating the euphemism that refers to your home city as a "swamp?"

It kind of is, though, in the literal sense.
posted by thelonius at 1:27 PM on December 6, 2016 [5 favorites]

We Don’t Talk About ‘Radicalization’ When an Attacker Isn’t Muslim. We Should.

posted by futz at 1:31 PM on December 6, 2016 [38 favorites]

None of the headlines that I have seen about Mr. ThinSkin selling his stocks indicate that it is yet to be proven. I mean come on, throw another word in there, "ThinSkin Claims that he sold..."

Give me a break.
posted by futz at 1:45 PM on December 6, 2016 [3 favorites]

100 clams says he sold his stock to the Trump Family Trust for $1 and he will buy it back for $0.75 cents.
posted by PenDevil at 1:48 PM on December 6, 2016 [4 favorites]

FYI, the House Ways and Means Committee Republicans are meeting next week to discuss tax overhaul and the ACA (likely on 12/14-12/15). If any of the Republicans on this list represent you, call them this week to voice your opinions! Sample script:

"Hi, I'm a constituent living in [town]. I'd like to leave a comment for the [Congressman/Congresswoman] about the Republican Ways and Means meeting on tax and healthcare reform next week, is that something you can help me with?"

[yes or fwd to someone else]

"[your comment here, e.g., "I strongly support the ACA and urge the Congressman to work on strengthening it rather than repealing or replacing it." "I am strongly in favor of a broad-based estate tax and very much oppose a repeal of the estate tax." "As a single parent, I file my taxes under head of household status and am very concerned about Trump's proposal to eliminate this." "I believe in the importance of a free and fair debate on the issues and strongly oppose using reconciliation to pass tax or health care reform." "I support expanding Medicare and strongly oppose any plans to privatize Medicare or reduce benefits."]

[thanks for comment]

"Thank you, I'd like to receive a response from [congressperson] regarding their position on [issue]. My email is [email]."

Follow up after the meeting. Consider forming a constituents group to track and publicize the congressperson's positions on tax/healthcare reform to the local community (a la moral mondays in NC).
posted by melissasaurus at 1:49 PM on December 6, 2016 [26 favorites]

None of the headlines that I have seen about Mr. ThinSkin selling his stocks indicate that it is yet to be proven.

Philadelphia Inquirer, doin it right
posted by beerperson at 1:54 PM on December 6, 2016 [23 favorites]

In Congressional news, Republicans are trying to attach a waiver allowing Mattis to serve in the cabinet (retired officers are barred from the office for a number of years) to the must-pass continuing resolution to keep the government open. Dems want hearings and a discussion on civilian control of the military.

Ugh, this is frustrating as hell on so many levels. By pushing this now, rather than waiting for post-Jan 20, the Republicans under Ryan are ensuring that the first fight about Trump's cabinet involves a general officer so popular he is nearly idolized, where the worst thing that you can say about him is that he likes his job. They are basically doing the equivalent of pushing the Democrats into insulting the mother of nearly half the military, and the Democrats are letting them.

And it means that when, say, the Bannon fight, or the Sessions fight comes up, it's already in the context of "Oh, the Dems just fight everything, look how hard they fought Mattis."
posted by corb at 1:57 PM on December 6, 2016 [10 favorites]

Isn't the entire point of civilian control of the military not to have a secretary who the troops idolise?
posted by PenDevil at 2:01 PM on December 6, 2016 [40 favorites]

When/if he sells his stock he's gonna have Meredith backdate the transaction to 6/1/16 in QuickBooks. Foolproof.

I used to know someone who would regularly backdate transactions between the entities he controlled. His logic, which I found hard to fault, was that he owned the entities and their existence was basically a legal fiction, so until he wrote things down the events hadn't happened yet.

Getting the accounts right without breaking the law was a lot of fun, I can tell you.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:02 PM on December 6, 2016 [6 favorites]

And it means that when, say, the Bannon fight, or the Sessions fight comes up, it's already in the context of "Oh, the Dems just fight everything, look how hard they fought Mattis."

And it would be great if the Dems were like "yes we absolutely will just fight everything." Rather than "oh no, we don't want the white nationalists to cast us in a bad light, better let them get away with 99.9% of things so that they finally respect our calls for decency on that remaining 0.1."
posted by melissasaurus at 2:02 PM on December 6, 2016 [34 favorites]

It kind of is, though, in the literal sense

Total derail, but that's not actually true.
posted by aspersioncast at 2:02 PM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

100 clams says he sold his stock to the Trump Family Trust for $1 and he will buy it back for $0.75 cents.

And claim a capital loss of 25% so the Government owes him money
posted by Mchelly at 2:08 PM on December 6, 2016 [4 favorites]

oh heavens not a FIGHT
posted by beerperson at 2:10 PM on December 6, 2016 [14 favorites]

This tweet—sent during Clinton's concession—is the most retweeted political tweet of the year, per Twitter.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:19 PM on December 6, 2016 [13 favorites]

Paul Ryan Says Free School Lunches Give Kids ‘An Empty Soul’

I am in tears.
posted by prefpara at 2:25 PM on December 6, 2016 [21 favorites]

corb, I get what you're saying and part of me thinks "Oh god if we did block Mattis he'd put up someone worse" but on the other hand, as part of an "Obstruct everything" plan it makes sense. I mean we HAVE played nice and...here we are. We need to stop worrying about What They Will Say because reality/facts no longer matter anyway. No matter WHAT we did, they'd blame us.

It hasn't made sense to compromise for a long time now. No one is impressed with our diplomacy and tact.
posted by emjaybee at 2:26 PM on December 6, 2016 [16 favorites]

Not sure if it's okay to talk about a Pantsuit Nation post? But Brianna Wu just posted that she's considering running for the legislature in 2018. Both because of Hillary's example and because of Bannon's role in the White House. (Bannon/Brietbart targeted her extensively for Gamergate shit.)
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 2:26 PM on December 6, 2016 [28 favorites]

> And it would be great if the Dems were like "yes we absolutely will just fight everything."

This. Republicans paid no price for their obstruction -- they were rewarded for it. Democrats actually want government to function, so I do not see them engaging in McConnell-like obstruction of nearly every single nominee or piece of legislation, but I don't see how fighting Mattis is going to detract from their ability to fight other nominees.
posted by tonycpsu at 2:26 PM on December 6, 2016 [7 favorites]

Paul Ryan Says Free School Lunches Give Kids ‘An Empty Soul’

OK, so this is horrible and several years old. Hopefully he got enough crap about it back then that he has learned his...
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:27 PM on December 6, 2016

The House Freedom Caucus just introduced a resolution to impeach the IRS Commissioner for "high crimes and misdemeanors" (but really for stuff that happened before he was even appointed). A sub-cabinet level person has never been impeached; a cabinet-level person has only been impeached once. Pelosi motioned to table it, which lost 235-180.
posted by melissasaurus at 2:28 PM on December 6, 2016 [3 favorites]

And Clinton's "Delete your account" to Trump was the 2nd most retweeted political tweet. :-D

Don't care how much the military likes Mattis. If we ignore or waive precedent, procedure and protocol to install him, it's way too short a jump from there to just having the military openly pick our leaders from among their ranks and seeing commercials that remind us that "Service guarantees citizenship" for my liking.
posted by lord_wolf at 2:28 PM on December 6, 2016 [11 favorites]

What the fuck
posted by Yowser at 2:29 PM on December 6, 2016

You know what, I missed the date on that. Someone retweeted it today and I assumed it was current. Still a howling nightmare, though.
posted by prefpara at 2:29 PM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

My extended family does a secret santa style gift exchange, since we've grown quite large, and this year I got one of the two racist uncles. Just found out for his gift he wants a confederate soldier miniature. Criminy.
posted by DynamiteToast at 2:29 PM on December 6, 2016 [3 favorites]

Scratch that, he gave me a list of a few different miniatures to choose from and of the 5 one was from the Union. So that's easy enough.
posted by DynamiteToast at 2:31 PM on December 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

Just found out for his gift he wants a confederate soldier miniature.

Get him a union solider miniature with a card that says "I prefer armies that didn't lose their wars, ok?"
posted by melissasaurus at 2:32 PM on December 6, 2016 [39 favorites]

An overlooked tidbit: Mayor Beth Van Duyne of Irving, TX visited Trump Tower with Flynn. Irving is where Ahmed Mohamed (the kid with the clock) lived. She's been on a wild anti-Sharia law kick (since before Mohamed's clock), getting on the national stage by attacking a regional Islamic mediation/dispute resolution panel.
posted by zachlipton at 2:42 PM on December 6, 2016 [6 favorites]

They are basically doing the equivalent of pushing the Democrats into insulting the mother of nearly half the military...a general officer so popular he is nearly idolized

When you put it that, way, though, that's exactly why there's a multi-year limit in the first place -- you don't want the head of the defense department to be idolized. That is incredibly dangerous, no matter how good of a candidate he might otherwise be.


Look, the Founding Fathers weren't saints. They pushed through some really shitty rules so the right kind of people (white/male/landowning) remained in charge, they showed some incredible short-sightedness in some other ideas (*cough* 2nd amendment *cough*), and there were things that they just totally couldn't predict and didn't even factor into their concept of an ideal country. But one thing they could easily grasp is that a beloved military leader should not be handed all the power. Big Ole GW himself struck down the idea because they all understood that a great military leader and a great leader of the country are not always the same thing.

This they got totally right and by God if the Dems roll over on this one there will be hell to pay in the future.
posted by teleri025 at 2:46 PM on December 6, 2016 [20 favorites]

Steve M., No More Mister Nice Blog: If Trump Fans Don't Take Him Literally, Why is His Hyperbolic Language So Specific?

So there's no basis for Trump's $4 billion figure -- I couldn't find a claim of this kind even in the wingnuttosphere, nor could Newsweek's Kurt Eichenwald. [...]

As I watch this story unfold, I find myself thinking of an idea about Trump that became increasingly popular in certain circles over the past few months. The Atlantic's Selena Zito seems to have been the first to articulate it:

“Fifty-eight percent of black youth cannot get a job, cannot work,” [Trump] says. “Fifty-eight percent. If you are not going to bring jobs back, it is just going to continue to get worse and worse.”

It’s a claim that drives fact-checkers to distraction. [...] When he makes claims like this, the press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.

(Emphasis added.) [...]

But what never gets explained is why Trump doesn't just go with the truth. $1.65 billion is a big number. You could easily imagine the Trump base recoiling at horror at that much tax revenue being spent on a plane, even if it turns out that the price tag is reasonable, given the communications and security extras that have to be built into Air Force One.

The point is that Trump has an intuition about the degree of falsehood that will make his intended audience believe him. It's not enough to be against undocumented immigrants -- you have to round all of them up, and build a wall, and get Mexico to pay for it. It's not enough that a new Air Force One will be expensive -- the taxpayers have to think they're on the hook for more than twice the actual projected cost. [...]

This stuff works. It works because it's taken at face value in some region of the average Tumper's brain. I bet the faithful will be repeating that $4 billion figure as if it's gospel for a long time to come.

posted by tonycpsu at 2:46 PM on December 6, 2016 [23 favorites]

When you put it that, way, though, that's exactly why there's a multi-year limit in the first place -- you don't want the head of the defense department to be idolized. That is incredibly dangerous, no matter how good of a candidate he might otherwise be. Yes, it's frustrating all around, but if it's that big of a deal to people in the military right now that's really all the more reason to fight this appointment, even if he's otherwise qualified.

Well - as an aside, I think Mattis will be just as beloved in a few more years, when it doesn't need a waiver, as he is now. He's been out of service for almost four years, and it really hasn't changed matters much. But that's not really what you're talking about - you're talking about the real danger of having the head of the defense department being so beloved that the military would take orders from him before the President. And - let me be clear - that's not really an if here. If Mattis is the SecDef, and Trump is the President, there are a lot of military members who would take orders from the SecDef.

I don't think I can possibly overstate how popular Mattis is with broad segments of the military. I'm retired. I've been retired for over five years. I'm a goddamn anti-war activist. He wasn't even from my service. If Mattis knocked on my door and said "follow me" I'm not even sure I would ask questions before putting on my coat. And you're entirely correct that that's, under ordinary circumstances, insanely dangerous. It's one of the reasons why we rotate generals and officers so often, so that that loyalty doesn't get a chance to develop and firm up. Mattis is a black swan and quite possibly the most popular member of the military that has existed in my lifetime.

But we are living in dangerous times. We are living in times where I flat out do not trust the civilian leadership of our military if that civilian leadership is appointed by Trump. We are living in times where I openly hope that the SecDef has a spine and can stand up to Trump and the military will follow him, because I don't trust Trump not to abuse any and all authority he possesses. I do not trust him not to kill us all.
posted by corb at 2:48 PM on December 6, 2016 [27 favorites]

The fact that a man is "idolized" by a group that almost assuredly voted heavily for Trump and who is willing to join a Trump administration aren't positives, no matter how it's spun as him being a check on Trump. Combined with the fact that he seems almost excited to start a war with Iran, any requests that the Dems roll over for him is highly suspect. And as for how it will affect Bannon, Sessions, et al: let's not kid ourselves. That the GOP and a feckless press will treat the Dems the same no matter what. It's what they've done for the last eight years, after all.
posted by zombieflanders at 2:48 PM on December 6, 2016 [30 favorites]

If Mattis knocked on my door and said "follow me" I'm not even sure I would ask questions before putting on my coat.

That sounds a lot like Napoleon Bonaparte or even Julius Caesar to me. It's exactly why someone like Mattis shouldn't be SecDef. Now maybe he's a Cincinnatus type. But we shouldn't be staking the country on a guy being Cincinnatus.
posted by Justinian at 2:53 PM on December 6, 2016 [12 favorites]

Mattis is a black swan and quite possibly the most popular member of the military that has existed in my lifetime

Step 1: Find or create blackmail material on Mattis
Step 2: Tell him you'll publicize said thing if he doesn't do what Trump wants.
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Genocide
posted by melissasaurus at 2:54 PM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

And you're entirely correct that that's, under ordinary circumstances, insanely dangerous.... But we are living in dangerous times. We are living in times where I flat out do not trust the civilian leadership of our military if that civilian leadership is appointed by Trump. We are living in times where I openly hope that the SecDef has a spine and can stand up to Trump and the military will follow him, because I don't trust Trump not to abuse any and all authority he possesses. I do not trust him not to kill us all.

“Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour ... If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?” ― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

posted by entropicamericana at 2:57 PM on December 6, 2016 [21 favorites]

Which is a roundabout way of saying that selecting a person that the military will unquestioningly follow reduces a complex system to a single point of failure. If you need to convince various military groups with their own agendas and loyalties, then you need to do more bargaining and politicking and it's more likely you'll face resistance along the way. If you only need to convince one dude who has his own loyal army, then you only need to convince/threatenen/blackmail that one dude.
posted by melissasaurus at 3:00 PM on December 6, 2016 [16 favorites]

you're talking about the real danger of having the head of the defense department being so beloved that the military would take orders from him before the President. And - let me be clear - that's not really an if here. If Mattis is the SecDef, and Trump is the President, there are a lot of military members who would take orders from the SecDef.

There's also the opposite nightmare scenario -- that members of the military who might balk at following flagrantly illegal orders from Trump will be swayed to follow them when they come through Mattis.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 3:01 PM on December 6, 2016 [22 favorites]

Dude is called "Mad Dog" for a reason. Does anybody even remember Fallujah?

Mattis is a war criminal.

"During the April 2004 siege [of Fallujah], more than 700 civilians were killed by the US military, according to Iraqi doctors in the city whom I interviewed in the aftermath of that attack.

"While reporting from inside Fallujah during that siege, I personally witnessed women, children, elderly people and ambulances being targeted by US snipers under Mattis' command. Needless to say, all of these are war crimes.

"During the November siege of Fallujah later that same year, which I also covered first-hand, more than 5,000 Iraqi civilians were killed. Most were buried in mass graves in the aftermath of the siege.

"Mosques were deliberately targeted by the US military, hospitals bombed, medical workers detained, ambulances shot at, cease-fires violated, media repressed, and the use of depleted uranium was widespread. All of these are, again, war crimes."

posted by monospace at 3:02 PM on December 6, 2016 [13 favorites]

FWIW, the last time I was at Comet Ping Pong, I was at a show where a bunch of MeFites were performing.
posted by schmod at 3:02 PM on December 6, 2016 [10 favorites]

FWIW, the last time I was at Comet Ping Pong, I was at a show where a bunch of MeFites were performing.

TFW you find out you've actually part of a satanic pedophile conspiracy cabal all along.
posted by zachlipton at 3:04 PM on December 6, 2016 [21 favorites]

FWIW, the last time I was at Comet Ping Pong, I was at a show where a bunch of MeFites were performing.

TFW you find out you've actually part of a satanic pedophile conspiracy cabal all along.

Next time us DC MeFites have a meetup, we'll credit you with the name of it.
posted by zombieflanders at 3:08 PM on December 6, 2016 [7 favorites]

Without taking a position on the rest of the comment; The use of depleted uranium ammunition is not a war crime.
posted by Justinian at 3:11 PM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's problematic, to put it mildly.

Check the byline, it's Dahr Jamail. I've met him, through the anti-war movement, and he is...kind of special. We had a lot of problems with him, because he would embellish veterans' accounts and then publish them, and then people thought our guys had said the things he was repeating and we spent a lot of time defending our veracity and talking about what the actual stories were.

I mean - let me make this clear - war crimes were definitely committed in Iraq & Afghanistan, if not the ones Jamail 'cites'. But I have never heard of Mattis either committing or ordering any - only stories of him stopping them when he saw them.
posted by corb at 3:21 PM on December 6, 2016 [12 favorites]

A Veteran for Standing Rock (YouTube 14min)

Not really tied into anything here. It is just a guy thinking aloud about the country. Trying to piece together what is what.
posted by phoque at 3:31 PM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

If he ran the show in Fallujah, then he is responsible, even if he never pulled the trigger himself. And maybe DU is not *technically* a war crime, but to me, that's splitting hairs.

"Mad Dog" is not an affectionate nickname. It's what you call an animal so dangerous it should be put down. This man should not become SecDef.
posted by monospace at 3:35 PM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish: There's also the opposite nightmare scenario -- that members of the military who might balk at following flagrantly illegal orders from Trump will be swayed to follow them when they come through Mattis.

monospace: Dude is called "Mad Dog" for a reason. Does anybody even remember Fallujah?

There were also allegations that white phosphorous artillery shells were used as a weapon by US troops while taking Fallujah. If used to target enemies and not as a smokescreen to shield movement, it's arguable this constitutes a violation of the 1980 Protocol on Incendiary Weapons (Protocol III to the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons) or the 1992 Chemical Weapons Convention. No treaty formerly mentions white phosphorous, but its use as a weapon and not a smokescreen meets many of the criteria for the way they define chemical weapons.

The taking of Fallujah, you'll recall, all started because a small group of civilian contractors who were former Navy SEALs took a wrong turn on a road and ended up getting killed in Fallujah, their burned bodies hung from a bridge. It was a horrible tragedy, but the taking of Fallujah always felt to me like a decision borne of emotion, not strategy, that we were angry at the images of their bodies being broadcast, and the fervor with which we conducted the Fallujah campaign reflected that.

It sounds like Mattis opposes Trump on torture, which is a good thing, but the story of Fallujah doesn't necessarily make me believe he would oppose emotional orders by Trump for everything, and it does make me believe the men beneath him might follow said illegal orders due to Mattis being beloved.
posted by bluecore at 3:36 PM on December 6, 2016 [5 favorites]

>>Paul Ryan Says Free School Lunches Give Kids ‘An Empty Soul’

>I am in tears.

OK, so this is horrible and several years old. Hopefully he got enough crap about it back then that he has learned his...

Given his schemes for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, it appears that he has not yet received enough crap.

Let's all remember that Paul Ryan's father died when he was a teenager, and he saved the Social Security Survivors benefit that he received to help pay for college. Now he wants to pull the ladder firmly up behind himself.

He is a disgusting, hypocritical and sad granny-starver.
posted by tivalasvegas at 3:38 PM on December 6, 2016 [41 favorites]

Oh come on. Clinton wasn't personally in charge of embassy security. Mattis was a military commander in Iraq, responsibility for actions taken under his command is part of that job. Surely you see the difference.
posted by monospace at 3:43 PM on December 6, 2016 [6 favorites]

How can it be that he said that and yet people still voted for him? How can anyone want to slap the food out of a child's hand?
posted by prefpara at 3:43 PM on December 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

Flipping this, though, that's the same line of reasoning that held Hillary Clinton personally responsible for the Benghazi attacks because she was Secretary of State.

The Sec of State is not in the direct line of command, nor did she order specific bombings that turned out to be civilian gatherings.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 3:44 PM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

Flipping this, though, that's the same line of reasoning that held Hillary Clinton personally responsible for the Benghazi attacks because she was Secretary of State.

No, because Clinton's subordinates were not the aggressors. Also, chain of command is a thing in the military and "didn't give the orders" is some Nuremberg flip-flop shit.
posted by rhizome at 3:47 PM on December 6, 2016 [4 favorites]

How can it be that he said that and yet people still voted for him? How can anyone want to slap the food out of a child's hand?

Suffering is noble, donchaknow

I mean not for Paul Ryan, but for black kids
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:49 PM on December 6, 2016 [13 favorites]

A YouGov poll shows that a majority of Republicans now think the free market has been bad for America. The dissonance between Trump and his base and the Republican establishment is really going to be... interesting.

@williamjordann
"The free market has been sorting [the economy] out and America’s been losing"

% Agree:
Democrats: 33%
Republicans: 57%
[poll breakdown]
posted by chris24 at 3:49 PM on December 6, 2016 [3 favorites]

How can it be that he said that and yet people still voted for him?

Tons of white upper middle class families use "percentage of students on free or reduced lunch" as a measurement of "quality of school." It's an extremely weak cover story that white people have been using for years to make sure their kids live in a segregated school district, whether those white people are consciously looking for segregated schools or not. White people are already primed to eliminate free school lunches, which they've been told correlate to "failing" schools and "problem" students.
posted by melissasaurus at 3:49 PM on December 6, 2016 [6 favorites]

CNN's reporting that the transition team requested a security clearance for Flynn's son and are now trying to downplay it. Jake Tapper asked Pence about it eight times and Pence ducked the question.

The real problem is that Flynn Sr. is just about as bad when it comes to spreading conspiracy theories.
posted by zachlipton at 3:50 PM on December 6, 2016 [18 favorites]

The upshot of him getting clearance would be that anything he then publishes has to be cleared by the IC. For the rest of his life.
posted by rhizome at 3:54 PM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

Interesting thing about this is now Darrell Issa represents a strongly Clinton district.

@PoliticsWolf
Hillary Clinton is the first Democratic presidential nominee to win Orange County California since 1936, & she won it by a decisive 51-42
posted by chris24 at 4:05 PM on December 6, 2016 [13 favorites]

Why did the Japanese guy from Softbank Trump showed off hold up a sheet of paper with Foxconn on it?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 4:07 PM on December 6, 2016

The Times is boldly throwing Flynn's son under the bus, dropping a tank on top of the bus, then parking a 747 on top of the tank: Trump Fires Senior Adviser’s Son From Transition for Sharing Fake News

President-elect Donald J. Trump on Tuesday fired one of his transition team’s staff members, Michael G. Flynn, the son of his designated national security adviser, for using Twitter to spread a fake news story about Hillary Clinton that this weekend led to an armed confrontation in a pizza restaurant in Washington.

The uproar over Mr. Flynn’s Twitter post cast a harsh spotlight on the views that he and his father, Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, aired on social media throughout the campaign. Both men have shared fake news stories alleging that Mrs. Clinton committed felonies, and have posted their own Twitter messages that at times have crossed into Islamophobia.

I still care far more about the fact that the guy who isn't fired and will be responsible for National Security considers True Pundit stories about "NYPD Blows Whistle on New Hillary Emails: Money Laundering, Sex Crimes w Children, etc...MUST READ!" to be reliable.
posted by zachlipton at 4:10 PM on December 6, 2016 [9 favorites]

The Times is boldly throwing Flynn's son under the bus, dropping a tank on top of the bus, then parking a 747 on top of the tank: Trump Fires Senior Adviser’s Son From Transition for Sharing Fake News

I can't wait for the tweet. "The failing @nytimes has said I fired Flynn's son. If they had reported on my fairly and without bias they would know I didn't fire him."

It's almost guaranteed at this point.
posted by Talez at 4:14 PM on December 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

Here's what we know about Trump's $50 billion deal with a Japanese billionaire

Additionally, the announcement did not give any sort of timeline for the investment. The PowerPoint presentation appeared to suggest it would take place over the next four years, however. It also bore the Taiwanese multinational Foxconn's logo and suggested another $7 billion would be invested over that period alongside the Vision Fund's $50 billion...

...Of note, SoftBank, a hyper-acquisitive company, has faced resistance from regulatory agencies in the US before — most notably when Sprint was mulling a takeover of T-Mobile. So it may simply be engendering goodwill with the new administration.

I wonder if this deal was discussed when Abe visited and during his phone call with Taiwan?
posted by futz at 4:32 PM on December 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

Interestingly white rural schools desperately need free lunch programs as well.
posted by AlexiaSky at 4:35 PM on December 6, 2016 [7 favorites]

The free market has been sorting [the economy] out and America’s been losing"

% Agree:
Democrats: 33%
Republicans: 57%
[poll breakdown]
posted by chris24 at 6:49 PM

57% of Republicans think free markets hurt us.
78% think gov should bribe companies.
75% think gov should threaten companies
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:36 PM on December 6, 2016 [3 favorites]

Boston Globe: Governor Charlie Baker said Tuesday that he is unilaterally slashing $98 million from the state budget to remedy what his administration says is a gap between projected revenue and authorized spending.

Cuts will touch a wide swath of government programs. They include health care for the poor, suicide prevention, the State Police crime laboratory, literacy programs, state parks, and the Bureau of Substance Abuse Services.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 4:39 PM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

There's considerable reason to think that the SoftBank thing, besides not really being anything new at all, is about setting up a return of the Sprint/T-Mobile deal after Trump revamps the FCC in his own image. It's just one trainwreck after another.
posted by zachlipton at 4:39 PM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

Cuts will touch a wide swath of government programs. They include health care for the poor, suicide prevention, the State Police crime laboratory, literacy programs, state parks, and the Bureau of Substance Abuse Services.

And the King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of Mine, you did for Me.’
posted by kirkaracha at 4:41 PM on December 6, 2016 [16 favorites]

Tomorrow on the Today show Time magazine will reveal the person of the year. There are 6 fginalists: Trump, H. Clinton, Beyoncé, CRISPR scientists, Putin, and Erdoğan.

the State Police crime laboratory,

Let me guess, there will be a bigger backlog of rape kit evidence.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:42 PM on December 6, 2016 [4 favorites]

And I shall say for the millionth time "cutting health care makes people have more chronic conditions or dead. Both are bad for the economy
."
posted by AlexiaSky at 4:45 PM on December 6, 2016 [12 favorites]

I will projectile puke all the way onto a certain toupee if trump wins.
posted by futz at 4:46 PM on December 6, 2016

From the Boston Globe article

Governor Baker’s action today cuts important programs, including approximately $6 million in reductions to homelessness and housing, $1.9 million in cuts to substance abuse prevention programming, $900,000 in cuts to HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment services, and $400,000 in cuts to services for terminally ill children,” she said.

Good Christ! How can anyone justify cutting any sort of service to terminally ill children?! I mean I don't care if that money is going towards housing their families closer to the hospice or taking them out to ball games. This is heartless.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:49 PM on December 6, 2016 [32 favorites]

if trump wins.

I have bad news
posted by EarBucket at 4:49 PM on December 6, 2016 [12 favorites]

Say what you will about death panels, but at least they put it up to a vote.
posted by peeedro at 4:49 PM on December 6, 2016 [4 favorites]

Boston Globe: Governor Charlie Baker said Tuesday that he is unilaterally slashing $98 million from the state budget to remedy what his administration says is a gap between projected revenue and authorized spending.

Cuts will touch a wide swath of government programs. They include health care for the poor, suicide prevention, the State Police crime laboratory, literacy programs, state parks, and the Bureau of Substance Abuse Services.

Nope. We're done, Baker. In 2018 on top of stumping for Warren I will be working my ass off to unseat you. You were supposed to be a moderate Rockefeller Republican but you're just a fucking Norquist slave like the rest.
posted by Talez at 4:51 PM on December 6, 2016 [38 favorites]

How many years until a successful rationale for raising taxes is developed such that a politician can rely on it without having to say we're going to get murdered in our sleep or our children will shrivel into husks if we don't pass some bond or whatever. Like seriously, government almost-entire purpose is about spending money for the benefit of the people.
posted by rhizome at 4:56 PM on December 6, 2016 [7 favorites]

Lobelog's Derek Davison at "and that's the way it was," his personal blog: Corruption Matters
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 4:57 PM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

What I hate about HIV is at this point, PrEP is expensive but super effective. We can litterally consistently prevent (not 100 % but damn close) the transmission of HIV by allowing high risk adults to take a once a day medication.

In addition: when people with HIV take their medication correctly they are less infectious over all and it significantly reduces risk(there are some exceptions like if the medcine isn't working) even if the person with the infection shares needles, has unprotected anal sex and so forth.

Treating people with HIV not only benefits people with the disease, it benefits those without it!

Indiana 's HIV rates have skyrocketed since cuts in care.
posted by AlexiaSky at 4:58 PM on December 6, 2016 [17 favorites]

Here's a letter from members of the House Democratic Leadership urging President Obama to arrange a classified briefing for the full House on Russian interference in the election.
posted by zachlipton at 5:00 PM on December 6, 2016 [24 favorites]

Trump at the NC rally stirring up the flag burning debate again, saying "We'll see what we're going to do about that." OK.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:05 PM on December 6, 2016

I've been wondering if Trump is planning to refer to world leaders by insulting nicknames, like he did with his opponents in the campaign. "Scary old lady Angela" and the like

"Dishonest [Shinzo] Abe"
posted by indubitable at 5:05 PM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

Obama - “my final words as your commander in chief.”

...As he put it in his speech, "the power of the presidency is awesome but it is supposed to be bound by you, our citizens." The White House also issued an unusual 61-page document on Monday outlining the legal basis for its various counterterrorism activities, arguing for the necessity of transparency and for legal constraints that reduce “the risk of an ill-considered decision.”

The document and the speech together sure seem like an acknowledgment that Obama, partially because of his own administration’s actions, is handing unprecedented presidential powers to someone he clearly thinks is unequipped to handle them responsibly.

Obama ended his speech by urging both members of the military and American citizens to continue to “protect our constitution among all threats foreign and domestic.” For once, the “and domestic” part didn’t feel like a throwaway line.
posted by futz at 5:09 PM on December 6, 2016 [38 favorites]

How trump would pronounce Abe has me cringing.
posted by AlexiaSky at 5:09 PM on December 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

Y'all know Fallujah was taken by two battalions, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines and 2nd Battalion 1st Marines? That's less than a single regiment and Mattis was CG of the 1st Marine Division, a unit composed of multiple regiments. If there was systematic war crimes, it would be on the battalions commanders heads. I'm sure The Joint Chiefs of Staff didn't allow a division commander to decide to take a city on his own. That was a political decision, made in a room with curved walls. I'm convinced sending Bravo Co. 1/5 into Fallujah first was superstitious act, a hope it would turn out to be a Hue and not a Mogadishu.

I think taking Fallujah was a bad call, worse than a siege would have been, but Mattis obeyed lawful orders and detailed units to implement those orders. That's what being under civilian control means.

I've been reading some of what's online about Mattis after responding to JackFlash up thread. So far, I don't think he would cross the Rubicon at all but would be very aware of the legal limits of a president's authority and would be a good counterweight to that crazy assed spy Flynn.
posted by ridgerunner at 5:20 PM on December 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

The document and the speech together sure seem like an acknowledgment that Obama, partially because of his own administration’s actions, is handing unprecedented presidential powers to someone he clearly thinks is unequipped to handle them responsibly.

Obama ended his speech by urging both members of the military and American citizens to continue to “protect our constitution among all threats foreign and domestic.” For once, the “and domestic” part didn’t feel like a throwaway line.

You know, instead of picking up the mantle of the Bush administration's executive branch power grab post-9/11 and taking it even further YOU COULD HAVE DONE SOMETHING ABOUT THIS. But I guess now we gotta cross our fingers and hope the next guy rules us in good faith. Oh well!
posted by indubitable at 5:22 PM on December 6, 2016 [15 favorites]

Charlie Baker's predictable cuts are why I get so pissed when fellow Massholes elect Republicans because "oh, they're a Massachusetts Republican, it's fine."

It's not fucking fine.
posted by lydhre at 5:25 PM on December 6, 2016 [19 favorites]

Instead of picking up the mantle of the Bush administration's executive branch power grab post-9/11 and taking it even further

... he could have been even less effective, due to unprecedented levels of obstructionism in Congress?

Obama was between a rock and a hard place.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 5:26 PM on December 6, 2016 [8 favorites]

Tomorrow on the Today show Time magazine will reveal the person of the year. There are 6 fginalists: Trump, H. Clinton, Beyoncé, CRISPR scientists, Putin, and Erdoğan.

It kind of has to be Trump or maybe Putin, but man I'd love to see it be Bey or the CRISPR scientists.
posted by Joey Michaels at 5:27 PM on December 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

... he could have been even less effective, due to unprecedented levels of obstructionism in Congress?

Obama was between a rock and a hard place.

Less effective at counter-terrorism? Was Congress obstructing him on dropping bombs on wedding parties overseas? That document he released wasn't talking about looking the other way on immigration enforcement or DEA raids in states that legalized marijuana.
posted by indubitable at 5:31 PM on December 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

It kind of has to be Trump or maybe Putin, but man I'd love to see it be Bey or the CRISPR scientists.
posted by Joey Michaels at 8:27 PM on December 6 [+] [!]

I want it to be Hillary because he will explode on twitter.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:48 PM on December 6, 2016 [32 favorites]

On the other hand, Baker has given those of us in the neighborhood of MA the mother of chanting opportunities:

Charlie Baker!
Kills Kids!

Charlie Baker!
Gives Aids!

Charlie Baker!
Loves H! (Works with Pills and Meth, too.)

Charlie Baker!
Brings Death!

Love Life!
Love Health!
Vote Dem!

Put in some marching drums, and man. I love it when propaganda is turned upon its head.

And we don't need that two years from now, we need that NOW. Your little town, if it's like mine, has a number of elections every year that will personally impact you and yours and the American way of life you thought you were used to. Start voting now... there are impactful elections still to come this year you may be able to vote in! Educate yourself about when and where, facebook and tweet the fuck out of it, and bring a friend and bribe them to come and vote any way they please, just vote, with a pleasant evening at the local pub after they're done.

You don't have to love any particular candidate or issue to vote. You just have to love being an American and part of something larger than yourself.

Vote vote vote. This year! Next year, lots of times next year, on important stuff in your community! Vote! Vote! Vote!
posted by Slap*Happy at 5:48 PM on December 6, 2016 [8 favorites]

Never mind twitter, he'd explode in real life. Go on,Time, doooooo iiiit.
posted by lydhre at 5:49 PM on December 6, 2016 [5 favorites]

I was trying to find a Time Person of the Year prediction market and ended up on this article and/or Greg Egan flash fiction story
posted by theodolite at 5:50 PM on December 6, 2016

It kind of has to be Trump or maybe Putin, but man I'd love to see it be Bey or the CRISPR scientists.

The CRISPR scientists are in court (on behalf of and as required by their universities) fighting to control the billions of dollars worth of patents backing the technology, converting federally funded research into patents that, if they are to be worth anything at all, will inevitably be used to deny people lifesaving healthcare. They've invented a great thing, but to hell with that crap.
posted by zachlipton at 5:53 PM on December 6, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'm not sure I understand how "Swarm AI" is different from "polling" but you have to admit it sounds a fuck of a lot cooler
posted by theodolite at 5:54 PM on December 6, 2016

@jeffzeleny A woman in the crowd at Trump rally waves a sign: "Expose Pizzagate."

The mind boggles. Does she mean "Put on your Sherlock Homes hat and go to Washington D.C. and find out the truth and expose these pedophiles and lock up Hillary? Or does she mean, "Tell the truth about this fake news story so this poor pizza business can operate safely." It's number one, isn't it.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:57 PM on December 6, 2016 [16 favorites]

Ohio Senate passes bill to ban abortion when heartbeat can be detected
posted by triggerfinger at 5:58 PM on December 6, 2016

Trump transition team members sign non-disclosure agreements

The agreement legally bars transition staffers from disclosing info about major portions of the transition work, like policy briefings, personnel material, donor info, fundraising goals, budgets, contracts, or any draft research papers. It also demands that if anyone on the team suspects a colleague of leaking material, he or she must tell transition team leadership. And it gives the Trump team grounds to tell those who run afoul of the rules: “You’re fired.”

Member of Trump’s Labor Department Transition Team Specializes in Recruiting Cheap Foreign Labor

A NEWLY-APPOINTED MEMBER of Donald Trump’s Department of Labor “landing team” — tasked with helping set up and implement the transition to a Trump administration — is the president of a recruiting agency that specializes in connecting employers, including major hotels, with temporary laborers from Mexico, the Caribbean, and other parts of the developing world.

Veronica Birkenstock, named to the Department of Labor team on Monday, is the president of Practical Employee Solutions (PES). PES promotes itself as specializing in the use of H-2B visas, having recruited “over 40,000″ workers in fields including hospitality, landscaping, welding, and construction, from 80 different countries. It is also the “preferred vendor of Marriott and Starwood Hotels.”

posted by zachlipton at 6:05 PM on December 6, 2016 [3 favorites]

You know, instead of picking up the mantle of the Bush administration's executive branch power grab post-9/11 and taking it even further YOU COULD HAVE DONE SOMETHING ABOUT THIS. But I guess now we gotta cross our fingers and hope the next guy rules us in good faith. Oh well!

Edward Snowden even gave him a perfect opportunity for sweeping reforms, but nooooo. Snowden wasn't kidding about turn-key totalitarianism, and now who has the key.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:11 PM on December 6, 2016 [12 favorites]

The Latest: Michigan court says Stein can’t seek recount


The court ordered the Michigan election board to reject her recount petition. It’s unclear how this would affect the recount, which began on Monday.

The appeals court ruled in favor of Republican Donald Trump and the state attorney general, who argued that Stein is not an “aggrieved” candidate under Michigan law because she can’t win the state with a recount.

wtf
posted by futz at 6:24 PM on December 6, 2016 [9 favorites]

There's considerable reason to think that the SoftBank thing, besides not really being anything new at all, is about setting up a return of the Sprint/T-Mobile deal after Trump revamps the FCC in his own image. It's just one trainwreck after another.

Sprint/T-Mobile? You're not thinking big enough. Son-sama has been digging the company out of this shit for two years now. He's ready for a payday. So is John Legere who's coming up on five years. I'm guessing this is the plan with Trump's FCC:

1) Acquire T-Mobile. Become #2 wireless provider in the US
2) Deploy 2.5GHz LTE on T-Mobile sites
3) Fire everyone at Sprint
4) Solicit bids from Comcast and Charter
5) Sell to whoever gives them a better bid
6) Roll around naked in a giant pile of money
posted by Talez at 6:26 PM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

The Latest: Michigan court says Stein can’t seek recount


The court ordered the Michigan election board to reject her recount petition. It’s unclear how this would affect the recount, which began on Monday.

The appeals court ruled in favor of Republican Donald Trump and the state attorney general, who argued that Stein is not an “aggrieved” candidate under Michigan law because she can’t win the state with a recount.

wtf

I am on a secret FB group for lawyers who are liberal. A lot of people expected this result.
posted by Ironmouth at 6:35 PM on December 6, 2016 [8 favorites]

But Jill Stein is perpetually aggrieved at everything in the world.
posted by zachlipton at 6:39 PM on December 6, 2016 [14 favorites]

LOTL? Me too!
posted by prefpara at 6:40 PM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

Secretary of State Gary Busey

Yeah, but he doesn't work on January 8th.

Federally recognized holiday in 3 . . . 2 . . . .
posted by petebest at 7:08 PM on December 6, 2016

I think upsetting as it is, the law is probably sound there. Stein should give the money to Clinton for a recount, but that's unlikely to happen.
posted by corb at 7:11 PM on December 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

The federal court has ruled the count can continue, though? Interesting.
posted by unknowncommand at 7:16 PM on December 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

converting federally funded research into patents that, if they are to be worth anything at all, will inevitably be used to deny people lifesaving healthcare

I am certainly no fan of patents, but this is a leap too far.
posted by Dashy at 7:17 PM on December 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

Ex-CIA official on Trump, Flynn: 'I'm watching a clown show'
posted by futz at 7:24 PM on December 6, 2016 [6 favorites]

The federal court has ruled the count can continue, though? Interesting.

They did that on Monday -- they didn't rule on the merits of Stein's recount request, just on the issue that the count couldn't be delayed and needed to proceed because of the December 13 deadline.

Now that the state appeals court has ruled against Stein, the Michigan AG and/or Republican Party either already submitted a new motion to the federal court to reverse that "proceed with recount" order, or they will any minute now.
posted by FelliniBlank at 7:25 PM on December 6, 2016

Ex-CIA official on Trump, Flynn: 'I'm watching a clown show'

Wait, I'm an ex-CIA official now? This administration-elect just gets weirder everyday.

You'd think I'd have remembered something about that.
posted by petebest at 7:33 PM on December 6, 2016

Most Americans Who See Fake News Believe It, New Survey Says
An exclusive Ipsos poll conducted for BuzzFeed News found that 75% of American adults who were familiar with a fake news headline viewed the story as accurate.

The survey found that those who identify as Republican are more likely to view fake election news stories as very or somewhat accurate. Roughly 84% of the time, Republicans rated fake news headlines as accurate (among those they recognized), compared to a rate of 71% among Democrats. The survey also found that Trump voters are more likely to rate familiar fake news headlines as accurate than Clinton voters.

What has happened to us? How do you combat epic levels gullibility and ignorance?
posted by futz at 7:49 PM on December 6, 2016 [31 favorites]

Hmmmmmm . . . Welp, I got nothin' . . . .
posted by petebest at 7:51 PM on December 6, 2016

newsfilter: tpm reporting a white, male busted on anti-religious-freedom terror plans. oh, and he has a 'trove' of child porn.

more evidence that every accusation from the right is a trump's-mirror phenomenon. it's starting to remind me of that fear-love-swayze guy in donnie darko. eewww/shiver/throw-up-a-little-in-my-mouth
posted by j_curiouser at 7:53 PM on December 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

Lawrence O'Donnell reported that the Republicans will be trying to tack on the waiver to let General Mattis serve as Sec. of Defense to a spending bill.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:55 PM on December 6, 2016

converting federally funded research into patents that, if they are to be worth anything at all, will inevitably be used to deny people lifesaving healthcare.

Right. Let me launch on a comprehensive overhaul of the ways that we fund academic research --

-- oh, wait. Trump's going to be in office. That won't be happening.

(My graduate alma mater, UW Madison, just fell out of the top-5 ranking of institutions, thanks to it being defunded by Scott Walker. If one of their researchers were involved, you damn well bet I'd want them to fight for every penny.)
posted by steady-state strawberry at 7:59 PM on December 6, 2016 [4 favorites]

Let's remember that the only reason pizzagate took off is because of "cheese pizza," a term so popular on chan boards, reddit, and the alt-right that they had to give it a euphemism.

And popular, I don't mean they hunt it down. They like it. A lot.
posted by Yowser at 8:02 PM on December 6, 2016 [7 favorites]

What has happened to us? How do you combat epic levels gullibility and ignorance?

The electorate was always stupid. It's why the founders didn't trust direct democracy.

We used to have gatekeeper institutions like newspapers and actual TV journalists that were trusted to relay the truth, or at least basic accurate facts forming the shared national consensus.

Now we don't. Now we have Facebook.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:13 PM on December 6, 2016 [14 favorites]

Marcy Wheeler, emptywheel: The #FakeNews about Iraqi WMD Got Hundreds of Thousands Killed

Now, the NYT (though not, I think, the WaPo) apologized for their WMD coverage and Milbank apologized for his Mad Bitch podcast and Baier apologized for his indictment scoop. No one has yet apologized for focusing more attention on Hillary’s email server than Trump’s own corruption, but I’m sure that’s coming. I’m not aware that the financial press apologized for the cheerleading that ultimately led to millions of Americans losing their homes to foreclosure, but then it also hasn’t stopped the same kind of fake news cheerleading that led to the crash. [...]

Elite commentators may view the herd instincts of average news consumers to be more crude than the herd instincts of professional news tellers. Perhaps they are. Across history, both types of herd instincts have led to horrible outcomes, including to the deaths of hundreds of thousands, even millions of people.

But as we try to deal with our herd instincts and the mistakes we all make (myself very much included), we might do well to exhibit a little less arrogance about it. That certainly won’t eliminate the mistakes; we are, ultimately, herd animals. But it might provide a basis to rebuild some trust, without which leads all of us — the professionals and the average news consumers — further into our own bubbles.

posted by tonycpsu at 8:21 PM on December 6, 2016 [6 favorites]

So, I'm fully aware that folks here aren't going to like a lot of what's in this article, and I'm certainly not endorsing everything in it, but it's food for thought: Van Jones Knows the Messy Truth.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 8:21 PM on December 6, 2016 [8 favorites]

re: CRISPR patents

I feel that it's not really that important of an issue. I can't back it up with concrete cites, but the feelings that I've been getting is that Feng Zhang (arguably inventor and first-to-publish the breakthrough) wants CRISPR (and the next generation of genome editing tools) to be available to all. He open sourced it at the outset and he (personally) and his lab provided active help to the community to get other people to be able to use it effectively and to crowdsource new insights.

Broad/MIT/Zhang winning the patent might protect CRISPR/cas9 from being exploited such that only patent owners could commodify the technique.

Not all patent holders are evil! It does matter who wins, sometimes.

Regardless, moot point, new editing systems are coming online and reaching maturity - many of these have higher efficiencies and/or specificities (which are both huge problems with CRISPR) - and I suspect more will come on.

If I was a betting person, I suspect that the first FDA widely approved therapy using directed genome editing tools (not clinical trial, not for a terrible orphan disease, but fully approved therapy) will NOT use CRISPR/cas9.

Not to mention point mutants and fancy stuff like peptide on/off switches, which may produce their own patents and be deemed "new art" (the Taq polymerase [an ubiquitous reagent in molecular biology] story).

New patent battles will be fought over the methods; I'm guessing that most of them are invalidated or a patented one is released by their owner for unrestricted use.

Patents expire; by the time clinically verified treatments are available, current basic patents may very well have expired.

TL;DR - the CRISPR fight isn't necessarily about groups of greedy scientists. It may very well be one group trying to prevent the greedy groups from stiffling availability.
posted by porpoise at 8:33 PM on December 6, 2016 [4 favorites]

Get ready, the FBI is already harassing liberal journalists over jokes on twitter. Comey made it abundantly clear the bureau is standing by just waiting for Obama to leave office so they can let their MAGA hats fly and start pursuing criminal investigations against Trump's political enemies. He's going to walk into to a ready made political secret police force.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:48 PM on December 6, 2016 [22 favorites]

(The CRISPR thing is probably an excellent subject for a new FPP from someone who knows more on the subject, but I'm sorry for starting the derail)

This is a good point. When's the last time a branch of the military publicly issued a statement that basically contradicts the President or President-elect?
posted by zachlipton at 9:06 PM on December 6, 2016

#Pizzagate Is the ‘Satanic Panic’ of Our Age—but This Time, the President’s Men Believe It
posted by futz at 9:20 PM on December 6, 2016 [5 favorites]

Current Affairs: The Necessity of Credibility: Ridding ourselves of fake news requires having media outlets that are actually worth listening to…

But before getting too sanctimonious, journalists should question their own role in giving this perspective a boost. The garbage churned out regularly by CNN and Slate may be better than Trump’s tweets, but it is not that much better. And by failing to show humility about their own ability to generate truth, and themselves being highly detached from the real world, talking-head pundits and biased “data-based” journalists may be helping to create the “post-truth” environment, by robbing words like “true,” “false,” and “fact” of their meaning. By conjuring phony statistics (like “percentage of false statements”) and treating highly subjective and interpretive judgments as if they are Just The Facts, the press steadily erodes the credibility it will need in order to effectively hold Trump accountable.
...
And one must be serious in understanding why people become conspiracy theorists in the first place. If the press is unaccountable, condescending, and secretive, it won’t be believed, even if it’s right. (Similarly, one of the reasons that so many wild conspiracy theories develop around Hillary Clinton is that—as even her supporters admit—she is extremely secretive. As a purely practical matter, if you act like you’ve got something to hide, people will assume you do. And they’re not irrational to make that inference.) If people are heading for fake news, then it is urgently necessary to figure out how to get them back. One won’t do that by continuing to do the same thing, such as continuing to spew biased and speculative punditry. This is a story about glass houses and stones: in order to convince people not to believe in disreputable sources, you must first give them reason to believe that you yourself are reputable.

It's provocative, and I don't agree with everything in here to be sure, but there's some good stuff.
posted by zachlipton at 9:21 PM on December 6, 2016 [6 favorites]

The Last Line Of Defense: Federal Bureaucrats Wait Nervously For Donald Trump

The person in Trump’s transition team who was dispatched to meet with officials from the Department of Energy ― the agency that oversees the country’s nuclear weapons stockpile ― showed up without a pen and didn’t ask any questions, according to one Energy Department staffer.

posted by zachlipton at 9:25 PM on December 6, 2016 [15 favorites]

Similarly, one of the reasons that so many wild conspiracy theories develop around Hillary Clinton is that—as even her supporters admit—she is extremely secretive. As a purely practical matter, if you act like you’ve got something to hide, people will assume you do.

Trump was infinitely more secretive and there was evidence of many wrongful acts on his part, but it didn't seem to hurt him. So was it the candidate, or the reporting?
posted by Joe in Australia at 9:28 PM on December 6, 2016 [45 favorites]

Sure, and as we've discussed before, people who are attacked for everything they do in their life tend to have good reason to become secretive.
posted by zachlipton at 9:35 PM on December 6, 2016 [16 favorites]

Only one side got its private communications hacked and drip-fed this election cycle, to a crowd of people predisposed to assume that "private" equals "seeekrit". The issue here is the predisposition, and there's now an implicit hierarchy where "on scripted reality TV" now projects a higher truth value than "on the news", and the ARG of overreading documents and chasing the scent of bullshit stories until you come up with a vaguely-coherent whole is a kind of self-scripted immersive reality show.
posted by holgate at 9:44 PM on December 6, 2016 [23 favorites]

As this campaign and its aftermath have developed I have gained strong belief in the "Trump's Mirror" concept... that whatever Despicable Donald and his cohorts are accusing others of doing is something that they are doing themselves. And the persistence of the "Pizzagate" story chills me to the bone. We already know that elements of the incubators of the 'alt-right' have long been using "cheese pizza" as a codeword for "child porn"... and many of them ARE INTO IT. It's part of their commitment to Libertarian Principles! And Trump already owns properties in countries where Sex Tourism is done (heck, Rightwing Saint Rush Limbaugh has been caught doing it). By sending both official enforcement and vigilantes on wild goose chases against Trump opponents based on fake accusations, they are putting a protective shield around everything Pro-Trump (and Trump-owned) where child porn, child prostitution and child sex slavery can FLOURISH.

In my lifetime, I have had the misfortune to meet and deal with more sex offenders (both registered and never-caught) than most people. And while my anecdotal sample is still very small, I haven't known a single one who DIDN'T support Trump (and I've seen more personality characteristics in common between sex offenders I've known and the Public Donald than I wanted to admit... and which I didn't want to think about, but the Pizzagators are rubbing my nose in it now).
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:10 PM on December 6, 2016 [25 favorites]

GOP Forces Dems to Allow Rushed-Mattis Waiver or Risk Shutdown

Under current law, the Department of Defense cannot be run by an individual who has served in the military in the last seven years. The waiver would allow Mattis to serve in that role even though he has only been out of the military for three years.

The spending bill does not automatically approve that waiver, it only limits the amount of time senators have to debate it to 10 hours. It will still take 60 votes to approve. But the expedited process could still save precious time in the Senate as lawmakers are expected to be busy in the new year installing the rest of Trump's cabinet, repealing the Affordable Care Act and getting a jump start on the appropriations process.
...
While many Democrats warned Republicans about including the Mattis provision in the spending bill, it's not immediately clear if they will risk shutting down the government over it.

posted by kirkaracha at 10:23 PM on December 6, 2016 [4 favorites]

it's not immediately clear if they will risk shutting down the government over it.

And so it begins.

Senators, draw your line in the sand now. What will you shut down the government for?

Write it down and then discuss. And then remember. Don't keep your powder dry.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 10:56 PM on December 6, 2016 [12 favorites]

The spending bill does not automatically approve that waiver, it only limits the amount of time senators have to debate it to 10 hours.

Grandstanding dicks. What have the Dems got to lose by rejecting this? Its not like there not going to be the minority party anyway.
posted by ridgerunner at 10:58 PM on December 6, 2016 [6 favorites]

Current Affairs: The Necessity of Credibility: Ridding ourselves of fake news requires having media outlets that are actually worth listening to…

Yah read this one it is good. (I especially enjoy the savaging of Jeff Bezos' blog.) I've been thinking of like, on the chans and such, the practice of taking self-portraits holding a piece of paper with your name, the date, and maybe something weird, perhaps specified by interlocutors, like a shoe on your head, just to establish that maybe the person composing the Internet post is the person in the photograph. Cause ain't nobody trust you for shit. And the current journalists, they ought to be working with a swiftness to get a metaphorical shoe on their head, same reason. I think it looks like so far on the whole they just don't get it though...
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 11:08 PM on December 6, 2016

One of my problems with the Current Affairs story is that it ignores the truly excellent reporting that came out of this election too. Beneath all the bad punditry and slanted editorial decisions and everything else, there were some very high quality investigative pieces that went into a lot of depth on the issues and candidates and the things they didn't want to talk about. It's because of that kind of reporting that people who voted for Trump were in every position to know that they were voting for him in spite of serious faults, including several faults that have manifested themselves already in the transition. It, of course, wasn't enough, but print outlets also did some really fine work this cycle.

He's right that the press has a credibility problem and needs to win back trust, but it's unreasonable to lay the blame for that entirely on stuff like a Washington Post blog when that's the same paper that uncovered Trump's broken charity promises during the campaign, among many others (the Access Hollywood tape was the Post too, though I like to think of that more as someone, presumably at NBC, sending Fahrenthold the story as a reward for his excellent work on the Foundation than something they dug up). It's especially unfair when one candidate devoted himself to tearing down the press at every turn, and dragged an army of rabid haters along with him.
posted by zachlipton at 11:21 PM on December 6, 2016 [11 favorites]

Sure, you get to stick your thumb in Boeing's eye, but they're more likely to be the canary in the coal mine for many more employees of companies that are likely to be affected, if not eliminated entirely.

Trump accused an enormous defence contractor of bilking the government and taxpayers. On the same day he then said he didn't fancy any more pointless foreign wars. These are both things leftists have been saying for years, so although I'm sure he won't deliver on any of it, I feel no need to tie myself up in knots defending Boeing 'because jobs'. Jobs is the justification given for the Trident nuclear programme in the UK.
posted by Coda Tronca at 11:23 PM on December 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

Joe Biden on the Late Show

"I'm a great respecter of fate. I don't plan on running again, but you know, to say you know it's going to happen in four years is not rational...I can't see the circumstance in which I'd run, but what I've learned a long long time ago Stephen is to never say never, you don't know what going to happen. Hell, Donald Trump is going to be 74. I'll be 77 in better shape."
posted by zachlipton at 11:48 PM on December 6, 2016 [5 favorites]

We already know that elements of the incubators of the 'alt-right' have long been using "cheese pizza" as a codeword for "child porn"

Meanwhile, on the other side of the lagoon, we have been using codewords such as "hamburger", "a plate of beans", "grilled cheese sandwiches" and "hardcore taters."
posted by ActingTheGoat at 12:01 AM on December 7, 2016 [5 favorites]

And if I had seen MetaFilter even ONCE use a codeword for "child porn" or "child prostitution", I would absolutely avoid this website the same way I avoid 4chan and 8chan.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:38 AM on December 7, 2016 [12 favorites]

That Van Jones article is just another of the endless stream of pundits convinced they were the ones who had the right answers all along and are now trying to spin the results to match their already held beliefs. Dreary rehash that, like so many of the rest, twist itself into knots trying to avoid the inherent contradictions within. Hillary not liberal enough, Hillary too liberal. "Kaint"and Clinton couldn't attract minorities, but Sanders could have, two evils, mid-America voted for someone who ran an explicitly anti-Muslim campaign, but aren't happy about it and will stand up for Muslims when the time comes, it's the liberal's fault Trump won for being too elite, which I guess means things like not being as caught up in hype about terrorism despite being more likely to live in areas that would actually experience such things than people in small town mid-America and so on. Basically Jones has a belief about the country that suits his position and he wants to defend it, that's all there is there.
posted by gusottertrout at 12:48 AM on December 7, 2016 [12 favorites]

Regarding the HuffPost story on the FBI investigating a journalist for a joke, maybe it's time to stop and think about these "hilarious" jokes you're making as a journalist given the clear evidence that people will believe pretty much anything. That people contacted the FBI about them could easily be harassment, but it could be actual belief that what is being said is true, so framing things in lame sarcasm which you think is "obviously" a joke might not be a great idea for someone who's job is in trying to convey factual information and context. If you want to make a joke, how about putting a little effort into actually making one instead of the lazy ass contrarian reversals of sarcasm in the first place since sarcasm doesn't translate all that well for many into text.

Should the FBI be investigating the tweets? In this case it sounded like they were reluctant, and probably shouldn't have, but this election shows that parsing truth from falsehood is becoming ever more difficult especially in only 140 characters. Should journalists be prevented from tweeting what they want, no of course not, but they should reflect a little on it given the state of their profession nowadays. The amount of "funny" and aggressive writing has increased to the point where it is legitimately difficult to know what is or isn't journalism, news, opinion, bullshit, lies, facts or anything else anymore. More reflecting and less grandstanding might be in order here.
posted by gusottertrout at 1:03 AM on December 7, 2016 [5 favorites]

Basically Jones has a belief about the country that suits his position and he wants to defend it, that's all there is there.

He's enlarging his views based on having accurately predicted how Trump would win, back in June. Given how few people managed that, it alone makes his current view worthy of consideration.
posted by Coda Tronca at 1:06 AM on December 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

No, not really. Being right about an outcome doesn't make you right about the conditions that led to the outcome, if it did, then we should be listening to Bannon before Jones anyway.
posted by gusottertrout at 1:39 AM on December 7, 2016 [12 favorites]

We are listening to Bannon.
posted by Coda Tronca at 1:52 AM on December 7, 2016

Then it's even harder to take Jones seriously since Bannon wasn't betting on the goodness in people's hearts, but on white supremacy, so something's gotta give.

I mean, I get it. Sanders supporters want to believe Sanders would have won where Clinton lost, and since Sanders didn't not win against Trump they feel they can say he would have. Except it doesn't work that way. People can believe what they want, but the arguments for the possibility haven't been great since they are relying on a set of assumptions that can't be proven and twist their facts and arguments to prop up their belief. Since Sanders didn't not beat Trump, sure, in some alternate reality maybe he does actually beat him and all the investment people put into Sanders pays off and the world is saved, but here that doesn't happen. That doesn't make Sanders or Clinton bad, or in the latter case a lesser of evil, it just means things went a different direction and the reasons for that being suggested are not based on what people did vote for as much as what they might have voted for if we did live in the alternate universe.

What people did vote for was Trump and what he ran on, little policy, lot's of hate, and vague mentions of solutions that were, to most eyes, illusions. Trying to derive a sensible policy based reasoning out of that is an intrinsically flawed concept. People weren't voting on policy or for rationality, so you can't get to a rational spot from where there was little or none. Good hearts are nonsense. People here have hearts no more or less good than the Germans did in the '30s or Muslims across the world do now, though those same "good hearted" people wouldn't believe that latter. Is everyone who voted for Trump an active bigot? No, most simply don't care about it, which makes them passively bigoted or at the very least extremely selfish.

People can tease the data in whatever ways they want, but when the end choice was Trump, the real possibilities for that choice are pretty limited since that was the campaign he ran. What people claim, of course, is going to be something different since they aren't especially likely to say we voted for ignorance and hate, I mean, shockingly some do, but many still have some reluctance to be so public about that. So simply listening to what people say about themselves isn't going to be the whole story either. I'm not saddened to see Jones trying to bridge the gap and wanting to believe in people, that's great, I just reject the arguments he made because they don't hold up to anything except wish fulfillment.

It's time to leave this crap behind and move on as far as I'm concerned. If Sanders is a part of that, great! I'm sick to death of the guy right now but he has done and can continue to do good things and if he or one of his allies runs as the Democratic candidate I'll vote for him because I'm not an asshole who'd turn their back on people. And if he runs and loses, I won't complain someone else would have done better because that's pointless sour grapes and frickin' annoying.
posted by gusottertrout at 2:14 AM on December 7, 2016 [23 favorites]

Its not like there not going to be the minority party anyway.

This isn't directed at your comment, but rather using it as a reason to post this earlier article.

Democrats won the most votes in the election. They should act like it.
Democrats need to be an opposition party, not a minority party.

More Americans voted for Hillary Clinton than for Donald Trump. More Americans voted for Democratic Senate candidates than for Republican Senate candidates.

So why aren’t Democrats acting like it? Why aren’t they trying to force Republicans, the media, and the emergent Trump White House to act like it?

This is not an argument that the election was rigged, or that Trump’s win is somehow illegitimate. The president is chosen by the Electoral College. The Senate is built to favor small states. Gerrymandering is legal. America does not decide national elections by simply tallying up votes.

But the will of the voters still matters, or at least it should. Thus far, Democrats have slipped comfortably into the position of minority party. They aren’t demanding that Trump put forward compromise candidates for key posts. They aren’t laying out a proactive agenda that would serve as their basis for negotiations with Trump and the Republicans. And they aren’t, in their public messaging, emphasizing that most voters opposed Trump’s agenda, and that both Democrats and Republicans need to take that seriously.

Democrats have confused the reality of being out of power with the idea of being in the minority. This lets the Trump administration and the Republican Party confuse the reality of being in power with the idea of having a mandate for their agenda.

posted by chris24 at 3:40 AM on December 7, 2016 [63 favorites]

Democrats won the most votes in the election. They should act like it.

And they can start by opposing the Mattis appointment. They need to say, over and over, "More Americans voted for us than for you. We're not going to let you do anything without scrutiny." Yes, that means that they have to be willing to let the Republicans shut down the government, because that choice is in the Republicans' hands.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:46 AM on December 7, 2016 [37 favorites]

Democrats have confused the reality of being out of power with the idea of being in the minority.

Witness the awesome power of this fully operational media infosystem!
posted by petebest at 3:50 AM on December 7, 2016 [6 favorites]

Re: Boeing - Trump doesn't have the smarts to go after the big defense contractors. He lacks the courage to tackle the military industrial complex, or take power away from the federal reserve. . . Plus he's not good enough to tangle with Cuba. And . . he's not smart enough to have the USSS procure him multiple partners every night.

*taptap* is this on?
posted by petebest at 4:16 AM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

Re: Boeing - Trump doesn't have the smarts to go after the big defense contractors.

No doubt, but that's not the same as saying we shouldn't go after big defence contractors just because Trump implied he would.
posted by Coda Tronca at 4:35 AM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

House Intelligence Committee sends letter to POTUS once again asking for details on Russian "interference" in election.

Reuters reported on Friday that James Clapper, the U.S. director of national intelligence, asked Congress to remove a provision in an upcoming intelligence authorization bill that would have created a special committee to combat Russian efforts to exert covert influence abroad.

Well if James Clapper talked to Congress - you *know* it's right! Probably nothing to see here.
posted by petebest at 4:46 AM on December 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

Trump is Person of the Year.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 4:59 AM on December 7, 2016

Now we have Facebook.

Pubic Hair
6.3K people talking about this
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 5:04 AM on December 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

roomthreeseventeen: "Trump is Person of the Year."

There really couldn't be any other choice.
posted by octothorpe at 5:07 AM on December 7, 2016

People care about Time? Really?
posted by Yowser at 5:10 AM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

via Anand Giridharadas: I have talked a lot on here about the kinds of courage that are going to be demanded of us in this time. @Time had a chance to debut one. Under @Time's longstanding pattern, Trump is the logical choice: the person who made the most news this year. But @Time has also withheld the recognition from many who fit that standard. What if they had done that with Trump? What if this was the year to say that causing harm to the republic in which @Time sits has to be counted as part of your total score? I understand that it would have gotten @Time an enormous amount of criticism. But these are small ways of standing up, and we need examples.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:13 AM on December 7, 2016 [19 favorites]

People care about Time? Really?

Care about it as in endlessly discuss who they choose as Person of the Year: yes.

Care about it as in actually buy it: probably not.

But yeah, I can't see how they could have chosen anyone but Trump. For what it's worth, previous recipients include the Ayatollah Khomeini, Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler. As they say every year, being chosen isn't an endorsement.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:15 AM on December 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

And then they said this about Clinton: "A female candidate in an election which didn't hinge on gender at all."
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:20 AM on December 7, 2016 [8 favorites]

The cover photo is interesting to me as a photographer because he's partially in profile in both the cover and lead image. While I haven't shot him, I know a few people who have and each said he's very difficult on shoots. Would basically only do straight to camera doing his Clint Eastwood/Zoolander look. And the orange with white eyes (which he used to and maybe still does himself) is a nightmare for retouching and color processing.

If you look at the images, they're both lit and posed to hid any double chin and slim the face. I'm sure Kander had to do hella convincing and show his work so to speak to get these poses.
posted by chris24 at 5:21 AM on December 7, 2016 [5 favorites]

"A female candidate in an election which didn't hinge on gender at all."

Hey man, can I bum an even off ya?
posted by petebest at 5:26 AM on December 7, 2016 [33 favorites]

Hey man, can I bum an even off ya?

We are definitely in deficit spending on evens.
posted by chris24 at 5:26 AM on December 7, 2016 [19 favorites]

That TIME (time-warner, one of the approved six media ourlets) cover and article - particularly the photos - are definitely inserted here from an alternate parallel nightmare reality where a quivering slight majority of voters in swing states are dumbfuck racist dickbags.

Although it would also explain the lack of jetpacks. Hmm.
posted by petebest at 5:35 AM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

No doubt, but that's not the same as saying we shouldn't go after big defence contractors just because Trump implied he would.

Yeah, that's pretty much the complete opposite of what I said. I have no idea where you got me defending Boeing from in a paragraph-long comment talking almost entirely about businesses that are neither large nor involved with the DoD, apart from the fact that Boeing is an example of what could happen to anyone. But just in case this is a genuine misunderstanding, let me put it into an easier-to-digest story form.

So, one of the major Departments in the US is Health And Human Services (HHS). There are a bunch of different operating divisions in HHS, ranging from gigantic ones like the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Food and Drug Administration all the way down to smaller ones like the Administration for Children and Families (ACF). Now, ACF does pretty much what the name says, which is to help provide services to children and families. It includes programs like Head Start, foster care funding, and tracking down deadbeat parents who owe nassive amounts of child support. Now, one of the offices within ACF is the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which as you may imagine helps refugees get on their feet once they're in the US. It's exactly the kind of thing that libertarians and anti-"big government" types completely ignore in their little neo-feudalist fantasies, mostly because it kind of knocks the support from under their entire worldview. But if you're a refugee it's a pretty essential part of your new life in America. In any case, it's not bombing anybody, it's not spying on anybody, it's made to help the kind of people that need help the most.

Anyway, let's assume a post-inaugural hypothetical, that there's a small- to medium-sized contractor who works with ORR. They have somewhere around 200 employees, and while their contract with ORR isn't their only one, it's their biggest one by far. The owner and most of the company are, like the big majority of residents in the DC area, on the left side of the political spectrum. The owner in this case is a huge supporter of social and economic justice movements. One night, she visits her local church (which has been vocally supporting BLM, opposing DAPL, and the like). The owner of the company speaks out, passionately, on a number of issues that have nothing to do with her work. She's interviewed by the local news, and the interview happens to go viral on Youtube. As we've seen over and over again, most recently with flag burning and Boeing, all it takes for Trump to lash out is to be disagreed with in public. We also know he loves stiffing the people that work for him, and the federal government is ripe for abuse by someone like that. So he sees it, and reacts just like we'd expect him to. Hell, maybe some of the channers/the_donald/gamergaters/etc doxx her and find out something innocent that manages to inflame Trump supporters, like she had an abortion no one knew about or that she once got arrested for public intoxication at college. No, wait, strike that...they invent some fake news about her, oh I dunno, running a satanic pedophilia ring and he or one of his advisers blows up the story.

Now, in this brave new world, Trump and his administration wield the kind of power that can destroy this company and their employees. I can guarantee you that Trump's spite will not be limited to big defense contractors. The man will fuck people over for $10k in a multi-billion dollar project. What's to say he's not going to go on a twitter rant about this company, who did nothing but speak out against his policies? Would you bet that he wouldn't find some way to hurt her and her company? Especially, in a case like this, where the work is exactly the kind of thing he wants to destroy because he's a massively xenophobic racist. You still think it's OK to let this behavior continue?

Trump accused an enormous defence contractor of bilking the government and taxpayers. On the same day he then said he didn't fancy any more pointless foreign wars. These are both things leftists have been saying for years, so although I'm sure he won't deliver on any of it, I feel no need to tie myself up in knots defending Boeing 'because jobs'. Jobs is the justification given for the Trident nuclear programme in the UK.

This isn't about defending Boeing or any other defense contractor, it's that what could happen to them could happen to anyone. And we haven't even got to the other aspects of your not-particularly-leftist conclusion, especially the fact that everybody, including large defense contractors, is made up of actual people. Most of them are working-class people who, due to geographic and political trends beyond their control, often need to find a place to work just to keep their heads above water. You can hate on the CEO all you want, but your attitude is going to hurt the folks working the assembly lines magnitudes more than him. THAT is what I was talking about, and if you still think that's the kind of leftism that should be mocked, then your leftism is the kind most of the rest of us could do without.
posted by zombieflanders at 5:40 AM on December 7, 2016 [39 favorites]

Or to boil it right down: a capricious arbitrary monarch is no friend of the left.
posted by holgate at 5:47 AM on December 7, 2016 [22 favorites]

Reporter's Notebook: What It Was Like As A Muslim To Cover The Election: So, for example, whenever the Pledge of Allegiance was recited at a GOP event, regardless of whether I was balancing a laptop on my knees, a notebook in one hand and a microphone in the other, I instinctively stood up.

I noticed — sometimes — my fellow journalists didn't stand; they would finish the email they were writing. But I also knew I couldn't afford to give the people in the room any more reason to doubt me.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:51 AM on December 7, 2016 [8 favorites]

The Smearing of Keith Ellison

The battle to ensure that Keith Ellison becomes head of the DNC has become an extremely important one. Schumer seems, for now, to be holding firm. And it’s essential that this continue. If one of Obama’s Republican Daddies actually throwing the presidential election to a Republican with the EMAILS! non-scandal teaches us nothing else beyond the obvious “no more Republican Daddies,” it should be this: no more [Shirley] Sherrods. No more internalizing Republican smears. Capitulating to this crap is wrong on the merits and also achieves nothing politically. Keith Ellison is an excellent choice to lead the DNC. He is not an anti-Semite. Ignore the ridiculous claims that he is. And let’s get to work.

posted by tonycpsu at 6:02 AM on December 7, 2016 [24 favorites]

From the Time article:

Shannon Goodin, 24, Owosso, Mich. Trump earned the support of Goodin, a first-time voter, by being "a big poster child for change," she says, adding, "Politicians don't appeal to us. Clinton would go out of her way to appeal to minorities, immigrants, but she didn't really for everyday Americans."

"everyday" Americans, eh?
posted by ominous_paws at 6:11 AM on December 7, 2016 [63 favorites]

Is the Time story sufficient grounds for a new post? We've had a POTY thread every year since 2003. And I have Thoughts. (Plus you know XQUZYPHYR is just dying for somebody to make The Joke.)
posted by Rhaomi at 6:18 AM on December 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

From the Time article:

Shannon Goodin, 24, Owosso, Mich. Trump earned the support of Goodin, a first-time voter, by being "a big poster child for change," she says, adding, "Politicians don't appeal to us. Clinton would go out of her way to appeal to minorities, immigrants, but she didn't really for everyday Americans."

"everyday" Americans, eh?

MURDEROUS RAGE INCREASING.
posted by dis_integration at 6:19 AM on December 7, 2016 [23 favorites]

"everyday" Americans, eh?

Or if you prefer, "Real Americans."
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:27 AM on December 7, 2016 [8 favorites]

HuffPost Corey Lewandowski Says Donald Trump Won The War On Christmas

Speaking on Fox News on Tuesday night, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski claimed it was safe to say “Merry Christmas” again.

“You can say again, ‘Merry Christmas,’ because Donald Trump is now the president,” he told Sean Hannity. “You can say it again, it’s OK to say, it’s not a pejorative word anymore.”

Phew! Well I for one am glad that the War on Christmas is over-- the body count was catastrophic and the casualties were devastating. Remember that one time when that greeter at WalMart was caught accidentally saying "Merry Christmas" and he was booed by holiday shoppers? Heartbreaking. And that time when all of the liberal elites boycotted Dunkin Donuts coffee because they came in red cups? Nearly drove them out of business. Thankfully we no longer have to give the secret signal (a nod and a touch to the nose) that meant "Merry Christmas" while we were forced to say "Happy Holidays." Our long National Nightmare is over.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:40 AM on December 7, 2016 [25 favorites]

Sometimes There Are More Important Goals Than Civility: Confronting racism can be crucial, even when it’s not persuasive.

The goal of arguments isn’t necessarily to directly change one opponent, but often to convince onlookers and create social incentives. Such was the gist of Clinton’s statement: She was not intending to convince Trump supporters to not be bigoted, but to draw people who see themselves as opposed to bigotry into her corner. Motivated candidates and institutions can create social conditions and stigmas by which bigotry is diminished, and they also change the way in which media transmit information and people absorb it. Imagine if the same outrage manifest in media coverage about the ideas of microaggressions and safe spaces pioneered by marginalized people had been marshaled against stubborn implicit racial biases and resistance to multiculturalism among whites, or if the useless term “racially charged” in media descriptions of racist things had been replaced with something more potent, like “racist.”

The main thing that this debate could use is a discussion of the effects of rigorously calling out racism on people who suffer from the effects of racism. In the vein of W.E.B. Du Bois’s thought, and Ida B. Wells anti-lynching work, perhaps there is an element of empowerment among people of color in calling out racism. Part of this is the effect of stigma itself: Stigmatization and appeals to moral rightness are among the most effective ways to seize power when dispossessed of it. But also, calling out racism aids its victims in understanding the powers at play in their own lives, and is the foundation of solidarity for many people of color. There is a reason why movements like the civil-rights movement and Black Lives Matter that have had dramatic impacts on the course of American history have developed around rather vivid and unflinching call-outs of white supremacy and racism, even leveled against their own white members.

posted by chris24 at 6:41 AM on December 7, 2016 [18 favorites]

Surveillance of Muslims traumatized my family. With Trump I’m afraid it’ll get worse.

When I was 13, two FBI agents knocked on my family’s door. They asked for my younger sister, at the time a 7-year-old in second grade at the school down the street from our home in New Jersey. My older sister, herself a teenager, fielded their questions, as my Pakistani parents, whose first language is Urdu, couldn’t fully comprehend what the agents were asking. They told us that my sister's school had called the FBI to report that my sister may have placed anthrax in a permission slip for a field trip. A teacher assistant’s home had been locked down and scoured by Hazmat teams.

posted by ChuraChura at 6:45 AM on December 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

Our long National Nightmare is over.

God Bless Trump our National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity is Finally Over.
posted by Talez at 6:51 AM on December 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

New thread
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:00 AM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

Is it really a new thread (we're only at 1700 comments here!), or is it just a separate thread for Time POTY chatter?
posted by everybody had matching towels at 7:14 AM on December 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

It's not a new thread.
posted by agregoli at 7:17 AM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

NYTimes Trump gave donors a tantalizing hint at his inaugural festivities: A helicopter grand entrance, Mark Burnett-style. The president-elect said he was paid a visit a day earlier by Mark Burnett, the executive producer of “The Apprentice,” the reality show that helped make the president-elect a household name. Mr. Trump told the crowd that Mr. Burnett proposed reinventing the inauguration with a helicopter taking off from New York City, according to an attendee.

Mr. Burnett, who is known for producing shows like “Survivor,” “The Voice” and “Shark Tank” as well, also told Mr. Trump that he should consider a parade up Fifth Avenue.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:23 AM on December 7, 2016

Corey Lewandowski Says Donald Trump Won The War On Christmas

I don't suppose that means Fox and the like will shut up about it.

I henceforth resolve to spend the next 4 years responding to "Merry Christmas" from strangers with "Io Saturnalia!" in a really overwrought accent.
posted by jedicus at 7:35 AM on December 7, 2016 [5 favorites]

Senate Dems to GOP: You're Sure Not Acting Like You Need Us

Democrats said that they would be willing to sit down and hash out plans to get the Obamacare marketplace working better, but at the moment, Republicans appear to be set on a strategy that fully repeals Obamacare with a promise to replace it down the road.

"Just an across-the-board repeal without any idea of how we are going to provide health care for millions of Americans is simply irresponsible," Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) told TPM in an interview. "If they repeal it, it's going to be on them."

posted by kirkaracha at 7:41 AM on December 7, 2016 [5 favorites]

roomthreeseventeen: Mr. Trump told the crowd that Mr. Burnett proposed reinventing the inauguration with a helicopter taking off from New York City, according to an attendee.

Guess he found his Leni Riefenstahl. Somewhere James O'Keefe looks at his reflection in a laptop screen before slamming it shut.
posted by bluecore at 7:42 AM on December 7, 2016 [5 favorites]

You can hate on the CEO all you want, but your attitude is going to hurt the folks working the assembly lines magnitudes more than him.

Fair enough and I take your point, but this issue goes right to the heart of government and industry and what it means to be a worker. The answer is not simply 'what's good for Boeing is good for workers.' Hence:

"Boeing is in the midst of its biggest peacetime boom in its 100-year history. In 2015, the company set records for both commercial deliveries, 762, and revenues, $96.1 billion."

But however, it...

"...plans to slash 4,000 jobs at its Washington state-based commercial division by June, with an additional 4,000 job cuts likely to come by the end of 2016."

As Clinton is very tight with Boeing financially, I don't doubt Trump is just settling a few old scores... but that's what these guys do all the time anyway. Trump just does it on Twitter.
posted by Coda Tronca at 7:43 AM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

I henceforth resolve to spend the next 4 years responding to "Merry Christmas" from strangers with "Io Saturnalia!" in a really overwrought accent.

So happy that it's time to trot this out again.
posted by uncleozzy at 7:45 AM on December 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

"Waiting for the Barbarians" - Chris Hedges
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 7:51 AM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

Mr. Burnett, who is known for producing shows like “Survivor,” “The Voice” and “Shark Tank” as well, also told Mr. Trump that he should consider a parade up Fifth Avenue.


wasn't burnett bemoaning the fact that he enabled trump's candidacy earlier in the election cycle? i guess a couple of lines of coke and a call from the president elect cleared that regret right up.
posted by murphy slaw at 7:56 AM on December 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

Ohio's house and senate have just passed a bill which would make abortion illegal after 6 weeks. They have been emboldened by our new president-elect:

State Senate President Keith Faber, a Republican, said the twice-defeated bill came back up again because of Donald Trump's presidential victory and the expectation he will fill Supreme Court vacancies with justices who are more likely to uphold stricter abortion bans. Asked if he expects the Ohio proposal to survive a legal challenge, Faber said: "I think it has a better chance than it did before."

This morning I called and e-mailed our "moderate" Governor Kasich several times asking him for a veto. I'm aghast, angry, and upset at how all this has happened, but ... it's just the next logical step in this political cycle. Get ready for more of this. Start stockpiling your emergency BC now.
posted by ChuraChura at 7:56 AM on December 7, 2016 [17 favorites]

ah, here we go

Apprentice's Mark Burnett Denounces Donald Trump

such denunciation. much regret. wow
posted by murphy slaw at 7:58 AM on December 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

Start stockpiling your emergency BC now.

It's not going to matter. If you go to the hospital for excessive bleeding when the miscarriage hits they'll run a pregnancy tox screen on you in hospital and throw you in the slammer if they pick up any misoprostol in your system.
posted by Talez at 7:59 AM on December 7, 2016 [7 favorites]

Start stockpiling your emergency BC now.

If you live in/near DC or Atlanta, Carafem has $10 emergency contraception every Wednesday in December.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 8:01 AM on December 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

ah, here we go

Apprentice's Mark Burnett Denounces Donald Trump

such denunciation. much regret. wow

Dateline Oct 13, 2016.
posted by dis_integration at 8:01 AM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

this issue goes right to the heart of government and industry and what it means to be a worker. The answer is not simply 'what's good for Boeing is good for workers.'[...]As Clinton is very tight with Boeing financially, I don't doubt Trump is just settling a few old scores... but that's what these guys do all the time anyway. Trump just does it on Twitter.

I've made it clear that's the opposite of what I'm talking about, and others have pointed out several times that Boeing is not the issue. And I have no idea why this is an issue you needed to bring Clinton into, or why you feel the need to pull the whole "they'll all do it, Trump isn't really that different" shtick, but this obviously isn't just you misunderstanding our points anymore. We get it: the wider problems that will affect everybody that isn't Boeing is meaningless, the rhetorical points about Boeing (or just large companies and/or defense contractors in general) are all that truly matters. It's gonna suck for all the regular folks working on regular projects, most of whom do not work for Boeing, that will be targeted by Trump, but by gum the "real" leftists might kinda-sorta-but-not-really bring down the fat cats a notch and that's obviously what counts.
posted by zombieflanders at 8:02 AM on December 7, 2016 [14 favorites]

Dateline Oct 13, 2016.


what a difference two months makes, eh? i am stunned by the strength of his convictions.
posted by murphy slaw at 8:04 AM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

Start stockpiling your emergency BC now.

It's not going to matter. If you go to the hospital for excessive bleeding when the miscarriage hits they'll run a pregnancy tox screen on you in hospital and throw you in the slammer if they pick up any misoprostol in your system.
This is dangerous advice (which I realize is not serious advice but more a "the world really sucks comment" but I think it's out of place, especially since it perpetuates the myth about how dangerous emergency BC is). It IS going to matter and it IS very good advice to buy emergency BC now, if you're a women who can physically get pregnant. Almost all the time emergency BC is very safe, does not end with excessive bleeding that requires going to a hospital, and it's by far the best way to end an unwanted pregnancy. It's nice to be able to have hypothetical discussions about this I guess, but many women have no choice and need to be pragmatic.
posted by blub at 8:11 AM on December 7, 2016 [37 favorites]

“You can say again, ‘Merry Christmas,’ because Donald Trump is now the president,” he told Sean Hannity. “You can say it again, it’s OK to say, it’s not a pejorative word anymore.”

The only thing dumber than this is that a whole lot of people think it actually means something. Which is the point, I guess.
posted by Rykey at 8:15 AM on December 7, 2016 [8 favorites]

Start stockpiling your emergency BC now.

Really there's no harm in stockpiling what you can afford to stockpile now. The worst that happens is you don't buy it for a few years.
posted by corb at 8:17 AM on December 7, 2016

apparently on behalf of all Metafilter

That's not a thing. It really isn't.
posted by Too-Ticky at 8:18 AM on December 7, 2016 [6 favorites]

Because they are being conflated here, emergency contraception is medication taken up to 72 hours after sex to prevent a pregnancy, while the abortion pill is a medication, of which misopristol is one component, that terminates an actual pregnancy.

Emergency contraception can be purchased over the counter at any pharmacy (unless the pharmacist is being an asshole). The abortion pill must be obtained with a prescription from a doctor and, in the US, is generally only something you can get from an abortion clinic.
posted by hydropsyche at 8:19 AM on December 7, 2016 [36 favorites]

It's not going to matter. If you go to the hospital for excessive bleeding when the miscarriage hits they'll run a pregnancy tox screen on you in hospital and throw you in the slammer if they pick up any misoprostol in your system.

Emergency Contraception, aka Plan B, aka the morning after pill, is does not induce miscarriages or abortion. It is not an abortifacient. It disrupts or delays ovulation or fertilization.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 8:20 AM on December 7, 2016 [26 favorites]

> "Just an across-the-board repeal without any idea of how we are going to provide health care for millions of Americans is simply irresponsible," Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) told TPM in an interview. "If they repeal it, it's going to be on them."

Senator Peters has been in politics long enough to know that Republicans are the absolute best at successfully walking away from responsibility for the results of their actions. They could repeal Obamacare and replace it with mandatory euthanization for anyone who gets sick and still pin that shit on Democrats. So good luck with that narrative.
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:38 AM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's just part of understanding his appeal.

See, this is where "American democratic privilege" kicks in. There's a lot to dislike about procurement models and regulatory capture and the power of lobbying and all that, but it's mostly not a capricious framework.

The companies best placed to work with the supposed aim of "disciplin[ing] big business and its cosy relationship with government" are the ones that know from global experience how to suck up and grant small symbolic victories to small minds, while writing off any shakedown on their balance sheet.
posted by holgate at 8:38 AM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

Love, LOVE the parade idea. Who is showing up in NYC for a pro-Trump parade? It's got to be what, 100-1 against? 1000-1? An outpouring of protesters like he's never seen. I would personally rent an air b&b with a balcony just to have the chance to throw confetti that has "TRASH BIGOTS" written on it.
posted by prefpara at 8:39 AM on December 7, 2016 [10 favorites]

I henceforth resolve to spend the next 4 years responding to 'Merry Christmas' from strangers with 'Io Saturnalia!' in a really overwrought accent.

Regret to inform the correct response is "Heil Trump!"
posted by kirkaracha at 8:39 AM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

Mod note: A few comments deleted. Coda Tronca, please lay off it in these threads if your main contribution is going to be to needle people about how some norm-breaking thing is no big deal; it just looks like picking a fight.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:40 AM on December 7, 2016 [7 favorites]

Emergency Contraception, aka Plan B, aka the morning after pill, is does not induce miscarriages or abortion. It is not an abortifacient.

Not to be a downer, but this difference didn't matter at all in Burwell v Hobby Lobby. I fear that with a justice picked by Trump (or lbr Pence), this may be the new normal, science be damned.
posted by zombieflanders at 8:43 AM on December 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

The NYC parade idea is a curious one. Would he still do the DC part down Pennsylvania Avenue, from the Capitol to the White House? The president typically walks part of the way. Would he want to walk past the hotel that bears his name? Or would the protesters be too much for him?
posted by everybody had matching towels at 8:46 AM on December 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

So wait. We're still here? There was a new thread link above, wtf guys.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 8:49 AM on December 7, 2016

Not to be a downer, but this difference didn't matter at all in Burwell v Hobby Lobby.

Yeah, I know. They can say it recites the Checkers speech for all I care, it still does not induce miscarriages or abortion. They cannot change what it actually does and doesn't do, and the distinction between miscarriages, abortion, and emergency contraception is an important one.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 8:49 AM on December 7, 2016 [6 favorites]

I can't imagine any scenario where Kasich signs the abortion bill.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:52 AM on December 7, 2016

Mod note: This thread remains the general catchall post-election nightmare thread. Time person-of-the-year specific discussion goes here, and now, stuff about the Ohio abortion bill goes here.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:52 AM on December 7, 2016 [11 favorites]

That's a POTY thread, this is the election thread.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 8:53 AM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

Pizza gate hysteria is spreading to Austin, TX as local restaurant Eastside Pies receives slander, threats and vandalism. One of the co-owners, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, is accused of having "CIA" connections.

My God. Are we in for four years of constant Satanic panic?
posted by sleepy psychonaut at 8:55 AM on December 7, 2016 [20 favorites]

My God. Are we in for four years of constant Satanic panic?

Yes.
posted by tivalasvegas at 8:57 AM on December 7, 2016 [32 favorites]

We are far too divided to have National Nightmares.
posted by zutalors! at 8:59 AM on December 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

My God. Are we in for four years of constant Satanic panic?


Knock knock
Who's there.?
Satanic panic...
Satanic panic who ?
Knick knock...
Who's there ?
Satanic panic...
posted by y2karl at 9:10 AM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

That's a POTY thread, this is the POTTY thread.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:11 AM on December 7, 2016 [5 favorites]

Inorganic Germanic titanic volcanic Satanic panic
posted by kirkaracha at 9:15 AM on December 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

Trump Denies Having Anything To Do With Dividing America: I'm Not President Yet!

"It is a great honor. It means a lot especially me growing up reading Time Magazine," Trump said. "I have been lucky enough to be on the cover many times."

"When you say divided states of America, I didn't divide them," Trump continued. "They're divided now. I think putting divided is snarky, but again, it's divided. I'm not president yet. So I didn't do anything to divide."

He doesn't seem to believe in the "you break it you buy it" philosophy.
posted by zachlipton at 9:25 AM on December 7, 2016 [6 favorites]

The Dangerous Myth That Hillary Clinton Ignored the Working Class
To many white Trump voters, the problem wasn’t her economic stance, but the larger vision—a multi-ethnic social democracy—that it was a part of.

Eric Levitz in New York Magazine: Clinton’s Failure With the Working Class Had Little to Do With Trump Voters
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 9:27 AM on December 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

John Kelly, Retired Marine General, Is Trump’s Choice to Lead Homeland Security

It's not yet official, and the Times reports it will be announced next week. Gen. Kelly ran the Southern Command, which put Guantánamo in his area of responsibility, and once questioned the plans to open combat jobs to women, saying it would cause the military to lower its physical standards. His son was killed serving in Afghanistan in 2010.

Best commentary:

How many generals do you need in government before you technically become a junta?

--@nxthompson
posted by zachlipton at 9:30 AM on December 7, 2016 [30 favorites]

Corey Lewandowski Says Donald Trump Won The War On Christmas

I can't remember who but some wag on Twitter said they were going to respond to "Merry Christmas" by saying "All holidays matter."
posted by madamjujujive at 9:32 AM on December 7, 2016 [70 favorites]

Scuttlebutt is that Scott Pruitt, attorney general of Oklahoma, will be Trump's pick for EPA administrator. Pruitt has never been responsible for environmental policy at any level of government in any capacity, but he's sued EPA over every major regulation since he assumed office in 2011. As if there was any doubt over what Trump considers to be relevant experience for that job.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 9:35 AM on December 7, 2016 [12 favorites]

So many generals. Anyone remember Seven Days in May ?
posted by madamjujujive at 9:38 AM on December 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

That Chris Hedges piece is great. The man is a prophet.

There will be rebels. They will live in the shadows. They will be the renegade painters, sculptors, poets, writers, journalists, musicians, actors, dancers, organizers, activists, mystics, intellectuals and other outcasts who are willing to accept personal sacrifice. They will not surrender their integrity, creativity, independence and finally their souls. They will speak the truth. The state will have little tolerance of them. They will be poor. The wider society will be conditioned by mass propaganda to write them off as parasites or traitors. They will keep alive what is left of dignity and freedom. Perhaps one day they will rise up and triumph. But one does not live in poverty and on the margins of society because of the certainty of success. One lives like that because to collaborate with radical evil is to betray all that is good and beautiful. It is to become a captive. It is to give up the moral autonomy that makes us human. The rebels will be our hope.

posted by Coventry at 9:43 AM on December 7, 2016 [13 favorites]

madamjujujive, so uh, this just crossed my timeline: One person close to Trump transition, noting all the military folks, said, "It's beginning to look like Seven Days in May"--@maggieNYT

Any chance you're "one person close to Trump transition?"
posted by zachlipton at 9:43 AM on December 7, 2016 [8 favorites]

yes, and i'm duclod man
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 9:49 AM on December 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

sleepy psychonaut: "My God. Are we in for four years of constant Satanic panic?"

Halflings and gnomes removed from the latest edition of D&D to avoid accusations of sexualizing minors.
posted by charred husk at 9:49 AM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

Halflings and gnomes removed from the latest edition of D&D to avoid accusations of sexualizing minors.

Elves were removed in North Carolinan editions a couple of years back because Pat McCrory kept confusing male and female elves.
posted by Talez at 9:52 AM on December 7, 2016 [5 favorites]

zachlipton, I am not close to the transition, would that I had any influence there. I thought about 7 Days in May when Mattis was nominated and then I saw that comment on Twitter, too. I guess all of us olds have the same cultural reference points.
posted by madamjujujive at 10:05 AM on December 7, 2016

The top comment from that Chris Hedges article minces no words:

I think we are privileged to be living through a demonstration of just why the Universe is silent. The answer to Fermi's Paradox is right there before our eyes.
Plainly 'intelligence', the only way in which Life on any planet or anywhere else it might arise in the cosmos could break the 'silence' by communicating, deliberately or accidentally, with others, is innately self-destructive.
I think the mechanism of this self-destruction is plain. Intelligence is bound to be distributed unevenly, and manifested in numerous forms, along a distribution, particularly where a varied population is guaranteed by reproduction that mixes up the attributes of individuals. On this distribution there will be individuals who hate and fear others, are greedy for more than a fair share and are violent, even murderous or genocidal in pursuit of self-advantage. Some will venerate Life, others despise it and feel no compunction in destroying it.
That greedy, destructive, type, basically the psychopaths, we have in huge numbers. Efforts to keep them away from power and unable to impose themselves on others, through religions and philosophies have totally failed. This type now completely controls the planet, mostly through the machinations of capitalism, the process where psychopaths, who the system empowers, demand infinite, cancerous, growth on a finite planet, with predictable results, which will shortly drive us to extinction. No amount of science, rationality, appeals to morality or to remember the fate of our descendants, has ever affected the way these psychotics act, and, in truth, as the End draws nigh, they are simply growing ever more vicious and deranged. The end could come quickly through thermo-nuclear war, or over a couple of more decades, through ecological collapse, but it is now unavoidable.

posted by bodywithoutorgans at 10:15 AM on December 7, 2016 [25 favorites]

"When you say divided states of America, I didn't divide them," Trump continued. "They're divided now. I think putting divided is snarky, but again, it's divided. I'm not president yet. So I didn't do anything to divide."

The Onion has a slideshow looking back on his campaign: The Election of Donald Trump: A Candidate Who United Every American Intolerance
posted by Doktor Zed at 10:16 AM on December 7, 2016 [5 favorites]

Scuttlebutt is that Scott Pruitt, attorney general of Oklahoma, will be Trump's pick for EPA administrator.

So I tried to google this guy and the results are endemic of how fucked we are. The first search result was a brietbart article, which is horrendous in and of itself. Because unless someone types in the exact spelling of that website, a responsible search engine should send them elsewhere. Out of morbid curiosity, I read the article and it claimed EPA had banned DDT without any factual information to back it up. I don't know how I'm going to survive four years of this post-factual shit.
posted by C'est la D.C. at 10:20 AM on December 7, 2016 [10 favorites]

Our long National Nightmare is over. Long live our long National Nightmare!

Hooray, everything's great, now President Kill is dead!
Hooray, I'll bet you can't wait to vote for President Kill instead.
posted by jackbishop at 10:21 AM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

Donald Trump seems to think appointing this many generals to his Cabinet makes him look strong. On the contrary, it reveals him to be what we already knew; a weak, rudderless man.
posted by Justinian at 10:24 AM on December 7, 2016 [30 favorites]

remarks to the Gold Star Parents, from February 2012, delivered by Lt. Gen. John Kelly, USMC, Senior Military Assistant to the Secretary of Defense. (2015)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:25 AM on December 7, 2016

A word of caution to those intending to stockpile chemical/drug/small-molecule birth control: they have expiry dates as the active compound(s) will degrade over time, even when kept in recommended environmental conditions.
posted by porpoise at 10:28 AM on December 7, 2016 [5 favorites]

it claimed EPA had banned DDT without any factual information to back it up.

Oh, yeah, I've heard that one. There are Serious Conservative Policy Experts who tell rooms full of other Serious Conservatives that the DDT ban was a crime against humanity and if only we could spray it everywhere malaria would be gone and everything would be great. And that was before Zika, so I can only imagine what they had to say about that.

Also:

Donald Trump Thinks Asbestos Health Risks Are A 'Mob Conspiracy'
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 10:36 AM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

No amount of science, rationality, appeals to morality or to remember the fate of our descendants, has ever affected the way these psychotics act, and, in truth, as the End draws nigh, they are simply growing ever more vicious and deranged. The end could come quickly through thermo-nuclear war, or over a couple of more decades, through ecological collapse, but it is now unavoidable.

This is not fucking helping.

And neither is: "There will be rebels. They will live in the shadows. ... The rebels will be our hope." This is not a goddam installment of Star Wars. Fantasies of glorious rebellion and wars of moral righteousness do not help. What helps is boots on the ground, calm strategy, and long hard work. This discourse of--and I honestly cannot find another word-- hysteria does not help. America is one country, not the whole world. Those who voted for Trump will soon enough have their illusions betrayed... in the meantime there are other elections and meaningful things to do in our own neighbourhoods. Courage.
posted by jokeefe at 10:42 AM on December 7, 2016 [66 favorites]

Robert Reich: The Art of the Autocrat

The art of the Trump deal is to use sticks (public criticism) and carrots (public commendation plus government sweeteners) to get big corporations to do what Trump wants them to do.

This isn’t public policy making. It’s not about changing market incentives. It has nothing to do with lawmaking. It’s a drop in the bucket in terms of jobs.

In reality, it’s the arbitrary and capricious use of personal power – hitting stock prices and turning public opinion against companies Trump doesn’t like, and raising stock prices and public opinion toward companies Trump does like.

Don’t be fooled into thinking Trump is being guided by anything other than his own random, autocratic whims. He could have attacked or lauded any one of thousands of big companies that are creating American jobs, or creating jobs abroad, or charging the government too much for their products.

This is the work of a despot who wants corporate America (and everyone else) to kiss his derriere.

posted by zachlipton at 10:45 AM on December 7, 2016 [23 favorites]

This is not fucking helping.

And neither is: "There will be rebels. They will live in the shadows. ... The rebels will be our hope." This is not a goddam installment of Star Wars. Fantasies of glorious rebellion and wars of moral righteousness do not help. What helps is boots on the ground, calm strategy, and long hard work. This discourse of--and I honestly cannot find another word-- hysteria does not help. America is one country, not the whole world. Those who voted for Trump will soon enough have their illusions betrayed... in the meantime there are other elections and meaningful things to do in our own neighbourhoods. Courage.

Yes, absolutely, thank you.
posted by zutalors! at 10:46 AM on December 7, 2016 [20 favorites]

Donald Trump seems to think appointing this many generals to his Cabinet makes him look strong. On the contrary, it reveals him to be what we already knew; a weak, rudderless man.

that's the common thread running through the whole alt-right/MRA/GamerGate/Trump phenomenon, this aspirational tough guy fantasy. if you can't be one yourself just suck up to one and cheer him on. Christ maybe that Navy Seal copypasta is the ur-text of this whole fucking mess
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:50 AM on December 7, 2016 [5 favorites]

Study: Clinton-Trump coverage was a feast of false equivalency

“False equivalencies abound in today’s reporting,” writes Patterson. “When journalists can’t, or won’t, distinguish between allegations directed at the Trump Foundation and those directed at the Clinton Foundation, there’s something seriously amiss. And false equivalencies are developing on a grand scale as a result of relentlessly negative news. If everything and everyone is portrayed negatively, there’s a leveling effect that opens the door to charlatans.”
posted by futz at 10:55 AM on December 7, 2016 [19 favorites]

In the first few days after the election I feel like people had these fantasies of being the Dutch resistance and like hiding Muslims in their homes. Also all the talk about all brown people being deported. When none of that happens and quieter moves to revoke rights and freedoms go on, who will notice?
posted by zutalors! at 10:56 AM on December 7, 2016 [19 favorites]

Some of Us Are Brave: An Aesop's Fable for Democrats [Tamara Winfrey Harris for bitchmedia]

This year, 88 percent of African American voters, 65 percent of Latino voters, 54 percent of women voters, and 78 percent of gay and lesbian voters were “with her.” Now, in return for our allegiance to Hillary Clinton, we are being told by Democrats that, in the name of harmony, it would be best to ignore the naked bigotry of the Trump campaign and view the people who voted against our humanity as well-intentioned. We are being told that discussing our issues is divisive.

Let’s be clear: Donald Trump ran a campaign all about the supremacy of the straight, white American identity. The people who voted for him either agree outright with his rhetoric or, at least, do not find it to be a problem. Voting for a demagogue “despite hate” is not an achievement that should engender empathy. And it is revolting to frame discussion about the legacy of slavery and Native genocide as alienating in the same country where the state can murder a 12-year-old black boy in a Cleveland park and fire water cannons at Native American protesters on a South Dakota reservation. It is especially insulting coming from a “liberal” party. [...]

Democrats’ eagerness to snag Trump voters brings to mind Aesop’s famous fable, “The Dog and Its Reflection,” where a pooch loses his bone when he opens his mouth to steal from another “dog” that is simply his own reflection in a stream. The Democratic Party would be wise to treat its base as if we matter before it, too, is left with nothing.

posted by melissasaurus at 10:59 AM on December 7, 2016 [56 favorites]

Rykey: Wealthy people engineer the system in their own favor, and the rest of us kindly stay the fuck out of the way? Friend, that's exactly how free-market capitalism works.

Related: When It Comes To Wealthy Leaders, World Abounds With Cautionary Tales (NPR, December 6, 2016)

He was a flamboyant, alpha-male billionaire who said things no career politician ever would — someone who promised to use his business savvy to reform the system and bring back jobs. Voters believed that his great wealth insulated him from corruption, because he couldn't be bought.

But his administration was marked by criminal investigations and crony capitalism.

Italian Prime Minister Silivo Berlusconi was — until Donald Trump came along — the best known example of a certain type of wealthy businessman who decides to go into politics, promising that, as an outsider, he is uniquely qualified to shake up the system, says Darrell West, vice president of governance studies at the Brookings Institution.

"Most of the time, they win, and for exactly the same reason that Trump did, which is [that] people like business people. They think they know how to create jobs and run the economy. It's a kind of white-knight phenomenon," West says.
...
Meredith McGehee of Issue One, a group that works to get money out of politics: "The United States has been the shining light on these issues and has been respected around the world for how you deal with these conflicts," she says. "And I would hate to see us lose that leadership."

On one hand, there's no rumors of _rump holding "bunga bunga" parties, but on the other hand, _rump is putting us solidly on the path towards four years of "country run on crony capitalism" territory, as heard in the piece following the cautionary tales piece linked and quoted above: In India, Trump's Business Interests Raise Anticipation And Questions -- _rump's branding is is sold for major developments, where he gets paid for branding and lets the developers handle the real work. And because the brand is his name, he can't separate himself from this.

But the projects have attracted attention in part because of the nature of property development in India: It is prone to political entanglement.

The founder of the Lodha Group, Mangal Prabhat Lodha, Trump's partner in Mumbai, is not only a property magnate but the vice president of Maharashtra state's BJP party, the most powerful in the country. Such connections could be used to cut corners, and risk the appearance of favoritism.

Architect Chandrashekhar Prabhu, a former president of the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority, says developers "clearly influence" the process of decision-making.

[Side note: it's a bit childish, but I like referring to the president-elect as _rump, inspired by vandalized political signs I've seen similar to these in the Erie region - he almost won the popular vote, so I'll almost spell out his name.]
posted by filthy light thief at 11:07 AM on December 7, 2016 [7 favorites]

> Fantasies of glorious rebellion and wars of moral righteousness do not help. What helps is boots on the ground, calm strategy, and long hard work.

They both help. They're not at odds with each other. Hedges' piece is a call for courage, dedication and effort.
posted by Coventry at 11:09 AM on December 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

This creeps me right the fuck out.

Dozens Of Members Of Congress Met With Religious Right Pastors To Drive Satan Out Of Power In The Capitol

Kistler revealed that U.S. Senate Chaplain Barry Black preached to participants and reportedly prophesied that a revival is about to sweep America and “it will commence … in the halls of Congress” and Walker concurred.

Kistler also revealed that in addition to praying in the Kennedy Caucus Room in the Capitol, pastors were given access to the U.S. Senate chamber by Rep. Louie Gohmert. In the senate chamber, he said, “we got on our knees … and it sounded almost like a labor room as people were crying out to God for the revival that Chaplain Black believes is coming and that we believe is coming.”

You have to read it. Scary shit.
posted by futz at 11:21 AM on December 7, 2016 [20 favorites]

Side note: it's a bit childish, but I like referring to the president-elect as _rump

Would you consider not doing so? It is a bit childish, it's also hard to read, contributes to lowering of the discourse, and makes every argument easier to dismiss out of hand. Just like you'd dismiss anyone talking about Killary, or Obambi.
posted by skewed at 11:28 AM on December 7, 2016 [29 favorites]

You have to read it. Scary shit.

The exorcism doesn't seem to have worked, they're still there.
posted by Candleman at 11:34 AM on December 7, 2016 [18 favorites]

Please enjoy this video of Ted Cruz passionately defending cheese: "Queso is made to be scooped up with tortilla trips, dribbling down your chin and onto your shirt."
posted by zachlipton at 11:37 AM on December 7, 2016 [6 favorites]

Uggggh. But: If they had Ted Cruz make more videos about the gastronomic pleasures of chocolate, garlic mashed potatoes, and cheeseburgers, I'd easily lose 30 pounds in the new year. Let's look into that.
posted by mochapickle at 11:40 AM on December 7, 2016 [7 favorites]

The allusions to the 40s in Nadav Kander's Time Magazine's cover and portraits are haunting and fantastic photography. Those big shadows on the old school backdrops. I mean, when you're adopting much of the same style as this Time cover, that's not an accident, right? And the M in "TIME" forming horns on his head. It's astonishing really.
posted by zachlipton at 11:48 AM on December 7, 2016 [13 favorites]

yes, and i'm duclod man

The Tau Cetian candidate.
posted by y2karl at 11:49 AM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

A new stopgap spending bill proposed by congressional Republicans sets aside only $7 million to to protect the president-elect at Trump Tower, even though city officials say the cost by Inauguration Day will be about $35 million.

The small allocation for NYPD overtime is part of an overall House budget bill that would prevent a government shutdown this weekend.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:54 AM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

> A new stopgap spending bill proposed by congressional Republicans sets aside only $7 million to to protect the president-elect at Trump Tower, even though city officials say the cost by Inauguration Day will be about $35 million.

I find myself wondering how much city government / police cooperation is legally required here. Could the city simply scale back their support until they're paid what it actually costs? I'm sure there are statutes that say local jurisdictions have to support Secret Service, but if there's no money to pay for it and no plans to provide that money, at what point can they simply say no?
posted by tonycpsu at 11:59 AM on December 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

A new stopgap spending bill proposed by congressional Republicans sets aside only $7 million to to protect the president-elect at Trump Tower, even though city officials say the cost by Inauguration Day will be about $35 million.

Dear NYC: So stop helping when the money runs out.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 12:06 PM on December 7, 2016 [23 favorites]

Side note: it's a bit childish, but I like referring to the president-elect as _rump

Would you consider not doing so? It is a bit childish, it's also hard to read, contributes to lowering of the discourse, and makes every argument easier to dismiss out of hand.

I've taken to referring to him as Hotel Guy. It's accurate, doesn't stoop to their level, and gets the point across.
posted by monospace at 12:07 PM on December 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

But then NYC would get the blame should something happen. And perhaps even be accused of complicity.
posted by mochapickle at 12:07 PM on December 7, 2016

I'm beyond disgusted by a lot of things these days, including the use of government shutdown as a negotiating tactic. Actual shutdowns hurt a lot of people, government workers first and foremost, but also people whose jobs intersect and rely on the government in some way. Even just threats of shutdowns incur costs and affect productivity because of uncertainty and contingency planning. It's just another way that Republicans have shown their complete disregard for disrupting the lives of many people, and I'd hate to see the Democrats adopt such a reckless technique.
posted by mollweide at 12:11 PM on December 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

As long as we're on the subject what is the origin of the [] meme? I see it being used for the PEOTUS a lot and am curious why.
posted by en forme de poire at 12:14 PM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

Whereas if NYC totally catered to every one of Trump's whims, he'd totally stop bashing De Blasio and become more reasonable in his demands? Not trying to snark—I honestly just can't see a downside to telling Trump to stay in the fucking place designated (and paid for) for POTUS, that isn't already a downside.
posted by Rykey at 12:15 PM on December 7, 2016 [6 favorites]

Fuck Ted Cruz and his quest to ruin everything I love.
posted by DynamiteToast at 12:15 PM on December 7, 2016 [8 favorites]

Government shutdowns are indeed terrible for people who depend on govt funding (I work at a public university and remember the last shutdown) but if that's the price of effectively resisting Trump, particularly when it's the Republicans who have made keeping the government running contingent on rushing through their preferred candidates... I don't know.
posted by en forme de poire at 12:21 PM on December 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

Could Ted Cruz lose a recall election for taking joy in wasting one of Texas' most valuable natural resources? Someone tell me where to file the paperwork.
posted by DynamiteToast at 12:22 PM on December 7, 2016 [5 favorites]

NYPD went on an unannounced virtual work stoppage at the end of 2014, so it's not out of the question that pro-Trump officers would just defy orders and do the protection detail anyway.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 12:22 PM on December 7, 2016

As long as we're on the subject what is the origin of the [] meme? I

I think some people have decided to not use the name "Trump", since calling him "Drumpf" failed to stop him.
posted by thelonius at 12:32 PM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

> it's not out of the question that pro-Trump officers would just defy orders and do the protection detail anyway.

People working enthusiastically on government services for free..? Sounds like a dream of Republican efficiency.
posted by Coventry at 12:32 PM on December 7, 2016

I'm all for TIME Magazine's artistic efforts in recreating an artistic impression of the early 1940's with all of the political references that may engender, but I wonder of what use is the effort is at this point? Thinking people who see this will grasp the implications; non-thinkers will not. Thinking people were planning personal and public reactions before this edition appreared. Non-thinkers don't get it and are still happy rationalizing that PEOTUS breaking campaign promises right and left is OK because reasons. Politicians of all stripes, aside from Evan McMullin, will avoid or deny the validity of the implications because reasons. In the end, with the apparent failure of the Democratic party to try to create an opposition stance to what the GOP, including the PEOTUS, is doing, and since the GOP is not interested in reining itself, including the PEOTUS, in, checks and balances are seemingly failing.

That means that all the impressive artistry is going to accomplish is to say, after the fact, that TIME photographers saw it coming. Ignoring the fact that the magazine provided only some balanced election coverage, thus participating in the mainstream media self-destruction which contributed to the electoral result of the election. Even at this point, the magazine is only alluding to the similarities between the political climate of the 1940's and now. by use of artwork creating an impression. It is not actvely stating the similarities, nor is it exploring other valid concerns about the incoming adminisatration, of which there are far too many to name here.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that our leaders, institutions and mainstream media are failing to protect the people, so it will be up to us to identify the problematic changes in laws and procedures and to do what we can to mitigate or remove them.

The sad part is that I was thinking this morning that not one appointment, tweet, news story or event that involved PEOTUS met with my approval to this point. That has never happened in any previous administration in my voting lifetime. I truly fear for all Americans, but especially for those PEOTUS and his minions have targeted.
posted by Silverstone at 12:35 PM on December 7, 2016 [6 favorites]

From the Person of the Year article:

He returns a few minutes later with that morning’s copy of Newsday, the Long Island tabloid. The front-page headline reads, “EXTREMELY VIOLENT” GANG FACTION, with an article about a surge of local crime by foreign-born assailants. His point, it seems, is that the world is zero-sum, full of the irredeemable killers that Obama’s idealism fails to see. The details are more compelling than any big picture. “They come from Central America. They’re tougher than any people you’ve ever met,” Trump says. “They’re killing and raping everybody out there. They’re illegal. And they are finished.”

A reporter mentions that what Trump is saying echoes the rhetoric of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who has overseen the extrajudicial killing of thousands of alleged drug dealers and users in recent months. The President-elect offers no objection to the comparison. “Well, hey, look, this is bad stuff,” he says. “They slice them up, they carve their initials in the girl’s forehead, O.K. What are we supposed to do? Be nice about it?”

Days later, Trump will have a phone call with the Philippine President, who called President Obama the “son of a whore” a few months ago. A readout from the Philippine government subsequently announces that during the call, Trump praised Duterte’s deadly drug crackdown as “the right way.”

He legitimately sets his worldview around tabloid headlines. That's horrifying.
posted by zachlipton at 12:50 PM on December 7, 2016 [29 favorites]

Pelosi: Dems OK with Mattis compromise

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Wednesday that most Democrats won't oppose compromise language in a stopgap spending measure aimed at expediting consideration of President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for Defense secretary.
posted by futz at 12:54 PM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

Re the [] thing, my own mental shorthand reason for adopting it was:

I don't like making fun of people's names, but don't want to write his, and arrays in python and ruby come in square brackets, and there's an array of things wrong with the man, his campaign, election . . .

That said, as mentioned in some thread long ago, I've had a Word Replacer turning his actual name into "Turnip" for close to a year.
posted by aspersioncast at 12:55 PM on December 7, 2016 [8 favorites]

Carrier Boss: I Just Swindled Trump And He Fell For It (VIDEO)

The negotiations also excluded the union, so it is possible the workers staying behind may have their salaries cut in order to give Trump a public relations talking point.

Hayes told CNBC the details of the phone call, in which Trump induced the company to take the sweetheart deal. He said Trump told him, “We are going to take the tax rate down; we are going to reduce all of this burdensome regulation. When all that happens you are going to be printing money, but I need you to relook at your decision to close the factory in Indiana.”

posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 12:57 PM on December 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

"This is not Gen. Marshall. But compared to some of the other people he could put forth, you have to make a judgment.”

2016: the year in which I agree with Pelosi
posted by corb at 12:58 PM on December 7, 2016 [5 favorites]

@BraddJaffy With the exception of Nikki Haley, Trump's cabinet picks so far are generals, billionaires or multimillionaires (via @mmurraypolitics)
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 1:01 PM on December 7, 2016

I don't like making fun of people's names, but don't want to write his

"Call him Voldemort, Harry. Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself." — Albus Dumbledore
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 1:01 PM on December 7, 2016 [36 favorites]

No amount of science, rationality, appeals to morality or to remember the fate of our descendants, has ever affected the way these psychotics act, and, in truth, as the End draws nigh, they are simply growing ever more vicious and deranged. The end could come quickly through thermo-nuclear war, or over a couple of more decades, through ecological collapse, but it is now unavoidable.

>
This is not fucking helping.

Yeah, I've alluded to this already but perhaps I'll say it louder now. I've rather had it with Chris Hedges shouting his own personal depression in public. I get it. He's been there as a war correspondent. He's seen things that have ripped him to the core. And he's continued to stare unflinchingly into the void. But in the end, I don't trust his conclusions. They sound like the inner monologue I was stuck with for a year or two after one particularly bad acid trip.

Seriously, man, check yrrr despair. You're upsetting the children.

And otherwise, what jokeefe said:

This discourse of--and I honestly cannot find another word-- hysteria does not help. America is one country, not the whole world. Those who voted for Trump will soon enough have their illusions betrayed... in the meantime there are other elections and meaningful things to do in our own neighbourhoods. Courage.
posted by philip-random at 1:01 PM on December 7, 2016 [11 favorites]

Love Is Not the Answer [Kara Brown for Jezebel]

Jones and others can rise up with their Love Armies and their op-eds and cupcakes and continue to have fruitless conversations with people who would applaud and defend any cop who shot them dead in the street. But you don’t have to love your oppressor or those who would sleep just fine at night with full knowledge of your oppression.

There are more of us than there are of them—2.6 million more, it turns out. Our time is not best spent waiting around for those who will ultimately realize making the life of a Mexican immigrant worse isn’t going to make theirs better.

We can no longer fight solely for harmony; we must fight to win—the safety of the vulnerable depends on it. Be the opposition your opposition deserves. Be the opposition that can defeat them. Because on the other side—on their talk shows and Facebook pages and Twitter accounts—they aren’t worried about our economic anxiety or the fear behind our decision-making. And they aren’t talking about loving us.

posted by melissasaurus at 1:02 PM on December 7, 2016 [44 favorites]

> Seriously, man, check yrrr despair. You're upsetting the children.

One thing I have never understood is how Chris Hedges talked himself into having four children.
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:07 PM on December 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

LA Times In diverse California, a young white supremacist seeks to convert fellow college students

Nathan Damigo brought his message of white separatism to an unusual place: an ethnic studies class at Cal State Stanislaus called Searching for America.

Speaking to a crowd filled with black and Latino students, he wove a country song tale of whites becoming an endangered minority in America and compared their plight to Native Americans — before describing his fantasy for a utopian homeland for whites not unlike Indian reservations.

“Even though horrible things did happen to the indigenous people … there was land set aside where they could be who they were and express themselves how they wanted to, and they could have a form of government that reflected them,” Damigo said. “And I think that is something that we want.”

posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 1:08 PM on December 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

That Kara Brown thing is interesting. I think a lot of anti-theists, self-included, expected there to be more vocal Christians in the GOP who were repelled by Trump on religious grounds. Instead many of them seem to have chosen party over faith.

The line that stuck with me:
" . . . one cannot untangle King’s calls for love from his Christian faith. And though his religion informed his tactics of nonviolence and compassion, many are not beholden to those values by their religious or spiritual beliefs. And others still interpret Christianity in a starkly different way."
posted by aspersioncast at 1:18 PM on December 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

fantasy for a utopian homeland

like a safe space
posted by zutalors! at 1:18 PM on December 7, 2016 [10 favorites]

Damigo said. “And I think that is something that we want.”

Yeah buddy, that's what you want. The worst poverty rate for any ethnic group, the worst rape rate overall and by other ethnics. Go tell the Southern Baptists they've gotta go underground for a century. Apparently nobody wants Ohio, Indiana or Pennsylvania right now, would that do for you. Unless we find something we want there. Etc.
posted by ridgerunner at 1:21 PM on December 7, 2016 [5 favorites]

> in the end, I don't trust his conclusions

Is it really irrational depressive despair to conclude that Trump is going to behave like the impulsive, bullying fascist he appears to be, once he takes the reins?
posted by Coventry at 1:22 PM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm happy to set aside some land that no one else wants where all the bigots can go bother each other and leave us alone. No deal? What if I throw in some beads and pillowcases?
posted by prefpara at 1:22 PM on December 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

He legitimately sets his worldview around tabloid headlines. That's also horrifying.

FTFY
posted by petebest at 1:26 PM on December 7, 2016

#NotTheOnion: Linda McMahon for SBA administrator.
posted by emelenjr at 1:30 PM on December 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

That Kara Brown thing is interesting. I think a lot of anti-theists, self-included, expected there to be more vocal Christians in the GOP who were repelled by Trump on religious grounds. Instead many of them seem to have chosen party over faith.

To be honest, if you're a self-identifying Christian in the GOP post-Reagan, you're either a) already used to putting party before faith or b) a member of one of those denominations that are functionally Satan worship anyway. Look at how evangelicals almost universally adore him.
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:30 PM on December 7, 2016 [6 favorites]

Coventry: “Is it really irrational depressive despair to conclude that Trump is going to behave like the impulsive, bullying fascist he appears to be, once he takes the reins?”

Well, I'd say it's irrational breezy optimism to expect that most Americans will say anything but "eh, he's not that bad really" when he does.
posted by koeselitz at 1:30 PM on December 7, 2016 [6 favorites]

#NotTheOnion: Linda McMahon for SBA administrator.

Fahrenthold would like to see some questions about the Trump Foundation donation come up during the confirmation hearings.
posted by zachlipton at 1:31 PM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

Ilhan Omar, the Somali-American woman elected in MN, was the victim of islamophobic/misogynistic violence yesterday in DC; described in this tweet/screenshot.
posted by melissasaurus at 1:34 PM on December 7, 2016 [9 favorites]

I keep going back and forth between "all of these appointments are going to destroy a lot of good programs and they'll find a convoluted way to blame it on progressives" and "they won't even bother to do that because there won't be anything left by 2020."
posted by everybody had matching towels at 1:37 PM on December 7, 2016 [5 favorites]

The main function of antichoice activism has been to use "protect babies" to justify voting for any horrifying thing the Republicans want, no matter how much it hurts actual people--and their babies.

The concrete, proven harm done is given much less weight than the theoretical/spiritual harm done by seeking an abortion (or even using birth control).

Therefore, when religious conservatives are confronted with the fact that a. Republican policies hurt and oppress the poor and b. Jesus was extremely clear that you can't do that and follow him, they say "BUT BABIES" and feel like they've got their get-out-of-jail card.
posted by emjaybee at 1:40 PM on December 7, 2016 [7 favorites]

@BraddJaffy With the exception of Nikki Haley, Trump's cabinet picks so far are generals, billionaires or multimillionaires (via @mmurraypolitics)

As we were told, if a majority of people voted for Hillary we'd find Goldman Sachs running the country.
posted by Talez at 1:45 PM on December 7, 2016 [21 favorites]

The HuffPo article zachlipton posted earlier today is worth a read, and as a Fed really hit home for me. I know I'm extremely lucky to be where I am and have the opportunities I've had, but I've been getting more and more nervous these last few weeks. I was already looking at changing agencies for multiple complex reasons, and I'm now in a mad dash to try to make something stick before Jan 20th but I'm not optimistic.

Starting to seriously consider looking for a way back into the private sector (which makes me sad, I love my work), and if Congress has their way I think a lot of other people will be following suit.
posted by photo guy at 1:46 PM on December 7, 2016 [5 favorites]

"There will be rebels. They will live in the shadows. ... The rebels will be our hope." This is not a goddam installment of Star Wars.

It's certainly not, but The Guardian's Steve Bell has been doing a Labour Party (and Trump) themed cartoon based on Star Wars for a while.
posted by Coda Tronca at 1:49 PM on December 7, 2016

Starting to seriously consider looking for a way back into the private sector (which makes me sad, I love my work), and if Congress has their way I think a lot of other people will be following suit.

I moved up my retirement both because I didn't want to serve under a Trump administration and because I'm legit worried about a military stop loss if we go to war with China or Boeing or whoever.
posted by macfly at 1:52 PM on December 7, 2016 [5 favorites]

A challenge for Betteridge's law of headlines:
Will police killings rise in Trump's America?
posted by farlukar at 1:52 PM on December 7, 2016

Re the [] thing, my own mental shorthand reason for adopting it was:

I don't like making fun of people's names, but don't want to write his, and arrays in python and ruby come in square brackets, and there's an array of things wrong with the man, his campaign, election . . .

I regret coming off so snarky about it. If it helps anyone get through the day, it's a win, even if that's all it does.
posted by thelonius at 1:54 PM on December 7, 2016

Yeah, that HuffPo article is a good one. It's really kind of sick that the kind of people who cheer Trump 'saving' those Carrier jobs are 100% on board with shrinking the federal workforce. Why are these jobs any different from those? (You don't need to answer that, I already know.) I'm not a government employee but I live and work in DC. This will be devastating to our city's economy.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 1:57 PM on December 7, 2016 [8 favorites]

Speaking of the people cheering Trump saving the Carrier jobs, Republicans, led in the effort by by Paul Ryan, just ripped the Buy America provisions out of the water bill. These provisions would have required that the federal funds go to buy US-made steel and other material for drinking water and sewer systems. Video of Sen. Sherrod Brown and Chris Hayes discussing the hypocrisy. Steelworkers unions are livid.
posted by zachlipton at 2:07 PM on December 7, 2016 [29 favorites]

Carrier Boss: I Just Swindled Trump And He Fell For It (VIDEO)

I just happened to be sitting in front of the TV the other night when the local (Indianapolis) news came on. The anchor opened with something like "...And Donald Trump says he'll be going after another company in Indiana that he says is moving jobs to Mexico..."

I yelled so loud my wife came running in from the other room. She found me flailing my arms in front of the TV screaming IT'S NOT GOING AFTER SOMEBODY TO GIVE THEM SEVEN MILLION DOLLARS OF TAXPAYER MONEY TO STILL MOVE HALF THE JOBS TO MEXICOOOOOO...

Christ, it's not even Inauguration Day yet.
posted by Rykey at 2:10 PM on December 7, 2016 [10 favorites]

Shannon Goodin, 24, Owosso, Mich. Trump earned the support of Goodin, a first-time voter, by being "a big poster child for change," she says, adding, "Politicians don't appeal to us. Clinton would go out of her way to appeal to minorities, immigrants, but she didn't really for everyday Americans."

And yet again, USA and world, I heartily apologize on behalf of the state of Michigan. I may need to get that tatooed somewhere visible.
posted by FelliniBlank at 2:11 PM on December 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

when the local (Indianapolis) news came on.

Found yer problem.

She found me flailing my arms in front of the TV screaming

Yup, it'll do that.
posted by petebest at 2:14 PM on December 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

Dem's and others need to prominently tally the number of jobs these policies/changes have destroyed and link it with a very short phrase to be repeated over and over. "GOP Job-killers" whenever they target a federal department for layoffs. "Trump is a job-killer, puts x000 Americans out of work".

Trump is a job-killer
Trump is a con man
Trump wastes taxpayer money
posted by LobsterMitten at 2:15 PM on December 7, 2016 [25 favorites]

A new stopgap spending bill proposed by congressional Republicans sets aside only $7 million to to protect the president-elect at Trump Tower, even though city officials say the cost by Inauguration Day will be about $35 million.

something something something the party of fiscal responsibility
posted by entropicamericana at 2:23 PM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

It looks like Damigo may be a little late to get his Rez.

The group proposes to put those lands into private ownership - a politically explosive idea that could upend more than century of policy designed to preserve Indian tribes on U.S.-owned reservations, which are governed by tribal leaders as sovereign nations.

I'm sure it won't be like the '20s when Osage were being killed for their headrights to the oil under their Rez. Or like Truman's termination policy.
posted by ridgerunner at 2:25 PM on December 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

(And obviously the "jobs killed" tally would include all the downstream jobs that depend on federal funding or purchasing -- schoolteachers, parts-suppliers, tourist workers and whole towns near national parks or military bases, etc.)
posted by LobsterMitten at 2:27 PM on December 7, 2016 [8 favorites]

Relevant Scenes From a Multiverse comic: This Machine Makes Racists.
posted by emjaybee at 2:28 PM on December 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Wednesday that most Democrats won't oppose compromise language in a stopgap spending measure aimed at expediting consideration of President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for Defense secretary.

what could possibly go worng
posted by entropicamericana at 2:28 PM on December 7, 2016

I've been coming more and more to the opinion the best strategy for the Dems is mass resistance, i.e. not even letting Trump put a justice on the court.

So of course they're going to fold. I hope they're right and I'm not. But I usually am.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 2:34 PM on December 7, 2016 [18 favorites]

If it helps anyone get through the day, it's a win, even if that's all it does.

See also: snark.

_{Maybe better suited for MeTa, but your comment got me to think about why I'd started doing it, which is probably a useful thing to do regardless. Somewhere back in there is probably a reference to Doonesbury's *.}
posted by aspersioncast at 2:37 PM on December 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

I moved up my retirement both because I didn't want to serve under a Trump administration and because I'm legit worried about a military stop loss if we go to war with China or Boeing or whoever.

I don't blame you, I'd do the same except I still have about a decade till I'm eligible. Not gonna lie, the retirement benefits have been one of the big things keeping me in though, they're not as great as some people think (a lot of state and local government have plans that are are way more generous) but it's better than nothing.

I'm not a government employee but I live and work in DC. This will be devastating to our city's economy.

Yeah its not gonna be good. I'd say defense contractors will be making money hand over fist, but given how [] acted with Boeing, who knows.
posted by photo guy at 2:38 PM on December 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

So of course they're going to fold. I hope they're right and I'm not.

The ghost of Tom Daschle lets out a single, sustained, fart.
posted by petebest at 2:39 PM on December 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

I had a surprisingly civilized Twitter conversation this morning with a former Marine who disagrees with our congressman (Ruben Gallego, also a former Marine) about blocking the waiver.

Then some other dude swept in, hurling accusations at Gallego of being a "traitor" and telling me in no uncertain terms that I'm wrong and should stop my "pathetic partisanship." He listed many fine qualities that Mattis brings to the table--which, as I told him, I don't question, but I do think it's a bad idea to enforce rules only when we like them.

A friend-of-a-friend on Facebook (another former Marine who disagrees with the waiver) said she's gotten some really nasty pushback from her "brothers and sisters" (which I first thought was literal, but she meant "in arms"), who essentially worship Mattis as a hero.

I am just afraid we're going to end up screwing ourselves--and the country, the rest of the world, the planet--royally in our attempts to be "reasonable."
posted by Superplin at 2:41 PM on December 7, 2016 [13 favorites]

Yeah, well, the next time you don't need a cop, don't call a hippy.
posted by y2karl at 2:44 PM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

Vice: Congress Used Dying Kids and Slick PR to Sell America a Handout for Big Pharma

The 21st Century Cures Act involved 1,300 pharma lobbyists and attempts to weaken FDA standards, ostensibly helping get treatments to patients faster, but also allowing approval on more flimsy evidence by allowing drug companies to submit summaries of data instead of raw data and consider "real world evidence" (anecdotes) when considering already approved drugs for new indications instead of clinical trials. It also funds the Cancer Moonshot and other important research programs.

As the Vice article discusses, patient groups have largely been captured by the pharmaceutical industry, the result being that they tend to advocate for the search for great big "cures" rather than tangible interim steps like more affordable treatments.
posted by zachlipton at 2:52 PM on December 7, 2016 [7 favorites]

The New York Times did an interview at the DC jail, The Comet Ping Pong Gunman Answers Our Reporter’s Questions:

What did he think when he discovered there were no children at the pizzeria?

“The intel on this wasn’t 100 percent,” he said. However, he refused to dismiss outright the claims in the online articles, conceding only that there were no children “inside that dwelling.” He also said that child slavery was a worldwide phenomenon.

He says he didn't vote for Trump or Clinton and that he's not political, but he read a lot of articles on pizzagate after recently getting internet access at home. He has listened to Alex Jones, and says that in his actions, he acted in haste and regrets how he handled the situation.
posted by zachlipton at 3:08 PM on December 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

A view into the world we almost had:

HR Lessons from the Campaign Trail

Bernard C. Coleman III understands that world well. Starting in April 2015, Coleman served as chief diversity and human resources officer at the Hillary for America Campaign Committee (HFA), the organization based in Brooklyn, N.Y., that managed Clinton's run for the White House. In that job, he and his team were tasked with a wide range of traditional and emerging HR duties for what he describes as a billion-dollar, nationwide enterprise.

While his team of four was responsible for more than 800 staff at headquarters, they also managed all HR issues for each state Democratic party, which meant having to comply with federal, state and local labor laws from coast to coast for almost 4,200 staffers. It was an all-encompassing, seven-day-a-week job that reached its end sooner than Coleman and his colleagues anticipated.

posted by melissasaurus at 3:20 PM on December 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

I feel overwhelmed by how cartoonishly awful these people coming in to power appear to be. How can the Republicans so completely abdicate their responsibilities to this country, its people, and its future? What is it about Republicanism that means you can never support a reasonable environmental regulation or hot lunch for poor children? Or fucking minimal qualifications for incredibly complex jobs that touch hundreds of millions of lives? How can they turn a blind eye to open, shameless bigotry and corruption? How can it be that good is not rewarded and evil is not punished? How can it be that we are powerless to stop them as they win by cheating and then govern at gunpoint? Shame shame shame on all of them. This is all intolerable.
posted by prefpara at 3:29 PM on December 7, 2016 [62 favorites]

The New York Times did an interview at the DC jail, The Comet Ping Pong Gunman Answers Our Reporter’s Questions:

He said he had grown religious in the last few years. Tattooed on his back are Bible verses: “Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”

Not too religious that he's actually read the bible. I mean it's fucking black and white, Leviticus 19:28

"'Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the LORD.

IT'S NOT THAT DIFFICULT.
posted by Talez at 3:29 PM on December 7, 2016 [18 favorites]

Also, is it a dwelling if nobody lives in it?
posted by box at 3:33 PM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

Courtesy of Alex Jones spreading his Sandy Hook Conspiracy...

AP Feds: Woman made death threats to Sandy Hook victim's parent

IAMI (AP) — A Florida woman has been charged with making death threats against the parent of a child who died in the Sandy Hook school shooting massacre because she thought the attack was a hoax, federal authorities announced Wednesday.

Lucy Richards, 57, of Tampa was arrested Monday after a grand jury indictment on four felony counts of transmitting threats, the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement.

The threats were made in January 2016 — according to authorities — and included messages that said, "you gonna die, death is coming to you real soon," and "LOOK BEHIND YOU IT IS DEATH." Court documents added that another threat said, "there's nothing you can do about it."

posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:35 PM on December 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

Okay, this was a while ago, but:

quoted by tonycpsu from "lawyers, guns & money": “... Republican Daddies...”

What on God's green earth is "Republican Daddies?" They seem to use this phrase several times – "Obama's Republican Daddies," "no more Republican Daddies," etc. What the hell? Is this supposed to be our equivalent on the Left of "cuckservative"? Whatever the hell it is, I object in the strongest terms.
posted by koeselitz at 3:36 PM on December 7, 2016 [8 favorites]

IT'S NOT THAT DIFFICULT.

Almost all Christians, at least in my experience with fundies, ignore the bulk of Leviticus. With the exception of that verse. And maybe that other verse on witches too.

But dietary restrictions, extremely strict Sabbaths, mixing types of cloth, tattoos, whatever are considered fulfilled in the name of Jesus. Thanks to Christ's sacrifice, we can eat lobsters, pork loins, and pepperoni pizza with extra cheese while wearing our cotton polyester blend t-shirts.
posted by honestcoyote at 3:36 PM on December 7, 2016 [11 favorites]

What on God's green earth is "Republican Daddies?"

A reference to the "Mommy Problem" described in West Wing, perhaps? "When voters want a national daddy, someone tough and strong, they vote Republican. When they want a mommy to give them jobs, health care policy equivalent of matzo-ball soup, they vote Democratic."
posted by melissasaurus at 3:42 PM on December 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

I've asked Evangelicals and they essentially say the Old Testament is nice and all but it's not the important part.
posted by rhizome at 3:42 PM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

Uh oh. The Koch Brothers have a beef with the GOP

WSJ Koch Industries Criticizes Key Feature of House GOP Tax Plan

Koch, based in Wichita, Kan., is taking aim at what is known as border adjustment, which would add taxes to imports and remove them from exports as a way of encouraging domestic production in the U.S. and mirroring border-adjusted consumption taxes in other countries. It is a crucial feature of the Republican plan, because it is expected to generate revenue that pays for lowering the corporate tax rate from 35% to 20% and because it is House Republicans’ alternative to the import tariffs that President-elect Donald Trump has proposed.

posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:45 PM on December 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

And now we sit and watch in disbelief as the victor drops one piece of china after another, spits in the soup, sticks his fist through a painting and gobbles up the chocolates. Not satisfied with the usual election night victory speech, he stages a post-election victory tour and gloatfest, a series of rallies in arenas where he can waggle his thumbs and smirk and holler and point out the journalists in their pen for the mob to boo and shake their fists at. He puts the Secret Service through their paces, highways are closed, planes diverted, cities disrupted, just so the man can say how much fun it was to defeat Hillary Clinton and confound the experts...

Meanwhile, the emperor-elect parades in the nude while his congressional courtiers admire him and the nation drifts toward the rapids. The one bright spot is the old draft-dodger’s newfound fondness for generals, including the one who talked him out of the idea of torturing prisoners of war. Military experience does encourage a certain respect for reality. There is hope that if the showman should decide late one night to incinerate Iran or North Korea and get it over with, someone might say, “Hold on. Let’s think this through.”

Thank you, Trump voters, for this wonderful joke
posted by y2karl at 3:47 PM on December 7, 2016 [16 favorites]

But dietary restrictions, extremely strict Sabbaths, mixing types of cloth, tattoos, whatever are considered fulfilled in the name of Jesus. Thanks to Christ's sacrifice, we can eat lobsters, pork loins, and pepperoni pizza with extra cheese while wearing our cotton polyester blend t-shirts.

But still, no touching wieners.
posted by Talez at 3:51 PM on December 7, 2016 [9 favorites]

Cuz God knows Americans cannot possibly clean Mar-A-Lago to his satisfaction

My Palm Beach Post Trump again hires foreign workers for Mar-a-Lago — little change in pay

PALM BEACH — President-elect Donald Trump is driving a hard bargain for the foreign workers who will staff The Mar-a-Lago Club this winter.

He’s paying some of them less than they made last year, and most get just a 1 percent raise.

As the presidential campaign heated up, Trump won approval to hire 64 foreign workers through the federal government’s H-2B visa program, according to newly released data from the U.S. Labor Department. Last year, Trump was allowed to hire 69 foreign workers at Mar-a-Lago.

"Hey, last year you put too much mayo on the club sandwiches and you served the steak too rare. You get a 25 cent cut in your hourly wage this year."(fake sentiment, real wage cut)
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:55 PM on December 7, 2016 [6 favorites]

and you served the steak too rare

???

There is no such thing.
posted by Talez at 3:57 PM on December 7, 2016 [5 favorites]

Talez, it is well known that [ ] likes his steaks well done.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:59 PM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

> A reference to the "Mommy Problem" described in West Wing, perhaps? "When voters want a national daddy, someone tough and strong, they vote Republican. When they want a mommy to give them jobs, health care policy equivalent of matzo-ball soup, they vote Democratic."

Right. Recent usage correlates with anger over Obama's pattern of appointing Republicans to important positions, particularly James Comey.

See also:

Media Matters: On Fox News, Sabato equated Democrats to "mommy," Republicans to "daddy"

Eschaton: Daddy Party

I don't think it compares at all to "cuckservative", which has a weird porny/racist thing going on, but whatever.
posted by tonycpsu at 4:00 PM on December 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

15 years ago, Al Qaeda displayed... WTF? Did the meeting with Abe not close the Ivanka deal?

@newtgingrich
75 years ago the Japanese displayed professional brilliance and technological power launching surprises from Hawaii to the Philippines
posted by chris24 at 4:01 PM on December 7, 2016

What on God's green earth is "Republican Daddies?"

He was talking about FBI Director Comey, and, rightfully, criticizing a ridiculous article that argued that we need him at the FBI because he has demonstrated "independence from his political masters". Why we should interpret his actions like that, rather than as naked partisan politics, was not discussed.

A lot of the political bloggers seem to latch on to little catchphrases and use them ad nauseum, and that's what he's doing here, I'd say.
posted by thelonius at 4:01 PM on December 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

Talez, it is well known that [ ] likes his steaks well done.

AND YET HE WON TEXAS?!?

Those people have no convictions.
posted by Talez at 4:01 PM on December 7, 2016 [10 favorites]

Metafilter: "...Whatever the hell it is, I object in the strongest terms."
posted by ridgerunner at 4:07 PM on December 7, 2016 [10 favorites]

15 years ago, Al Qaeda displayed... WTF? Did the meeting with Abe not close the Ivanka deal?

he seems to be marking the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack.
posted by indubitable at 4:07 PM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

Well in my neck of the woods: At A&M, protests, big crowds and tension over white nationalist's speech

So today my feed is filled with photos and videos of hundreds of people protesting a few Nazis. With the obligatory state riot police riding horses through peaceful crowds (no one was injured, only two arrested, the police action was the only aggression). So it's nice to see decency out-shouting hate in a conservative area/campus.
posted by threeturtles at 4:07 PM on December 7, 2016 [8 favorites]

I've asked Evangelicals and they essentially say the Old Testament is nice and all but it's not the important part.

That's what I was always taught in Methodist Sunday School but-- correct me if I wrong here-- most, if not all, of the messages against abortion and against homosexuality come from passages in the Old Testament.

AND YET HE WON TEXAS?!?

Those people have no convictions.

As far as I can tell his palate is very unsophisticated and stuck somewhere around the 60's. He had an actual temper tantrum over a chef who served Caesar salads in Parmesan cheese bowls because bowls fashioned out of Parmesan cheese are too weird for him.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:09 PM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

he seems to be marking the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack.

I know. By praising their execution of the attack. Seems an odd/offensive thing to do on the anniversary of the second worst sneak attack in US history where 2,335 people died. Unless you're trying to ingratiate yourself with the Japanese. As my comparison implied, would anyone praise Al Qaeda for the tactical brilliance of 9/11?
posted by chris24 at 4:09 PM on December 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

it is well known that [ ] likes his steaks well done.

ah, of course he does.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 4:11 PM on December 7, 2016

He had an actual temper tantrum over a chef who served Caesar salads in Parmesan cheese bowls because bowls fashioned out of Parmesan cheese are too weird for him.

The chef defended himself to trump and was fired the next day according to what I read.
posted by futz at 4:11 PM on December 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

don't think it compares at all to "cuckservative", which has a weird porny/racist thing going on, but whatever.

Ohhh no yeah the "Daddy" thing is a Milo Yiannopoulos thing and there's totally weird porny associations.
posted by corb at 4:16 PM on December 7, 2016 [5 favorites]

Crooks and Liars Here's Another Way To Get Merrick Garland On SCOTUS (Updated)

The president has nominated Garland and submitted his nomination to the Senate. The president should advise the Senate that he will deem its failure to act by a specified reasonable date in the future to constitute a deliberate waiver of its right to give advice and consent. What date? The historical average between nomination and confirmation is 25 days; the longest wait has been 125 days. That suggests that 90 days is a perfectly reasonable amount of time for the Senate to consider Garland’s nomination. If the Senate fails to act by the assigned date, Obama could conclude that it has waived its right to participate in the process, and he could exercise his appointment power by naming Garland to the Supreme Court.

I think this idea has been raised before but that was before the election was decided and we were all confident Clinton would be in the White House. It really, really bothers me (and I know a lot of others) that the Republicans are being rewarded for their bad behavior by being allowed to seat someone on the SC as soon as Trump gives them a nominee. I really wish the Democrats would take a page out of the Republican handbook and bend the rules otherwise if they don't try something the next time we have a Democratic President and a Republican-controlled Senate we will see a repeat of this same situation.

The chef defended himself to trump and was fired the next day according to what I read.

Exactly. And not even by DJT himself but by somebody else.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:20 PM on December 7, 2016 [12 favorites]

I don't think it compares at all to "cuckservative", which has a weird porny/racist thing going on, but whatever.

well let's ask google image search
posted by indubitable at 4:26 PM on December 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

As far as I can tell his palate is very unsophisticated and stuck somewhere around the 60's.

It's not just his palate; his whole mindset is outdated.

The only famous generals he knows are Patton (World War II) and MacArthur (World War II and Korean War). The Patton biopic (Nixon's favorite movie) was made in 1970.

He's obsessed with hairspray and the ozone layer; that changed in the late 1980s/early 1990s.

His crime statistics are almost 30 years out of date.

He thinks Scott "Chachi" Baio is a star.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:32 PM on December 7, 2016 [21 favorites]

The whole "Daddy" thing really underscores the weird D/s dynamic the entire Trump campaign had/has. I keep waiting for a nice article dissecting the psycho-sexual aspects of Trump and his supporters but haven't found one yet.
posted by misterpatrick at 4:40 PM on December 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

Maybe he'll pardon Screech.
posted by thelonius at 4:41 PM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

he seems to be marking celebrating the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack.

FTand Fuck You Newton, you weaselly sack of shit.
posted by petebest at 4:55 PM on December 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

most, if not all, of the messages against abortion and against homosexuality come from passages in the Old Testament.

This is all the Old Testament has to say about abortion:
"And if men strive together, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart, and yet no harm follow, he shall be surely fined, according as the woman's husband shall lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. " [Exodus 21:22]

Murder was a capital offense. If you cause a woman to miscarry a (presumably) wanted baby? You pay a fine.

All of this life begins at conception garbage is a really modern invention.
posted by Mchelly at 4:56 PM on December 7, 2016 [35 favorites]

My apologies to the noble weasel. I claim only pique and regret the error.
posted by petebest at 4:57 PM on December 7, 2016

The chef defended himself to trump and was fired the next day

Jeez, it's not like you have to eat the parmesan bowl if you don't want it. You can still eat the salad and just pretend the bowl's made of glass, if that calms you down. I guess it's more fun to throw a chef out of work than to chalk up his menu choices to how fancy your club is.
posted by Rykey at 4:58 PM on December 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

Federal judge lifts order that had allowed Michigan's recount, effectively ending it.
posted by futz at 5:04 PM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

@realDonaldTrump: Chuck Jones, who is President of United Steelworkers 1999, has done a terrible job representing workers. No wonder companies flee country!

Washington Post At the Dec. 1 meeting, where Trump was supposed to lay out the details, Jones hoped he would explain himself.

“But he got up there,” Jones said Tuesday, “and, for whatever reason, lied his a-- off.”
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:14 PM on December 7, 2016 [6 favorites]

Kellyanne Conway Suggests That Women With Kids Shouldn’t Take Jobs in the White House

Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said that mothers should not accept high-powered career opportunities—a standard that does not apply to fathers, in Conway’s opinion.

“I do politely mention to them the question isn’t would you take the job, the male sitting across from me who’s going to take a big job in the White House. The question is would you want your wife to,” Conway said, describing conversations she’s had with male colleagues. “Would you want the mother of your children to? You really see their entire visage change. It’s like, oh, no, they wouldn’t want their wife to take that job.”
posted by futz at 5:16 PM on December 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

I immediately had three different reactions.

1. Someone please, please save us from this actual horror film in which we're watching the blade of the saw inch closer and closer to our soft and vulnerable limbs.
2. I hope bad things happen to her.
3. My entire visage would change too if I pictured my wife working closely with Trump and his band of merry molesters.
3a. Humor apparatus broken. Unable to laugh at my own joke. GOTO 1.
posted by prefpara at 5:20 PM on December 7, 2016 [18 favorites]

LOL, whut. Listen, I respect Kellyanne saying that a Trump White House position isn't a good fit for her young family. But don't tell other women what to do. And certainly don't tell men what their wives should do.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:21 PM on December 7, 2016 [19 favorites]

but if you don't tell the men, how will their wives know what they should do
posted by prefpara at 5:22 PM on December 7, 2016 [6 favorites]

She is not taking a job at the White House in that administration because she expects it will not last for the duration, and she's young yet.
posted by Francolin at 5:29 PM on December 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

but if you don't tell the men, how will their wives know what they should do

. . . Tw- . . Twitter?
posted by petebest at 5:31 PM on December 7, 2016

Jones was just on CNN tonight pointing out that hundreds of his members are losing their jobs, in case you're wondering what set Trump off.

Meanwhile, the NYT has a report: Donald Trump Is Said to Intend to Keep a Stake in His Business

President-elect Donald J. Trump is considering formally turning over the operational responsibility for his real estate company to his two adult sons, but he intends to keep a stake in the business and resist calls to divest, according to several people briefed on the discussions.

Under a plan now being considered by the Trump family and its lawyers, Ivanka Trump, Mr. Trump’s elder daughter, would also take a leave of absence from the Trump Organization, in the surest sign that she is exploring a potential move to Washington with her husband, Jared Kushner. Mr. Kushner is discussing an as-yet undetermined role advising his father-in-law, and Ms. Trump plans on being an advocate on issues in which she has a personal interest, like child care.

posted by zachlipton at 5:37 PM on December 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

Newt Gingrich @newtgingrich
75 years ago the Japanese displayed professional brilliance and technological power launching surprises from Hawaii to the Philippines

WHAT THE FUCK?!?

If he was a Democrat he'd be hung. IOKIYAR.
posted by Talez at 5:40 PM on December 7, 2016 [28 favorites]

If he was a Democrat he'd be hung.

I think you mean he'd be hanged.

Hey now
posted by Rykey at 5:43 PM on December 7, 2016 [19 favorites]

And they was right!
posted by petebest at 5:44 PM on December 7, 2016 [7 favorites]

And Jones already says he is getting death threats. As Sarah Jeong puts it, "THIS IS HOW ONLINE HARASSMENT HAS ALWAYS WORKED." It's just not usually orchestrated by the President of the United States.
posted by zachlipton at 5:44 PM on December 7, 2016 [23 favorites]

Isn't Ivanka a new mother? I guess she should stay home, too.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:45 PM on December 7, 2016

> Scuttlebutt is that Scott Pruitt, attorney general of Oklahoma, will be Trump's pick for EPA administrator. Pruitt has never been responsible for environmental policy at any level of government in any capacity, but he's sued EPA over every major regulation since he assumed office in 2011. As if there was any doubt over what Trump considers to be relevant experience for that job.

Trump to tap vocal EPA opponent to head the EPA. RIP, EPA.

In other news: Rapid Arctic ice melt sets the stage for economic disaster under Trump: The great ice sheets are unstable, ice melt is speeding up, and deniers will soon be in charge. What could go wrong?
posted by homunculus at 5:45 PM on December 7, 2016 [8 favorites]

And Jones already says he is getting death threats

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump
Chuck Jones, who is President of United Steelworkers 1999, has done a terrible job representing workers. No wonder companies flee country!

Dear Leader has told us kek wills it.
posted by Talez at 5:45 PM on December 7, 2016

Jone's response:

"Isn't very damn nice" and it "must mean I'm doing a good job", trump "doesn't like to be challenged"
posted by futz at 5:51 PM on December 7, 2016 [14 favorites]

Gingrich is one of those dudes who collects Waffen SS memorabilia and will tell you more than you ever wanted to know about the differences between the 8.8 cm KwK 36 L/56 and the 8.8 cm 44 L/71. You can just imagine him sitting in a darkened room pleasuring himself to Japanese and Nazi war machines.

I'm not sure how professionally brilliant it is to launch a sneak attack on a country which can become the most powerful nation in the history of the earth inside 3 years and doing so in a way that doesn't actually hinder their warfighting capability to any great degree. Sinking/damaging some non-carrier capital ships did absolutely nothing of significance to the USA's capabilities past a few months it took to repair/shift ships. Except they killed thousands of Americans in the process, thus guaranteeing their own destruction.

This is like Gingrich tweeting about how tactically brilliant the 19 9/11 hijackers were.
posted by Justinian at 5:56 PM on December 7, 2016 [16 favorites]

I should say "reminds me of one of those dudes" since I have no actual evidence that Newt Gingrich collects Waffen SS memorability or beats it to nazi stuff. But lots of people are talking about it. Very smart people.
posted by Justinian at 5:59 PM on December 7, 2016 [6 favorites]

You can just imagine him sitting in a darkened room [...] to Japanese and Nazi war machines.

wtf nobody needed to read that
posted by indubitable at 6:00 PM on December 7, 2016 [5 favorites]

didn't they, indubitable? didn't they?
posted by Justinian at 6:00 PM on December 7, 2016 [12 favorites]

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump
If United Steelworkers 1999 was any good, they would have kept those jobs in Indiana. Spend more time working-less time talking. Reduce dues

We're really doing this. The president-elect is starting a shitfight on Twitter with a union local's president.

Jesus Fucking Christ.
posted by Talez at 6:06 PM on December 7, 2016 [63 favorites]

17 Americans were killed in the Battle of Guam.
52 killed Americans were killed in the Battle of Wake Island.
68 British troops were killed in the Invasion of Malaya.
2,403 Americans were killed at Pearl Harbor.
~5,000 British troops were killed in the Battle of Singapore.
~6,000 British troops and civilians were killed in the Battle of Hong Kong.
23,0000 Americans were killed in the Philippines Campaign.

Surprise!

This is like Gingrich tweeting about how tactically brilliant the 19 9/11 hijackers were.

It's very much like Bill Maher said the 9/11 terrorists weren't cowards except his show got canceled but nothing will happen to Gingrich because IOKIYAR.
posted by kirkaracha at 6:06 PM on December 7, 2016 [6 favorites]

Federal judge lifts order that had allowed Michigan's recount, effectively ending it.

Oh good, that clears out my Thu--Mon schedule considerably.
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:08 PM on December 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

The president-elect is starting a shitfight on Twitter with a union local's president.

And the entire country is watching a musical starring a man in drag. Welcome to 2016.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:09 PM on December 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

> Reduce dues

Not that facts matter in this post-fact society, but average union dues in the US are something like $400 per year, or a rounding error compared to the cost savings these companies are seeking by moving operations to countries with cheaper labor.

Also, "work harder" from a guy who wants to phone in the job of President. Right.
posted by tonycpsu at 6:10 PM on December 7, 2016 [14 favorites]

Also note that Trump is fighting his side of the fight on Twitter, while the union rep (and other Trump targets) can't respond there because replying to Trump's twitter is useless.

So Trump is "saying it how it is" straight to his base, while his opposition can only respond with the help of media. The same media that Trump has been calling crooks and liars.
posted by ymgve at 6:11 PM on December 7, 2016 [26 favorites]

Gingrich is being sarcastic; he's saying that no matter how ingenious and industrious the Japanese are, they'll always be the foreign bastards who stabbed us in the back.
posted by EarBucket at 6:22 PM on December 7, 2016

Also, Gingrich wrote an alternate history novel in which the Nazis win WWII that featured a scene where a sexy Nazi spy seduces the president's chief of staff:

Suddenly, the pouting sex kitten gave way to Diana the Huntress. She rolled onto him and somehow was sitting athwart his chest, her knees pinning his shoulders. "Tell me, or I will make you do terrible things."

I don't think positing him as a Nazi fetishist is all that far-fetched.
posted by EarBucket at 6:26 PM on December 7, 2016 [24 favorites]

And the entire country is watching a musical starring a man in drag. Welcome to 2016.

We all did that back in 1988.

I'm not bitter about not being able to find an NBC live stream at all
posted by Talez at 6:29 PM on December 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

"athwart"? sexy.
posted by kirkaracha at 6:30 PM on December 7, 2016 [9 favorites]

Athwart. Don Martin lives!
posted by petebest at 6:38 PM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

Trump Team Scrambles for A-List Inaugural Performers: ‘They Are Willing to Pay Anything’
Trump’s team is hoping to do better than Kid Rock and Ted Nugent

“They are willing to pay anything,” one of the insiders told TheWrap. “They told me, ‘We’ll pay their fees.’ Most of these artists’ fees are in the six to seven figures.” The insider said the Trump negotiator also offered to pay him for delivering top talent, saying, “Name your price.”

“I couldn’t do it,” the insider said. “Not even for a billion dollars.”

Trump’s team issued a denial to TheWrap.
posted by futz at 6:39 PM on December 7, 2016 [22 favorites]

Gingrich is being sarcastic; he's saying that no matter how ingenious and industrious the Japanese are, they'll always be the foreign bastards who stabbed us in the back.

I'll take 'Alternative Explanations that Aren't Better' for 800, thanks Alex
posted by tivalasvegas at 6:39 PM on December 7, 2016 [5 favorites]

It's not far-fetched which is why smart people are talking about it. I'm just asking the question.
posted by Justinian at 6:39 PM on December 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

Kid Rock and Ted Nugent. Wow. Meatloaf musta got Romnied.

Its too bad the US Marine Band kicks ass; they could pull something off. Hopefully the ace talent catchers in the article forget they're there.

"Too tootly" Trump tweets [twake]
posted by petebest at 6:52 PM on December 7, 2016

It is frankly bizarre how in the tank for Trump Kid Rock is. He also played that veterans concert they tried to get me to go to in Cleveland.
posted by corb at 6:55 PM on December 7, 2016 [7 favorites]

75 years ago the Japanese displayed professional brilliance and technological power launching surprises from Hawaii to the Philippines

'scuse newt while he rubs one out
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:06 PM on December 7, 2016

Starting to think the most effective immediate thing we can all do is stop using Twitter.
posted by drezdn at 7:18 PM on December 7, 2016 [16 favorites]

75 years ago the Japanese displayed professional brilliance and technological power launching surprises from Hawaii to the Philippines
I was taught in High School History in the 1970s that the Pearl Harbor attack was one of the biggest STRATEGIC MISTAKES of the 20th century. FDR was failing to get Congress into making a commitment to helping Great Britain against the Nazis; when he declared war on Japan, Germany automatically backed up their Axis allies and we were automatically in position to turn the tide of WWII. If they had resisted the temptation and waited another year or two it might have been too late for the USofA to make a difference. With that kind of judgment from Newt, we should have wished Trump had taken more of his advice.
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:21 PM on December 7, 2016 [8 favorites]

Louis Peitzman: "A whole lot of ugly comin' at you from a neverending parade of stupid" is a good tagline for 2016. #HairsprayLive
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:21 PM on December 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

Conspiracy afflicted website
Below is my ten point plan on what must be done to save this country, and end our enslavement to a foreign agenda.
1. Abolish the Federal Reserve immediately and permanently, then back our currency with gold and silver.
2. Abolish all unconstitutional gun control laws immediately and permanently.
3. Throw the United Nations out of America, physically and politically.
4. Abolish free trade.
5. From Pearl Harbor, to JFK, from Waco, to 9-11, expose all the coverups, lies, and outrages that have been committed by the shadow government, in the guise of the American government.
6. Build a 30 foot high concrete wall separating Mexico and the U.S. topped by electrified razor wire and lookout towers every mile.
7. Put an end to federal subsidies for housing and medical care.
8. Put an end to federal support for public education.
9. Ban cell phones, cell towers and wi-fi.
10. Put an end to mandatory automobile insurance, mandatory health insurance, and all other state mandated intrusions into our privacy, and thefts of our money.

Was looking for other stuff and stumbled on this and just thought it funny how someone completely unhinged isn't far from Trump in objective.


For music I like The Lacs (YouTube music video, 3min54sec).
posted by phoque at 7:23 PM on December 7, 2016

technically the electoral college has a right to abort this presidency before it comes to term but republicans won't allow it #reallife
posted by prefpara at 7:24 PM on December 7, 2016 [7 favorites]

K-Fed is available.
posted by ocschwar at 7:29 PM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

Secretary of state candidate Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., said in an interview Wednesday that the United States cooperating with Russia is a good thing and that China is not America’s friend.

Quotes FTA:

...“If it’s right for us to join in and cooperate and have a better relationship with Russia in order to defeat radical Islam and to pull China back a bit,”

...Rohrabacher has been referred to as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “favorite congressman,” and he said that while most of his colleagues may view that as a negative, he doesn’t mind advocating it.

...When Golodryga (Yahoo journalist) brought up Russia’s history of alleged human rights abuses, he responded, “Oh, baloney — where do you come from?” Golodryga said she immigrated to the United States from the former Soviet republic of Moldova as a political refugee. “Then the audience knows you’re biased,” Rohrabacher retorted.

...“If the Chinese are ever going to intercede for us, it’s going to be based on that we have a strong leader who’s not a pushover and a strong leader who will actually threaten them — not military action against them — but threaten them with consequences if they’re supporting the military dictatorship attaining nuclear weapons power in Korea..."

What is trump going to do when he burns through all his Top Notch Deplorables? And he will burn through them.
posted by futz at 7:29 PM on December 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

Remember the "freedom fries" b.s.? It feels like we're in for X number of years of that made worse because it's the president doing it.
posted by drezdn at 7:34 PM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

7. Put an end to federal subsidies for housing

I wonder if the author owns a house with a mortgage on it and takes advantage of the mortgage interest deduction (definitely the biggest government housing subsidy).
posted by rmd1023 at 7:35 PM on December 7, 2016 [8 favorites]

Pruitt at the EPA stretches the "fox guarding the hen house" metaphor that animates every Trump pick to date beyond breaking. It's not remotely strong enough, this is Jerry Sandusky in charge of a retreat for troubled teens. It's Anakin Skywalker leading the Younglings class.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:37 PM on December 7, 2016 [24 favorites]

Secretary of state candidate Rep. Dana Rohrabacher

aka Taliban Dan-a.
posted by holgate at 7:42 PM on December 7, 2016

I can't tell you how depressing it is that it's necessary for Hairspray's "You Can't Stop The Beat" to look like a timely and bold protest against this Administration's efforts to set things back to the Coolidge Administration.
posted by zachlipton at 7:47 PM on December 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

Trump’s team is hoping to do better than Kid Rock and Ted Nugent

one word: mariachi
posted by j_curiouser at 7:56 PM on December 7, 2016 [6 favorites]

T. D. Strange , it's the dingo guarding the baby (I stole that from Twitter).

I'm seriously not sure how to cope with this level of escalating shit and terror every fucking day for years.

So I'm at the point now where I think, you know what, if we can't overcome this, if we are such a garbage species that we choose hate over even our own survival, well then we are danger to any other sentient species in the galaxy so maybe it's better if we just blow ourselves the fuck up before we have a chance to find them or vice versa.

Pity about all the nice people/animals/plants we are taking with us, of course. I hope the bacteria, jellyfish and cockroaches will be able to do something useful with the wreckage.

Of course I hope we can overcome it, I am not giving up, I am inspired by good people and art and music everyday, but when you're looking into the light of an oncoming train loaded with carloads of flaming toxic garbage, you have to decide how to deal with the chances that you might not survive this encounter.

I sometimes like thinking about the fact that in the immense spaces of the universe, our stupidity is far too small and weak to harm anyone but ourselves. That's where I'm at for comfort now.
posted by emjaybee at 8:00 PM on December 7, 2016 [10 favorites]

one word: macarena
posted by kirkaracha at 8:01 PM on December 7, 2016

Isn't Putin FROM the Caucasus?
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:09 PM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

I sometimes like thinking about the fact that in the immense spaces of the universe, our stupidity is far too small and weak to harm anyone but ourselves. That's where I'm at for comfort now.

As far as climate change goes, there's still hope in the rest of the world. Republicans in the US are basically the only significant block of humans that are full stop climate deniers. Even China and Putin agree it's real, even if they're not jumping to lead the charge in reforming their economies to prevent it. The rest of the world can still act, but they'll have to find another leader outside of the US once Trump withdraws from every significant climate treaty. Once they realize the scale of our folly, the US could become an international pariah state rightfully punished into economic oblivion with retaliatory climate sanctions.

I mean, it's not good. The US just voluntarily gave up the natural role as the trendsetter, the model and leader of the world community to turn completely into denial and conspiracy. At a minimum it sets any chance of progress back 4 years, subject to China stepping up to fill the leadership void. But it's not impossible, yet. We hope.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:13 PM on December 7, 2016 [10 favorites]

one word: macarena

No, that would be for if Hillary won.
posted by zachlipton at 8:18 PM on December 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

Apprentice's Mark Burnett Denounces Donald Trump

The guy is worth nearly a half a billion dollars and his excuse is that he was bound by non-disclosure agreements. What is half a billion dollars worth to you if you are still a coward unwilling to stand up for your beliefs? What does that say about people who aren't billionaires and but have the courage to take a stand?
posted by JackFlash at 8:23 PM on December 7, 2016 [15 favorites]

T.D. I am hopeful for that too, but afraid to hope that the rest of the world will be able to keep us all alive. But I'd be fucking grateful if they did. Solar is getting so cheap compared to oil. We have the tools to improve things right in front of us, if we would just stop being so stupid.
posted by emjaybee at 8:23 PM on December 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

What does that say about people who aren't billionaires and but have the courage to take a stand?
That cowardice can be VERY profitable?
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:38 PM on December 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

Putin is from St. Petersburg and has spent his career there and in Moscow AFAIK. No real connection to the Caucuses.
posted by Justinian at 8:41 PM on December 7, 2016

So much bigger in the Primaries than the Caucuses...
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:43 PM on December 7, 2016 [6 favorites]

What does that say about people who aren't billionaires and but have the courage to take a stand?

Courage is just another word for nothing much to lose?
posted by ridgerunner at 8:44 PM on December 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

Courage is just another word for nothing much to lose?

Uh, that word would be "freedom". Burnett is a slave to his avarice.
posted by JackFlash at 8:50 PM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

Robert Reich: The Art of the Autocrat

Reich has a bold live action version on this theme on CNN tonight with a direct address: "Lemme just say, because Donald Trump is probably watching right now."
posted by zachlipton at 8:51 PM on December 7, 2016 [9 favorites]

Senate Dems shamed for nearly all-white top staffers
Activists say there's a 'soft bigotry' at work — and party leaders say they need to do a better job hiring minorities.
posted by futz at 9:04 PM on December 7, 2016 [7 favorites]

Burnett is a slave to his avarice.

I'll take your word for it. I don't know much about rich people anyway, and would just as soon keep it that way.
posted by ridgerunner at 9:29 PM on December 7, 2016

The guy is worth nearly a half a billion dollars and his excuse is that he was bound by non-disclosure agreements.

The concerns of people at that level of the global elite aren't the same as those of people at our level. We kind of pretend that they are, but the things that motivate them tend to be ones that affect people in their social position, not the ones that affect people with more limited resources and standing. It's like the concerns of parents not being the same as young kids: the parents abstractly approve of justice and mercy and so forth, but they are not really interested in who pushed who off the swings when it was their turn.

I don't for one minute believe that Burnett was really concerned about the legal consequences of breaking an NDA. It was probably more like "I don't feel like a fight and creating unpleasantness in my social circle; and there's undoubtedly things that could be dragged up about me, too." In contrast, I bet a lot of people here would have been happy to be sued or go to jail, as long as it kept the Pumpkin Parasite out of office. But that's because our concerns aren't his concerns.

I think it's interesting to apply the same view to people on the "good" side, like Clinton or Obama. I'm sure they're motivated by their moral outlook in a way that Burnett isn't. But even though they might have disapproved of warrantless imprisonment or executions in an abstract sense, it didn't motivate them enough to risk other considerations - considerations that aren't so different from Burnett's. Hence Guantanamo, hence drone warfare, hence all the other paraphernalia of the security state that Trump will now control. It doesn't make them bad people, as such. It's just that ... well, their concerns aren't ours, even when they're pushing us both in the same direction.
posted by Joe in Australia at 10:10 PM on December 7, 2016 [23 favorites]

Activists say there's a 'soft bigotry' at work — and party leaders say they need to do a better job hiring minorities.

This is a known systemic problem, which is that Congress -- like lots of well-meaning liberal publications -- still relies upon unpaid internships at the bottom rung, and if you can't draw upon existing connections and contacts in DC and the Bank of Mum & Dad, you are not going to get on that rung. Local Dem offices are more diverse, but ffs, the cost of making and airing a single campaign ad would cover a year in DC for a low-level staffer who doesn't have a rich aunt with a spare room in Dupont Circle.
posted by holgate at 10:14 PM on December 7, 2016 [18 favorites]

At least when the nukes start falling or the Earth turns into Venus, Mark Burnett and Ivanka Trump will still be welcome at New York dinner parties.
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:19 PM on December 7, 2016 [14 favorites]

Even if the nominees in question are not part of his thinking, there's little doubt that Trump's decision to nominate so many generals is rooted in a mix of his own lack of military service and his instinctive inability to think of relations between people or nations as anything but ones of domination.
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:32 PM on December 7, 2016 [15 favorites]

It's really tempting to think the worst case scenario will continue to come true, but the way things are going and the general competence level being brought to bear makes me think there is a decent chance here that something no one could ever have imagined ends up going down that ruins the Trump name/brand even more than a lost presidential campaign would. We have all of these things that are going Trump's way that seem so irrevocable and some of them, like the election results themselves, are so but a lot of it is also extremely precarious and based on unprecedented circumstances and marriages of convenience. We are so tempted to cast the future of the Trump administration in the framework of the past and the Bush administration, but the same kinds of loyalty and discipline don't exist today with the same levels of sincerity that Bush's GOP had. It was almost a different party back then. They'll try to make it work the same, but Trump has few if any true friends and is not well liked at all on a personal basis. We know there are many difficult moments he is almost certain to face which his ego can't handle productively. We know he doesn't have much self-control when he gets upset and that he gets upset rather easily. We're still in a bizarre phase where Trump can't really be told no or have any of his ideas rejected in any meaningful way. That changes soon, though, and what do you think the consequences of that will be? Now that we know anything can happen, it's hard not to expect anything to happen.
posted by feloniousmonk at 10:43 PM on December 7, 2016 [9 favorites]

fwiw:

"Call him Voldemort, Harry. Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself."

I will admit that I have not read the books, but I don't believe that Voldemort lived in Voldemort Tower while presiding over the Voldemort Organization with stakes in Voldemort-branded entities around the world. I'm simply not going to say or type the name of the resident-elect until he and his spawn are powerless and broke, because his name is his brand and I am not unpaid marketing. This is not about fear; it is about a small amount of defiance through self-discipline that I hope to be the foundation for more personal defiance in more substantial ways.
posted by holgate at 10:47 PM on December 7, 2016 [18 favorites]

WaPo has more details on those threats, Donald Trump just insulted a union leader on Twitter. Then the phone started to ring.

Half an hour after Trump tweeted about Jones on Wednesday, the union leader's phone began to ring and kept ringing, he said. One voice asked: What kind of car do you drive? Another said: We’re coming for you. He wasn’t sure how these people found his number.

“Nothing that says they’re gonna kill me, but, you know, you better keep your eye on your kids,” Jones said later on MSNBC. “We know what car you drive. Things along those lines.”

“I’ve been doing this job for 30 years, and I’ve heard everything from people who want to burn my house down or shoot me,” he added. “So I take it with a grain of salt and I don’t put a lot of faith in that, and I’m not concerned about it and I’m not getting anybody involved. I can deal with people that make stupid statements and move on.”

I mean what do you think is going to happen when the President-elect personally blames a local union rep by name for "companies flee[ing] the country?" Or: "I see Melania's fight against cyberbullying is going well."
posted by zachlipton at 10:50 PM on December 7, 2016 [37 favorites]

We're still in a bizarre phase where Trump can't really be told no or have any of his ideas rejected in any meaningful way. That changes soon, though, and what do you think the consequences of that will be?

Think Tienanmen Square. Only over an SNL skit or a tweet. And every single day.
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:53 PM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

Local 1999 contact page If you want to show some support.
posted by ridgerunner at 11:16 PM on December 7, 2016 [5 favorites]

Well, this is nice:
A Federal Judge Has a Message for Naturalized Citizens (and Trump)

She concluded, that day, by telling the sixty-eight new Americans:

I welcome you today to your new life as citizens of the United States, and remind you in the clearest words I know to say to you: You are welcome here! You are welcome here! Now it is up to you to assume the important responsibilities of citizenship, which means to join the struggle to make this country as good and kind and just and welcoming as you imagined and hoped and perhaps prayed that it would be when you first embarked on your journey to become a citizen.

posted by Joe in Australia at 2:53 AM on December 8, 2016 [48 favorites]

Isn't Putin FROM the Caucasus?

As Justinian said; Stalin was from Georgia, though.
posted by tsuipen at 2:56 AM on December 8, 2016

I mean what do you think is going to happen when the President-elect personally blames a local union rep by name for "companies flee[ing] the country?" Or: "I see Melania's fight against cyberbullying is going well."

Gosh, who could ever have predicted that this wouldn't have been limited to big defense contractor CEOs and other people who allegedly "deserved" it?
posted by zombieflanders at 3:30 AM on December 8, 2016 [13 favorites]

On the matter of name using, there are those who feel that euphemisms lower the tone of the discourse. I'm pretty sure that one Mr Obama would agree, given the graciousness he showed when meeting his successor at the WH. But the name is the brand, and people here, me included, are using MF for support, to vent, to cling to some hope. We are not all Obama. I can't bring myself to use his name without altering it. I managed not to use it at all here, but that ain't gonna work in most cases. I support those who can't bring themselves to use his ugly name.
posted by stonepharisee at 3:53 AM on December 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

I guess these days I'm just waiting for something to systemically snap. I don't have the technical jargon to describe this well, but the U.S. at this particular moment feels like a machine where about five crucial parts are about to wear out. Probably Trump wouldn't be possible w/o the internet, but the internet is also fucking our with our collective sanity in dangerous ways, I think. It's not 1861 and we're in Cali wondering what's going with the Civil War. We know each jot and tittle, about ten seconds after it happens.

So I don't know what's going to fail first, but I do know that I completely trust the Trump Administration to exacerbate if not initiate the failure.

For a while I was like some others here, sure, maybe we deserve Trump. If it weren't for great art and people I admire as just superb examples of a human being, I would say, maybe humanity deserves to not thrive. I think we can, though. Wasn't there a weird Battlestar Galactica where Adama gets up before the fleet after the apocalypse and is all *we need to deserve to survive*? I kind of like that. If America really were Trump, I'd say, hey, good luck next species. I don't think he is. He's a result of our baser nature, but Obama (and HRC's popular win) is a consequence of our better nature.
posted by angrycat at 4:11 AM on December 8, 2016 [14 favorites]

The headline of the day that should be fake but isn't: Pope Francis compares media that spread fake news to people who are excited by feces

“I think the media have to be very clear, very transparent, and not fall into — no offense intended — the sickness of coprophilia, that is, always wanting to cover scandals, covering nasty things,” Francis said in an interview published Wednesday in Tertio, according to Reuters and to other reporters who read the Belgian publication.

Crux, a news outlet covering the Catholic church, said the interview was conducted in Spanish, in which the term coprophilia is sometimes used more loosely to describe a morbid interest in dirty things, not just a prurient interest in feces. Later in the same interview, Francis used the related term “coprophagy.”

posted by peeedro at 4:29 AM on December 8, 2016 [27 favorites]

the euphemisms, . . . are annoying to parse

It's parsing errors all the way down.
posted by petebest at 5:11 AM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

@ChrisCrocker: Hi. I'm the "Leave Britney Alone guy". I was a meme & laughing stock for 10 years. I delt it. You're the President-Elect. Grow up.
posted by tonycpsu at 5:49 AM on December 8, 2016 [24 favorites]

My new plan for the recount money: give it to Tim Kreider. I'm not going to make it through the Trump era without The Pain.... coming back.
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:55 AM on December 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

Trump Team Scrambles for A-List Inaugural Performers: ‘They Are Willing to Pay Anything’
Trump’s team is hoping to do better than Kid Rock and Ted Nugent

Holy shit, I was joking. We're about 30 seconds away from gentlemen's lattes, "Monday Night Rehabilitation" and Costco Law Review aren't we?

Secretary of state candidate Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., said in an interview Wednesday that the United States cooperating with Russia is a good thing and that China is not America’s friend.

It's becoming pretty transparent that a lot of these assholes' nostalgia for Russia as a familiar adversary and co-hegemon and their hostility to China in the same role has to do with Russia's whiteness.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:15 AM on December 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

this is bullshit.
posted by tonycpsu at 6:18 AM on December 8, 2016 [10 favorites]

Gosh, who could ever have predicted that this wouldn't have been limited to big defense contractor CEOs

Trump called the Boeing CEO a 'terrific guy'. He loves CEOs.
posted by Coda Tronca at 6:42 AM on December 8, 2016

Noam Chomsky and Harry Belafonte discuss the oncoming Trump presidency and how we got here.

I don’t usually agree with Sarah Palin, but I think she nailed it when she asked at one point, "Where’s all this hopey-changey business?"

posted by Coventry at 6:44 AM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

He who smelt it, delt it
posted by thelonius at 6:50 AM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Kinda interesting to note that Putin is easily coded as white whereas Xi is not.

Wonder if that has anything to do with Rohrabacher's support.


It's simpler than that. Putin says "let's you and him fight." So we fight.
posted by ocschwar at 6:50 AM on December 8, 2016

Steve M., No More Mister Nice Blog: I am Shocked, Shocked, That an Authoritarian Likes Generals

Washington Post front page, are you kidding me?

The linked story is not bad, apart from this assertion. But why does the media continue to say this about Trump? The guy said he wanted to "bomb the shit out of" ISIS. He advocated taking Iraq's oil as spoils of war. Why was the press so focused on his (after-the-fact) Iraq War skepticism while ignoring his more bloodthirsty applause lines?

[...]

Trump thinks hiring a lot of generals makes him an honorary military man. But for the GOP in recent decades, that's typical. Ronald Reagan loved to salute, even though his military experience was limited to filmmaking and a war-bond drive. George W. Bush gave us that flightsuit moment in 2003, even though his military service was limited to the Texas Air National Guard. Trump is like no president we've seen before in many ways -- but not in this way.

posted by tonycpsu at 6:59 AM on December 8, 2016 [7 favorites]

This is a little upthread, but there are enough Jones's involved now that they've replaced the Steves; can we throw in an initial when mentioning them?

P'rhaps my own poor reading comprehension, but when Jones the death threat thing started I wasn't sure if we were talking about Van or Alex, and it turned out to be neither (although I assume Alex gets his share).

_{Obligatory I would also like a pony.}
posted by aspersioncast at 7:01 AM on December 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

75 years ago the Japanese displayed professional brilliance and technological power launching surprises from Hawaii to the Philippines

I was taught in High School History in the 1970s that the Pearl Harbor attack was one of the biggest STRATEGIC MISTAKES of the 20th century... With that kind of judgment from Newt, we should have wished Trump had taken more of his advice.

Indeed, for a supposed US history "expert" Newt is totally failing this one. I hope Trump keeps him in that inner circle for more wisdom. I mean, Yamamoto warned that Pearl Harbor would buy the Japanese six months at best and the Battle of Midway was darn near six months to the date. This stuff is WWII History 101. "Professional brilliance" my fat old ass.
posted by Ber at 7:01 AM on December 8, 2016 [7 favorites]

Is Newt saying America *wasn't* Great when we were bombed on at Pearl Harbor? I thought that was the beginning of all the winning that they feel ended with Bill Clinton's election.
posted by zutalors! at 7:05 AM on December 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

"Where’s all this hopey-changey business?"

While I appreciate that Chomsky advocated voting Clinton vs. 3rd party, fuck him on this. In the 4 months he had a filibuster proof Congress, Obama and Dems passed Obamacare, the auto bailout and the stimulus. So he merely saved the economy, saved the auto industry, and insured 20 million by passing the first comprehensive healthcare plan in US history, something every Dem had tried and failed at for decades. The stock market more than doubled, unemployment halved. A ton of other things accomplished despite the complete obstructionism.

That Trump voters didn't see enough "hope & change" has way more to do with racial blinders and partisanship than Obama'a actions. The fucking Tea Party arose in large part in reaction to Obama's infrastructure proposal, yet this year they basically voted for it coming from Trump. It wasn't what was being done, it was by who.

It's also interesting that France has had a similar rise in far right fascist "populism", yet without the stagnation we've seen in the US. Maybe it's not tied to economics.

@gabriel_zucman
No growth for bottom 50% incomes in the US since 1980. In France: +32%, despite same trends in trade, technology--& that's before transfers! [chart]
posted by chris24 at 7:06 AM on December 8, 2016 [43 favorites]

He who smelt it, delt it

Unfortunately we are the ones smelling this Trump
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:11 AM on December 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

Yamamoto warned that Pearl Harbor would buy the Japanese six months at best and the Battle of Midway was darn near six months to the date.

It's not like Japan had a lot of choice at that point. The US/British/Dutch oil embargo had left the Japanese military with very little time before they would run out of oil. Pearl Harbor was a move of desperation — it was that or pull out of China and become a tiny resource-starved island at the whim of white imperialism.
posted by Coventry at 7:12 AM on December 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

nominating this charming Trump-surrogare bon mot I just heard on NPR for NewSpeak Award of 2016:

"it's not crony capitalism, it's selective investment."
posted by entropicamericana at 7:17 AM on December 8, 2016

The pizza panic has spread to Brooklyn.
posted by peeedro at 7:18 AM on December 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

Here is my issue with Mattis. If he is so great and honorable and whatever, why would he accept the offer for a position that he knows he does not meet the qualifications for? Why does he think he's so special the rules should be bent for him? Does he seriously not know of someone equally qualified who meets the requirement of time spent out of command?

Makes you wonder.
posted by asteria at 7:21 AM on December 8, 2016 [17 favorites]

Reply All this week was a yes-yes-no about Pizzagate and man these dudes have just been continually super duper naive about everything. I feel like maybe they are now realizing that THESE PEOPLE ARE FUCKING CRAZY and THE INTERNET IS REAL LIFE but it has been frustrating as hell to listen to them try to couch online white nationalism as just another funny niche internet thing.
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:21 AM on December 8, 2016 [14 favorites]

WaPo: The right has its own version of political correctness. It’s just as stifling
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:26 AM on December 8, 2016 [9 favorites]

The right has its own version of political correctness. It’s just as stifling

I was starting to get worried about halfway through, because I hate it when I agree with libertarians, but then came, "the PC duty to publicly shame those who use unacceptable language to describe race, gender or whatever other identity is the victim du jour," and all was right with the shitty world again.
posted by uncleozzy at 7:39 AM on December 8, 2016 [7 favorites]

why would he accept the offer for a position that he knows he does not meet the qualifications for?

Every general wants to be emperor. But, you know, we can have Germanicus or we can have Nero.
posted by dis_integration at 7:44 AM on December 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

It has now been one month since the election.
posted by theodolite at 7:50 AM on December 8, 2016 [6 favorites]

Meh. This is definitely A Thing, but calling it "patriotic correctness" cedes the argument about what patriotism really is. As Orwell said:

By ‘nationalism’ I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’. But secondly — and this is much more important — I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognising no other duty than that of advancing its interests. Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.

"Nationalist correctness" doesn't exactly roll of the tongue, of course, but it seems more accurate to me for describing this phenomenon.
posted by tonycpsu at 7:51 AM on December 8, 2016 [18 favorites]

But, you know, we can have Germanicus or we can have Nero.

It's 2016 and all so it's not like I wouldn't believe those are the only two options but I am going to need more proof on that.
posted by asteria at 7:54 AM on December 8, 2016

I hate it when I agree with libertarians, but then came, "the PC duty to publicly shame those who use unacceptable language to describe race, gender or whatever other identity is the victim du jour," and all was right with the shitty world again.

Given that we're in for four years of racist / sexist / xenophobic / homphobic Twitter provocation from Donald Trump, the left could really stand to reflect on whether "shaming" tactics genuinely work to advance equality in the long term, or whether Trump is going to spend the next four years provoking us into reactions whenever he wants. It feels good to get really mad about something really terrible, but it also means that our side is easy to provoke at will.

For example, Conor Friedersdorf (another libertarian, and not a favorite around here, but he's also not our enemy) had two food-for-thought articles (1) (2) on the risks of relying on stigma to drive the agenda of equality.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 8:07 AM on December 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

Which brings us back to my point - they may not be enemies but can someone who is so beholden to their own ego be considered an ally?
posted by asteria at 8:08 AM on December 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

Reply All this week was a yes-yes-no about Pizzagate and man these dudes have just been continually super duper naive about everything. I feel like maybe they are now realizing that THESE PEOPLE ARE FUCKING CRAZY and THE INTERNET IS REAL LIFE but it has been frustrating as hell to listen to them try to couch online white nationalism as just another funny niche internet thing.

posted by soren_lorensen at 7:21 AM on December 8 [7 favorites −] [!]

I really appreciate reading this. Reply All is a thoughtful, well crafted podcast. It's often funny and sometimes insightful. But politically, it leaves me feeling hopeless. These guys seem willfully naive about racism on the internet, always giving an out to those who post racist content online and assuming it's disingenuous (and even if it was... assuming that has an impact on the harm it causes).

Parts of the internet that are totally broken because of myopic design by an elite of white, cis men, they just shrug off as 'wacky'. Never do they suggest that there should be any kind of government oversight or regulation of the internet, nor, that I've heard, do they explore more sinister aspects of the far reach of internet companies.

The one thing that does give me hope about Reply All (and by extension a certain demographic of youngish white guys) is the apology episode they did about Yas, Queen. My one beef with that is they didn't really emphasize that it was trans women of color in specific who created this meme, but still, they owned up to erasing history in an admirable way.

Here's hoping they come around on racist internet trolling.
posted by latkes at 8:09 AM on December 8, 2016 [7 favorites]

So he merely saved the economy, saved the auto industry, and insured 20 million by passing the first comprehensive healthcare plan in US history, something every Dem had tried and failed at for decades.

[...]

@gabriel_zucman
No growth for bottom 50% incomes in the US since 1980. In France: +32%, despite same trends in trade, technology--& that's before transfers! [chart]

Ruling out economics entirely while US income for the lower 50% has stagnated for the last 36 years seems like an bad way to win non-voters.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 8:10 AM on December 8, 2016 [7 favorites]

Well, how many of those lower 50% keep voting for the guys with the boot on their neck?
posted by asteria at 8:11 AM on December 8, 2016 [7 favorites]

Ruling out economics entirely while US income for the lower 50% has stagnated for the last 36 years seems like an bad way to win non-voters.

Obama hasn't been president for 36 years, merely 8. And if he hadn't saved the economy from another Great Depression, wages wouldn't be flat since 1980, they'd be negative. And a shit ton of people wouldn't be making wages at all.
posted by chris24 at 8:13 AM on December 8, 2016 [14 favorites]

Obama officials alarmed at slow pace of agency-level transition

I suppose there is some small hope that the Trump team will be so inept that they can't wreck literally everything.
posted by Fleebnork at 8:15 AM on December 8, 2016 [18 favorites]

Who goes "Well, I just got laid off, better put on these Jackboots"? No, the tendency for Fascism is rationalized by economics, not created by it.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 8:16 AM on December 8, 2016 [10 favorites]

Obama hasn't been president for 36 years, merely 8. And if he hadn't saved the economy from another Great Depression, wages wouldn't be flat since 1980, they'd be negative. And a shit ton of people wouldn't be making wages at all.


i feel like this is how it's going to be forever. republicans wreck everything for eight years, democrats come in and do their best to patch it up and then get tossed out for not fixing everything in spite of total refusal to deal on the part of republicans

well, forever until climate change induced famine leads to total breakdown of the rule of law
posted by murphy slaw at 8:19 AM on December 8, 2016 [31 favorites]

Obama hasn't been president for 36 years, merely 8.

Yes, but he's representative of the Democratic Party faction which has enabled that stagnation, and was behind the nomination of their next representative from day one:

Protecting his vulnerable accomplishments from the GOP wrecking ball and safeguarding his legacy have always been top priorities for Obama, and he had told friends as early as late 2014 that Clinton, for all her flaws, was “the only one” fit to succeed him.

posted by Coventry at 8:20 AM on December 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

For example, Conor Friedersdorf (another libertarian, and not a favorite around here, but he's also not our enemy)

Except that he is. Yes, it's nice that he's not so blinded by privilege that he realizes that a mistrial on a case where we see a cop shooting a fleeing man in the back is a travesty of justice, but he's also the sort who is constitutionally incapable of connecting the dots from that to his routine arguments that protesting against institutional bias of all forms is infringing on free speech, and how the latter fuels the former.

Don't assume someone is an ally because they might agree with you on one subject.
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:22 AM on December 8, 2016 [16 favorites]

Here's hoping they come around on racist internet trolling.

That Alex did some actual reporting gives me a little hope. Their previous episodes touching on white nationalism and abuse on the internet have just been incredibly disappointing to me that they were even starting from a place of "Omg what is this, I have never heard of this before!" Like, y'all are supposed to be the experts, no? And for them to always be like, "Welp, that's depressing." as their take-away... *sigh*

Just... really everyone around me that didn't and is not closely following the entire shitstorm we're in and have been in for the past year, I am losing patience for. The information is out there. It's freaking everywhere. You don't have to read niche zines or join obscure bulletin boards to find it. Read the Atlantic. Read WaPo. Hell, read the New York Times. This shit has actually been covered--not always super well, but if you want to know, you can get the info easily. Which I know because that's how I've gotten all my information. I don't use Facebook, I don't spend all day refreshing, like, OccupyDemocrats or whatever OutrageBookNewsMaxSource we have on the left. I just pay some damn attention on a daily basis. It's not fun, but it's not difficult.
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:24 AM on December 8, 2016 [23 favorites]

he had told friends as early as late 2014 that Clinton, for all her flaws, was “the only one” fit to succeed him.

thanks obama
posted by entropicamericana at 8:25 AM on December 8, 2016

my issue with Mattis. If he is so great and honorable and whatever, why would he accept the offer for a position that he knows he does not meet the qualifications for? Why does he think he's so special the rules should be bent for him
There's a few reasons for this, I think.

First, the veterans' community has been vocally begging him to save us, through basically every medium: blogs, well read military cartoons published in the Marine Corps Times, even in person appearances. We tried to get him to run for president so hard he had to issue multiple denials and a detailed explanation of why he would be a bad fit.

Secondly, I think there's a mismatch between civilian and military understanding of what a waiver entails and how rare it is. The military frequently deals in waivers, because it has such rigid rules. You have waivers for entry into the service, waivers for promotion, waivers for assignment and appointment, waivers of literally all stripes.

Thirdly, the tradition of leadership for both commissioned and noncommissioned officers says that if you have the capacity to serve, and you are the most qualified for the position, you have an obligation to step up and do so. Are there other people who could be a qualified secretary defense? Absolutely. But you've been looking at Trump's cabinet picks . How many of them can you say are competent? What would you say the likelihood of him choosing a competent secretary of defense is, if Mattis turned it down? He has an obligation to his troops, and ultimately to the nation, not to let someone incompetent fill that position.
posted by corb at 8:26 AM on December 8, 2016 [13 favorites]

Well, how many of those lower 50% keep voting for the guys with the boot on their neck?

I don't know. Not very many, I'd think. In this particular election, lower-income people who voted tended to vote for Clinton, just as they tended to vote for the Democratic Party. Trump's turnout was abysmal overall. I think the problem for the Democratic Party is getting people to the polls, not convincing Trump voters to become liberals.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 8:26 AM on December 8, 2016 [9 favorites]

the left could really stand to reflect on whether "shaming" tactics genuinely work to advance equality in the long term

The argument that we should, or even could, re-frame the argument about racist and sexist language is silly. The entire argument is that it perpetuates institutional bias. The right frames that as "somebody's feelings are hurt" and tells minorities to toughen up.

How do you fight that with anything but shame?
posted by uncleozzy at 8:28 AM on December 8, 2016 [6 favorites]

Yes, but he's representative of the Democratic Party faction which has enabled that stagnation

I wish I lived in the world were it was just Democrats choosing to be neo-liberal dicks that created economic inequality. As opposed to the world where Dems lost 5 of 6 presidential elections prior to Bill Clinton by landslides that make Obama's defeat of McCain look like a squeaker. And the one Dem victory was a very close race that could've changed with a switch of 3,687 votes in Hawaii and 5,559 votes in Ohio. And that was after Nixon's impeachment and pardoning and end of Vietnam. The country wasn't nearly as liberal then. Every liberal Dem candidate either lost big in the primary or got destroyed in the general. This retconning where a liberal politician could've won or could've passed their agenda is ahistorical. Clinton was far from perfect, but he was much better than Bush I, the Sequel or Dole would've been.
posted by chris24 at 8:29 AM on December 8, 2016 [18 favorites]

The bottom income brackets voted Clinton. That's not who lost the election. It was white suburban counties flipping from Obama to Trump, people making 70-120k a year who still felt "economic anxiety", or maybe something else. Whatever could it have been.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:30 AM on December 8, 2016 [30 favorites]

As opposed to the world where Dems lost 5 of 6 presidential elections prior to Bill Clinton by landslides that make Obama's defeat of McCain look like a squeaker.

They might have fared better if they'd stuck to their populist roots.
posted by Coventry at 8:32 AM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

or maybe something else

Things that make you go hmmmmm...
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:32 AM on December 8, 2016 [6 favorites]

chris24, it sounds like you know the history. What were the good reasons for ousting Patman as Banking Committee Chairman, way back when?
posted by Coventry at 8:34 AM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

They might have fared better if they'd stuck to their populist roots.

I give you George McGovern, from my home state of South Dakota (and who I met as a child.)

"Growing up amid that lack of affluence gave young George a lifelong sympathy for underpaid workers and struggling farmers. He was influenced by the currents of populism and agrarian unrest and by the "practical divinity" teachings of cleric John Wesley that sought to fight poverty, injustice, and ignorance."

George ran for president in 1972. He lost the Electoral College 520 - 17. He lost the popular vote 61% - 38%.
posted by chris24 at 8:36 AM on December 8, 2016 [10 favorites]

Yes, to a president backed by J. Edgar Hoover, because his running mate had a fatal scandal.
posted by Coventry at 8:40 AM on December 8, 2016

No, the tendency for Fascism is rationalized by economics, not created by it.

Just...what? No. There is no Fascist tendency without economic anxiety.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 8:40 AM on December 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

For those who could use a little pain relief, Zadie Smith has some gentle, encouraging, and wise words from a speech she gave in Berlin, Nov. 10: On Optimism and Despair.
posted by cwest at 8:40 AM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

This is a serious question that I don't understand. Can't the pizzagate people be gone after for libel? Is it just that everyone affected is afraid to go after them?
posted by archimago at 8:42 AM on December 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

Yes, to a president backed by J. Edgar Hoover

Hoover died May 1972, 6 months before the election. And Nixon wanted to remove him in 1971 but didn't do so because he feared him.
posted by chris24 at 8:43 AM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Nixon was an avid consumer and user of Hoover's political snooping, and continued to rely on the same methods after he passed away. Watergate was straight out of Hoover's playbook, for example, though he would have executed it much better.
posted by Coventry at 8:48 AM on December 8, 2016

This is a serious question that I don't understand. Can't the pizzagate people be gone after for libel? Is it just that everyone affected is afraid to go after them?

Here you go, NPR had a good report on this yesterday afternoon.
posted by DynamiteToast at 8:48 AM on December 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

You added "And Nixon wanted to remove him in 1971 but didn't do so because he feared him." Yes, of course he did. Everyone did. But Nixon was Hoover's creature.
posted by Coventry at 8:49 AM on December 8, 2016

This is a serious question that I don't understand. Can't the pizzagate people be gone after for libel? Is it just that everyone affected is afraid to go after them?

I've been wondering this myself.

It seems as though in the UK, a Twitter account user can be held legally responsible for malicious tweets, but I can't think of any time that has happened in the US:

Student jailed for racist tweet

Man jailed for antisemitic tweet to Labour MP

UK man arrested for posting anti-Muslim tweets after Brussels attacks
posted by maggiemaggie at 8:50 AM on December 8, 2016

No. There is no Fascist tendency without economic anxiety.

I respectfully disagree. Economic arguments (propaganda) are just what get the plebs to line up for a bayonet in the gut.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 8:51 AM on December 8, 2016 [7 favorites]

It seems as though in the UK, a Twitter account user can be held legally responsible for malicious tweets, but I can't think of any time that has happened in the US:

The UK has much different and more stringent libel and slander laws. The first amendment makes that kind of stuff tricky in the US.
posted by dis_integration at 8:52 AM on December 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

Nixon was an avid consumer and user of Hoover's political snooping, and continued to rely on the same methods after he passed away. Watergate was straight out of Hoover's playbook, for example, though he would have executed it much better.

No one's denying that Nixon was an insecure paranoid criminal. Your point was that Hoover was a big part in winning Nixon the election. Hoover wasn't around for the election. And Nixon's sliminess preceded his election in '68. It's a big part of why he lost in '60. It wasn't created by Hoover.
posted by chris24 at 8:54 AM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

No. There is no Fascist tendency without economic anxiety.

"Economic anxiety" is such a vague description that it could cover all sorts of things, real or just "felt". Hard to use that as a steady determining qualification for fascism as is, it'd need more clarity in its definition for that.
posted by gusottertrout at 8:56 AM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

My point was that Hoover's methods were a big part of McGovern losing. We could have an argument about the role Eagleton played in his defeat, vs his populism if you like, though.
posted by Coventry at 8:56 AM on December 8, 2016

i'm not sure that relitigating the 1968 election is going to clarify any of the topics in this thread. can we drop the derail?
posted by murphy slaw at 8:59 AM on December 8, 2016 [21 favorites]

I mostly agree, but holding up McGovern as a failure of populism is willfully ignorant.
posted by Coventry at 9:02 AM on December 8, 2016

My point was that Hoover's methods were a big part of McGovern losing

McGovern lost because he was going to lose because the country didn't want his beliefs. Watergate, other Hooverian/Nixonian dirty tricks, or Eagleton didn't lose it. A liberal Democrat did. And everybody knew it, knew it so well that Ted Kennedy, Walter Mondale, Hubert Humphrey, Edmund Muskie, and Birch Bayh all turned down the VP slot because they didn't want to be part of an asskicking.
posted by chris24 at 9:03 AM on December 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

@ppppolls: Our national poll in the field this week, only 53% of Trump voters thought California's votes should be included in national popular vote
posted by zombieflanders at 9:04 AM on December 8, 2016 [10 favorites]

I should clarify: Fascism is always present in the desires of certain segments of the populace. Our Micheal Bay/McBain/"Terrorist Hunting Permit" sticker culture knows this. Mainly, the people anticipating the ascent of Strongmen are comfortable, middle-class, educated middle-managers. They aren't the real victims of Neoliberal economic policy to the extent that the people they hire to remodel their houses, work on their cars, serve them food, childcare, medical care are. When things are okay, no one wants to line up to be on the front lines so that Glenn Beck can afford another private jet. But when they can use economic arguments to persuade those people to take a bullet so they can live out their Strongman fantasies . . . That's good old-fashioned American Fascism.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 9:05 AM on December 8, 2016 [10 favorites]

How do you fight that with anything but shame?

Because shaming doesn't work. And our side understands that in the context of, say, the opioid epidemic. Yelling at folks that their addiction means they're bad people accomplishes nothing except making the speaker feel morally superior.

But then we turn around and do the same thing! We get to feel morally superior, but it makes the person on the receiving end dig in.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 9:07 AM on December 8, 2016 [12 favorites]

Our national poll in the field this week, only 53% of Trump voters thought California's votes should be included in national popular vote

Well that's totally reasonable
posted by beerperson at 9:08 AM on December 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

And our side understands that in the context of, say, the opioid epidemic.

so what's the harm reduction strategy for racism? it doesn't seem like a good analogy to me because chemical abuse is a behavior that harms the individual that partakes in it. racism harms others.
posted by murphy slaw at 9:09 AM on December 8, 2016 [12 favorites]

Shaming ABSOLUTELY works. But it works much less well when the people involved are not part of the same community, and when shaming isn't accompanied by consequences. In person shaming for saying bigoted and awful things is critically important. People need to feel like their actual communities don't tolerate open racism etc. Online, it's much easier to disengage from being shamed, unless a real consensus forms, but even then people retreat to their subgroup. These safe spaces for bigots are the reason we're seeing so much behavior that comes across as shameless to us. They are shame insulators. And they are needed because shaming works. It's a very effective tool, and we need to use it effectively and not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
posted by prefpara at 9:11 AM on December 8, 2016 [26 favorites]

Hate is not a mental illness. It's not a physical illness. This shit is a choice people are making. I'm okay with using the same language I use with my four-year-old and saying "this is a bad choice" rather than "you are a bad person" but that's about as far as I'm willing to go towards treating it like something that these people just can't possibly help, the poor dears.
posted by soren_lorensen at 9:12 AM on December 8, 2016 [23 favorites]

McGovern lost because he was going to lose because the country didn't want his beliefs. Watergate, other Hooverian/Nixonian dirty tricks, or Eagleton didn't lose it. A liberal Democrat did. And everybody knew it, knew it so well that Ted Kennedy, Walter Mondale, Hubert Humphrey, Edmund Muskie, and Birch Bayh all turned down the VP slot because they didn't want to be part of an asskicking.

[Many comments earlier:]

Mistakes were made, the recounts are not going to save us, but acting like everything was a catastrophe over 79,000 votes in MI, WI and PA is an overreaction. Many more people voted for the most progressive platform in history. If you want to fix things going forward, being realistic on where we are and how we got here is important.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 9:13 AM on December 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

Shaming ABSOLUTELY works.

+1. It may not convince racists, but that's far from shaming's only purpose or goal. I posted this earlier in the thread, but it applies here.

Sometimes There Are More Important Goals Than Civility: Confronting racism can be crucial, even when it’s not persuasive.

The goal of arguments isn’t necessarily to directly change one opponent, but often to convince onlookers and create social incentives. Such was the gist of Clinton’s statement: She was not intending to convince Trump supporters to not be bigoted, but to draw people who see themselves as opposed to bigotry into her corner. Motivated candidates and institutions can create social conditions and stigmas by which bigotry is diminished, and they also change the way in which media transmit information and people absorb it. Imagine if the same outrage manifest in media coverage about the ideas of microaggressions and safe spaces pioneered by marginalized people had been marshaled against stubborn implicit racial biases and resistance to multiculturalism among whites, or if the useless term “racially charged” in media descriptions of racist things had been replaced with something more potent, like “racist.”

posted by chris24 at 9:15 AM on December 8, 2016 [22 favorites]

@ppppolls: Our national poll in the field this week, only 53% of Trump voters thought California's votes should be included in national popular vote

Total coincidence the state they want to exclude is the 2nd most diverse in the country (the 1st is Hawaii, which totally earns that title, but in the popular consciousness, I feel it's recognized more as vacationland and not for its diversity).
posted by zachlipton at 9:17 AM on December 8, 2016 [9 favorites]

Rustic Etruscan, not sure your point. Yes, I said both those things. The political landscape has changed a lot from 1972. What was considered liberal and/or acceptable in 1972 is much different than 2016. So I don't see the conflict in those statements. The country rejected a liberal Democrat in 1972 and more people voted for a liberal agenda in 2016. That's seemingly evidence of my point that the country has become more liberal.
posted by chris24 at 9:19 AM on December 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

I think it's going to take a lot of rethinking of our language. Slate had an article about research that shows that different framings on moral arguments can have a *huge* difference in outcome.

Our side is a big fan of the notion that intent doesn't matter as much as outcomes when the other side does things that turn out racist or sexist. We have to apply that to ourselves too. If some framings make racists more racist and others don't, we have an absolute civic and moral obligation to figure that out and use the ones that work.

And remember, we aren't trying to cure the Klan. We're trying to cure the guy in the middle who doesn't *think of himself* as racist but was willing to vote for Trump.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 9:20 AM on December 8, 2016 [16 favorites]

lolz.

@realDonaldTrump May be it is better to consider #Antonov aircraft as Air Force One?

--@AntonovCompany

Antonov is a Ukrainian aircraft manufacturer,
posted by zachlipton at 9:21 AM on December 8, 2016 [19 favorites]

I don't know why the "yelling" strawman always comes up when we're talking about racism. Lots of white people consider any anti racism language to be "yelling" (including people on "our side", whatever that even means).
posted by zutalors! at 9:26 AM on December 8, 2016 [23 favorites]

We're trying to cure the guy in the middle who doesn't *think of himself* as racist but was willing to vote for Trump.

But why spend all the energy and emotional labor to comfort him when he doesn't extend the same favor, when he is such a flaky, inconsistent ally, when our policies actually are already better for him, and when focusing on him turns off and away better, more consistent parts of our constituency, i.e. PoC? I have no problem on accepting those who want to do the right thing, but the effort to convince those who are less likely to see the light seems much better spent on GOTV and maximizing our existing coalition.
posted by chris24 at 9:27 AM on December 8, 2016 [23 favorites]

And remember, we aren't trying to cure the Klan. We're trying to cure the guy in the middle who doesn't *think of himself* as racist but was willing to vote for Trump.

I do agree with this -- it's important to separate the racist intent from the racist result of an action whose motivations were manifold (but, let's be honest, at least a little racist) -- but at the start of this we were talking about shaming racist language, and I don't really think you can re-frame that.
posted by uncleozzy at 9:27 AM on December 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton's communications director, has an op-ed expanding on her statements at the Harvard event: Our campaign lost the election. But Trump’s team must own up to how he won.

At Harvard, some on the Trump team crowed that we in the Clinton campaign and those in the press were foolish because we took Trump’s words “literally.” That’s right. We did. You should take a candidate for president’s words literally. You know who else took his words literally? White supremacists. The white supremacists who lauded Trump with cries of “Hail, Trump!” Duke, who expressed confidence that Trump’s decision to make Bannon his chief strategist meant Duke’s ideology would have a prominent place in the West Wing. The students who mocked Hispanic athletes with chants of “build that wall.” The man in New York City who threatened the off-duty female Muslim police officer last weekend.

posted by zachlipton at 9:28 AM on December 8, 2016 [47 favorites]

In Trump's America, Putin builds Air Force One!
posted by dis_integration at 9:28 AM on December 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

Oh, dang. The NY Times story on the probable Labor Secretary is quietly searing:

In a 2012 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mr. Puzder’s company listed his base salary as over $1 million. “Annual base salaries should be competitive and create a measure of financial security for our executive officers,” the filing said.

Many advocates of raising the minimum wage argue that it is necessary to provide a measure of financial security to ordinary workers.

posted by notyou at 9:29 AM on December 8, 2016 [40 favorites]

There is no Fascist tendency without economic anxiety

Chicken / egg.
posted by aspersioncast at 9:30 AM on December 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

Chris24, I wanted to say this the first time you posted that article, but since it's come up again: THANK YOU for posting it. As a POC I feel like I've been totally fucking gaslighted since the election into thinking that its wrong and divisive to stand up for my own humanity and the humanity of Latinos, Muslims, and black people. White people, I get the need to reach out, but think hard about what you are implying.
posted by sunset in snow country at 9:32 AM on December 8, 2016 [26 favorites]

I don't think shaming open bigots has the purpose or effect of converting them. The goal is to set norms about what is acceptable in our society that protect vulnerable people and uphold our core values of inclusiveness and tolerance of difference.
posted by prefpara at 9:33 AM on December 8, 2016 [23 favorites]

But why spend all the energy and emotional labor to comfort him when he doesn't extend the same favor, when he is such a flaky, inconsistent ally

Because if we wait for him to spontaneously do the work to reduce his racism quotient, it isn't going to happen. What would motivate him to do so? I know we're fond of telling people to educate themselves, but what's our fallback when they say "nah, no thanks"?

And we can do more than one thing at a time. We don't have to drop everyone else like a hot potato in favor of these guys. We just need to articulate 99% of what we're already saying in a more effective way.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 9:34 AM on December 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

Trump wants to make a fast food CEO the Secretary of Labor

He's on the board of the International Franchise Association, which systematically opposes efforts to raise the minimum wage; he's also criticized the Obama administration for expanding the number of American workers who are covered by overtime rules and has said publicly that he'd like to open restaurants that are largely run by robots*:

"They're always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there's never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex, or race discrimination case," says Puzder of swapping employees for machines.

posted by bodywithoutorgans at 9:34 AM on December 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

And remember, we aren't trying to cure the Klan. We're trying to cure the guy in the middle who doesn't *think of himself* as racist but was willing to vote for Trump.

I'm not interested in trying to "cure" either of them (and I'm not really a fan of using healthcare/illness terminology in the context of someone's racism). This continued centering of the white male Trump voter is exhausting and itself promotes white supremacy/patriarchy. There are more of us than there are of them, we just need to keep organizing and engaging with folks who are receptive to our humanity. The best you're going to do with a Trump voter who doesn't think of himself as racist but unhesitatingly acts in lockstep with racists is to get him to realize that he *is* racist in his heart of hearts and doesn't really care. I'm not even interested in shaming them; I acknowledge that they exist and that they are a threat to my existence, beyond that, I'm not allocating any emotional labor to them.
posted by melissasaurus at 9:36 AM on December 8, 2016 [37 favorites]

Yes also agree that prioritizing helping our imaginary benighted but salvageable borderline racist voters over helping people who are being physically and emotionally attacked by bigots is questionable.
posted by prefpara at 9:37 AM on December 8, 2016 [6 favorites]

We don't have to drop everyone else like a hot potato in favor of these guys. We just need to articulate 99% of what we're already saying in a more effective way.

Except we don't what will work or if it even will. So we spend a shitload of time and energy figuring out what to do, then trying it, then wondering why it didn't work, then trying other things. Meanwhile, PoC get pushed aside by this focus on changing white minds. We don't need to change their minds. We need to beat them. And our current coalition can do that.
posted by chris24 at 9:38 AM on December 8, 2016 [12 favorites]

Trump wants to make a fast food CEO the Secretary of Labor

Brought to you by Carls Jr.
posted by Servo5678 at 9:38 AM on December 8, 2016 [6 favorites]

I kept expecting the "fast food CEO" to be the owner of Chik-Fil-A.
posted by pxe2000 at 9:40 AM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

I just joined a local SURJ affiliate that kind of imploded a couple years ago but now is trying to reconstitute itself. I'm... really I am kind of torn, honestly. I really like to think that just having nice, reasonable conversations, white person to white person, that I could accelerate someone's movement from unacknowledged implicit bias to acknowledged-and-actively-working-on-it. And if it's possible to do, I am ready, willing and able to take that on because it's at least one way I can positively use my white privilege. But I remain unconvinced that this is possible on any kind of scale. And the time I spend tilting at this particular windmill is time I won't have to actually get my hands dirty in support of local marginalized communities.

Meanwhile, on last week's This American Life, it took a woman over two hours of one-on-one conversation and debate to convince one dude that he shouldn't slap women's asses, though he's still totally going to catcall and treat women like objects. He just won't touch them anymore while he does it.
posted by soren_lorensen at 9:42 AM on December 8, 2016 [11 favorites]

@realDonaldTrump May be it is better to consider #Antonov aircraft as Air Force One?

Do I remember correctly that there's a partly-built An-225 that could be finished?

Me, I think we should build new Sprint missiles for high-speed presidential transport. 100g won't hurt a real man.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:43 AM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Once again, public speech has a different function than personal or private speech. Trying to persuade in public requires thinking about the larger public effects, where standing up strongly to racism as racism matters, that's the language of protest and it sets the boundaries for what is and isn't acceptable. In private, persuasion can be shaped to fit the needs of an individual listener, to convince them, through whatever reasonable means and shaping of speech that might be thought effective, that their individual behavior may be problematic and that they may find personal benefit by changing their behavior to better fit community norms and moral standards.

These two approaches are not incompatible, they are complimentary. The personal backs up the public and can provide context and explanation that is not easily possible in broad conversation. So, by all means, individually speak in ways that you think are effective, but don't deny the public voice of protest especially since that is the voice coming from those most affected by racism. Those are the people who first need your direct support before any secondary attempts at conversion of the recalcitrant.
posted by gusottertrout at 9:44 AM on December 8, 2016 [13 favorites]

I kept expecting the "fast food CEO" to be the owner of Chik-Fil-A.

That would have given me a bingo on my rabidly anti-gay cabinet picks card.
posted by C'est la D.C. at 9:44 AM on December 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

Yes also agree that prioritizing helping our imaginary benighted but salvageable borderline racist voters over helping people who are being physically and emotionally attacked by bigots is questionable.

I thought the idea was helping society by getting people to be less racist. These racist people are harming the people we want to help. Fuck "helping" racists, I just want them neutered. I could give a fuck about their feelings, use the most effective methods we have. If shame works, use that, by all means. But honestly, if shame works then wherefore Trump. Maybe something more direct and physical is required, that seems to be a language they understand.
posted by ODiV at 9:46 AM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Shit, okay maybe don't beat the shit out of anyone. I am frustrated and am not literally calling for violence not in self-defence.
posted by ODiV at 9:47 AM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

all turned down the VP slot because they didn't want to be part of an asskicking.

Their reasons aren't given in the article you cited. Why do you believe that?
posted by Coventry at 9:54 AM on December 8, 2016

Shaming ABSOLUTELY works.

I feel like we just had a election that proved that no, it doesn't. By which I mean, yes, shaming might help bring fence-sitters over to your side, but expecting shaming to work on the person doing terrible things seems kinda pointless.

Trump is living proof that a person can basically opt-out of feeling shame, and that removes a huge amount of possible checks against their abuse of power.
posted by tocts at 9:55 AM on December 8, 2016 [8 favorites]

what if by "shaming" i mean "clubbing them senseless with their own severed femur"
posted by poffin boffin at 9:58 AM on December 8, 2016 [37 favorites]

asking for a friend
posted by poffin boffin at 9:58 AM on December 8, 2016 [9 favorites]

On the topic of shaming, my wife was telling me that in this article about people dealing with Sandy Hook hoax "investigators," what finally worked with one "investigator" was contacting his family and employer and asking them if they knew how his crazy behavior was damaging other people's lives.

I find this tactic very disturbing, but apparently it was effective, and definitely a shame-based approach.
posted by Coventry at 10:01 AM on December 8, 2016 [19 favorites]

Hey, I wonder what our Secretary of Labor thinks about women.

The advertisements that Mr. Puzder’s companies runs to promote its restaurants frequently feature women wearing next to nothing while gesturing suggestively. “I like our ads,” he told the publication Entrepreneur. “I like beautiful women eating burgers in bikinis. I think it’s very American.”

There is so much shade in this NYT story. I love it.

(This NYT story, on the other hand, which equates Trump supporters being called racist with a student threatened with being lit on fire because she wore a hijab as "bias incidents on both side," that displeases me.)
posted by zachlipton at 10:07 AM on December 8, 2016 [12 favorites]

There is no Fascist tendency without economic anxiety

Chicken / egg.

Getting into what precisely constitutes fascism would be a waste of time -- the scholars who study it for a living don't really have a consensus -- but the most convincing basis is that it's a reactionary philosophy that offers a cultural national rebirth by the rejection of modernity and modern political systems (Socialism and Liberalism) to a population that has been humiliated by the perceived consequences of modern political and economic systems (Palingenetic Ultranationalist Populism).

It can't really exist without Modernity to react to, and Modernity is not just tolerance, egalitarianism or Enlightenment thought but also the societal paradigm created by industrial production. This is why Joseph de Maistre, a notable reactionary thinker writing against the French Revolution, was only the starting point for fascists and not the blueprint, because he was Monarchist, and monarchy had been overturned by Modernity, just as Fascism would overturn Modernity.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 10:08 AM on December 8, 2016 [10 favorites]

Bottom line, the swift shift in focus to the white Trump voter by "real progressives," (ie Bernie Sanders and many comments by white "real leftists" here) made me feel like the "real progressives" or "real left" doesn't have my back. I have never felt that way, as a woman and POC, and that shift after the election just confirmed it in an especially chilling way.

Now maybe my vote as an Asian American doesn't matter too much, and that's understandable. But I believe strongly that a coalition that doesn't take all of us and our "identity politics" into account is not one that can truly represent us all, and is therefore vulnerable to collapse.
posted by zutalors! at 10:12 AM on December 8, 2016 [29 favorites]

Their reasons aren't given in the article you cited. Why do you believe that?

McGovern was always way behind in the polls. He was a unpopular nominee. He had a grassroots campaign based on opposition to the Vietnam War and liberal platform, but the establishment didn't like him because they feared he'd get killed in the general. There was a Anyone But McGovern movement in the party led by fellow candidate Henry Jackson. His own party started the "Acid, Amnesty and Abortion" campaign against him. After he got the nomination there was a Democrats for Nixon movement lead by the former Democratic Governor of Texas and Secretary of the Treasury John Connally who said the Democratic party "is becoming an ideological machine closed to millions who have been the party's most loyal and steadfast members" under McGovern's leadership.
posted by chris24 at 10:14 AM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm not even interested in shaming them; I acknowledge that they exist and that they are a threat to my existence, beyond that, I'm not allocating any emotional labor to them.

Trouble is, there are just enough of them in just the right places to win presidential elections. And the nature of the senate gives them a structural election advantage. And gerrymandering gives them an advantage in the House. And state level districting gives them a structural advantage in state legislatures.

"It's not fair that we should have to do the work" is an argument that hamstrings us, even though it's 100% true. The other side is both uninterested in doing the work and unmotivated to do the work.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 10:18 AM on December 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

I just joined a local SURJ affiliate that kind of imploded a couple years ago but now is trying to reconstitute itself. I'm... really I am kind of torn, honestly. I really like to think that just having nice, reasonable conversations, white person to white person, that I could accelerate someone's movement from unacknowledged implicit bias to acknowledged-and-actively-working-on-it. And if it's possible to do, I am ready, willing and able to take that on because it's at least one way I can positively use my white privilege. But I remain unconvinced that this is possible on any kind of scale. And the time I spend tilting at this particular windmill is time I won't have to actually get my hands dirty in support of local marginalized communities.

One of the things that I feel gets lost in these conversations is that changing people's minds and habits is hard, relentless work that has a low rate of return. We can be talking about racism, we can be talking about civics, we can be talking about abortion, we can be talking about preconceptions about regional stereotypes, whatever. Humans are really horrible at changing their minds - and even when they think they have, they're really bad at then following through with their actions. Persuasion works best if the persuader is someone that the target sees as similar to themselves, but even then, it can take years or maybe not even work at all. And I can't ask the targets of hate to put themselves in harm's way by advocating that they work on doing this themselves.

There are no fast and easy answers for this. It's fucking hard to do good work. It's a long slog and we do not have time on our side.

I don't know what the answer is - personally, I've been trying to have more patience for arguments I would have noped out of in the past because I realize that these are people who would be more receptive to me, plus I'm not exactly the target most of the time. I've been bringing it up and talking about politics. I've been having a lot of shitty uncomfortable conversations. But I don't view that as the main thrust of my activism, because there's a lot of more immediate concerns about disenfranchisement and hate crimes and health care to take care of.
posted by dinty_moore at 10:19 AM on December 8, 2016 [7 favorites]

There is so much shade in this NYT story. I love it.

That article characterizes unabashedly sexist advertising as an "occasional streak of political incorrectness," and directly above that says this:

Mr. Puzder will arguably have less experience in government than any labor secretary since the early 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan appointed a longtime construction executive named Raymond J. Donovan. Mr. Donovan’s tenure was marked by an easing of numerous regulations.

"Easing of numerous regulations" is one way to say it. "Stripping of numerous protections" is another. This is exactly the kind of debate-framing failure that George Lakoff has been screaming about for years.
posted by theodolite at 10:22 AM on December 8, 2016 [39 favorites]

McGovern was always way behind in the polls.

It almost sounds like Trump took a page from McGovern. The wikipedia page I cited has him at 41% prior to the Eagleton controversy (no citation, though.) I wouldn't call that "way behind," especially given recent experience. Trump was below 40% in October.

There was a Anyone But McGovern movement in the party led by fellow candidate Henry Jackson.

That sounds like at least as plausible a reason to refuse the VP slot as "anticipating an asskicking."
posted by Coventry at 10:22 AM on December 8, 2016

> Trouble is, there are just enough of them in just the right places to win presidential elections.

No, there were just enough of them in just the right places to win this Presidential election. Four years from now, if we're still alive by then, Democrats will have a different candidate, Trump will have four years of "governing" under his belt, and many states that Hillary almost won will be trending in the blue direction demographically. "Trump won by getting Rust Belt non-college educated whites" can't be simply rewritten as "Democrats cannot win without getting more Rust Belt non-college educated whites."
posted by tonycpsu at 10:25 AM on December 8, 2016 [6 favorites]

"It's not fair that we should have to do the work" is an argument that hamstrings us, even though it's 100% true. The other side is both uninterested in doing the work and unmotivated to do the work.

I'm not saying "it's not fair." I'm saying there is a maximum amount of emotional labor that one person can do, and that women already do more emotional labor than men and have to do a ton of emotional labor just to coexist with men, and POC already do more emotional labor than white people and have to do so much to just coexist with white people. There are limited EL resources, and they should go to those who need it the most -- white Trump-voting men are really far down on that list. This overlaps really well with the "Men dump their anger into women" FPP.

It's not about "fairness" - it's about "I used up all of my EL on X, Y, and Z, so by the time I get around to Trump voters there's none left." I'm not superhuman, there's a limit to what I can do. I believe that focusing on organizing and helping marginalized communities is a better allocation of my limited resources.
posted by melissasaurus at 10:27 AM on December 8, 2016 [32 favorites]

Four years from now, Democrats will have a different candidate

Christ let's hope so
posted by beerperson at 10:28 AM on December 8, 2016 [11 favorites]

It almost sounds like Trump took a page from McGovern. The wikipedia page I cited has him at 41% prior to the Eagleton controversy (no citation, though.) I wouldn't call that "way behind," especially given recent experience. Trump was below 40% in October.

McGovern was never closer than 16 points behind in polling. And typically more like 25 points down.

May 53% 34%
June 53% 37%
July 56% 37%
August (early) 57% 31%
August (late) 64% 30%
September 61% 33%
October (early) 60% 34%
October (late) 59% 36%
November 62% 38%
Actual result 61% 38%
posted by chris24 at 10:28 AM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

How Umberto Eco Tagged Today’s Fascists: Daily Beast summary of Umberto Eco's 1995 essay on Ur-Fascism.

• The cult of tradition, the idea that a revealed truth at some earlier historical moment “has been spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message.”
• The rejection of modernism is not the same as a rejection of technology. (Look at ISIS and the Internet). Rather it’s a rejection of the Enlightenment, of the Age of Reason, “seen as the beginning of modern depravity.”
• Once rationalism is out of the way, then action for action’s sake comes to be seen as “beautiful in itself” and “must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection.”
• Disagreement is treason
• And eternal Fascism is racist by definition, according to Eco, it “grows up and seeks for consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference.”
• One of the most typical features of historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, Eco wrote: “a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.“
• In this atmosphere of irrationalism, prejudice, and frustration, inevitably there arises an obsession with a plot, and, as Eco noted, “possibly an international one.”
• By the same token, the followers must feel humiliated “by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies.” Thus, for instance, we hear today that America is weak, that Russia is better led, that the Chinese take the United States to the cleaners on trade deals.
• This brings us to what Eco called popular elitism: “Every citizen belongs to the best people of the world, the members of the party are the best among the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to) become a member of the party. But there cannot be patricians without plebeians.”
• For the Eternal Fascist, life is permanent warfare and talk of pacifism is “trafficking with the enemy,” according to Eco.
• Then there’s the matter of official heroism, or, as ISIS and al Qaeda would have it, “martyrdom.”
• Part of this picture is machismo. “Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters,” said Eco.
• Eco notes the prevalence of what he calls selective populism, where “citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People.”
• And he concludes by warning against what George Orwell called Newspeak, the language of totalitarianism that the author of 1984 identified most closely with Stalinism but was and is common to all brands of fascism.

Literary Hub's Umberto Eco on Donald Trump: 14 Ways of Looking at a Fascist is another good analysis.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:28 AM on December 8, 2016 [45 favorites]

So I guess my point is that by talking about bias, white person to white person, you are helping people be less racist in aggregate. But it's a slow process that sees very little results and receives a lot of pushback. It's better than nothing, but if you don't have the energy to talk about it after focusing on more directly helping minorities, work with more directly helping minorities.
posted by dinty_moore at 10:28 AM on December 8, 2016 [7 favorites]

McGovern was never closer than 16 points behind in polling.

I don't think month-level resolution is adequate. The entire Eagleton controversy happened on that timescale.
posted by Coventry at 10:29 AM on December 8, 2016

I don't think month-level resolution is adequate. The entire Eagleton controversy happened on that timescale.

Eagleton was nominated as VP on July 13th, the mental health issue sprung up two weeks later and he resigned August 1st. So there were three months of polls before the controversy that showed him down 19, 16 and 19 points to Nixon. And it was those numbers that Kennedy et al were aware of in making their decision not to join the ticket.
posted by chris24 at 10:37 AM on December 8, 2016

Mod note: Guys, I feel like this sidetrip back to the early 70s is getting kinda long in the tooth, maybe take it to email at this point.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:40 AM on December 8, 2016 [17 favorites]

I hear it was so much fun, though.
posted by Coventry at 10:47 AM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Colbert: Pizzagate is an Alt-Right Fever Dream [youtube clip 10:10 mins]
posted by melissasaurus at 10:51 AM on December 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

In this atmosphere of irrationalism, prejudice, and frustration, inevitably there arises an obsession with a plot, and, as Eco noted, “possibly an international one.”

And, as Eco added in a footnote, "possibly involving pizza for some reason."
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 10:53 AM on December 8, 2016 [13 favorites]

Four years from now, Democrats will have a different candidate

But you have to admit Hindsight 2020 with the H-logo would be a hell of a slogan.
posted by asteria at 10:53 AM on December 8, 2016 [27 favorites]

But you have to admit Hindsight 2020 with the H-logo would be a hell of a slogan.

The arrow could point backwards even.
posted by mazola at 10:55 AM on December 8, 2016 [7 favorites]

(This NYT story, on the other hand, which equates Trump supporters being called racist with a student threatened with being lit on fire because she wore a hijab as "bias incidents on both side," that displeases me.)

--

Hello,

I'm writing about the article "On Campus, Trump Fans Say They Need Safe Spaces" published on December 8 (link), which includes this paragraph:

Bias incidents on both sides have been reported. A student walking near campus was threatened with being lit on fire because she wore a hijab. Other students were accused of being racist for supporting Mr. Trump, according to a campuswide message from Mark Schlissel, the university’s president.

I understand that the thought of being labeled as racist is uncomfortable to many, but to equate this with actual threats of violence is irresponsible. The SPLC counted 867 incidents of hateful harassment in the 10 days after the election (link), reflecting the surge in white nationalism and Islamophobia fueled by Trump's victory. (Just 23 of those incidents were anti-Trump.) This is a very real threat to racial and religious minorities in the U.S. that cannot be equated to the discomfort some white Trump supporters feel at being called racist.

I understand the work that goes into good journalism, and I appreciate all that the New York Times does to uphold those standards. I ask only that your writers take care not to use false equivalencies that obscure the very different threat levels Trump supporters and religious minorities face.

Thank you.

This is my guiding principle these days: When you feel like shutting up, don't. I opened the window, closed it, opened it again, cut and pasted the relevant text, closed it, opened it, found the contact email, hesitated. With fake news on the rise who cares. Why fight this battle. Why haven't I written an email about anything else. I'm going to look stupid. No one cares what you think. But damn it, there are a lot of things about this election and news coverage that are over my head, but I KNOW that being threatened with being set on fire is NOT the same fucking thing as being called racist. Everything about this society has conspired to train me to shut up pre-emptively so that my senators and representatives and friends' moms on Facebook and whoever checks the New York Times email address do not have to deal with my liberal millennial female Asian American mixed-race San Franciscan ass and I just will. not. be silent anymore.
posted by sunset in snow country at 11:19 AM on December 8, 2016 [82 favorites]

Folks on the left could also stand to work on not coming up with the most offensive possible read of everything and focus on what tactics are shown to work. And not turn everything into a zero sum game.

Trump is going to be provoking us into reactions, and then using those reactions as an excuse to do terrible things.

Different people can do different parts of the work, sure. But we are losing elections, and the presidency is the least of it in a lot of ways. If the guys on the other side take a few more state houses they can call a constitutional convention and ratify whatever the hell they want. What we're doing now is not working.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 11:20 AM on December 8, 2016 [7 favorites]

Blue Jello Elf, it's funny that you mention "doing the work" and "focusing on tactics that are shown to work," because to me that means GOTV and shoring up our base and fighting voter suppression. People here are not saying that they're too offended to engage, they're saying that they don't think what you're proposing is effective, for many different reasons. I think there's room for disagreement here but I would suggest listening to that instead of acting like we're performing offense as some sort of enjoyable recreational activity.
posted by sunset in snow country at 11:25 AM on December 8, 2016 [26 favorites]

And, as Eco added in a footnote, 'possibly involving pizza for some reason.'

He was Italian.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:26 AM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

possibly involving pizza for some reason

It's worse than we thought.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 11:31 AM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Mod note: Blue Jello Elf, qcubed, I feel like this is already at kind of an impasse and is likely to get more heated if it keeps on in here; I'm gonna request you two let this drop at this point.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:33 AM on December 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

@wpjenna
"I really like him as a person," Trump said of Obama, adding that he has run some of his cabinet picks past him. "I love getting his ideas."

@shaqbrewster Retweeted Jenna Johnson
.@realDonaldTrump was speaking so highly of Pres. Obama, I thought I was about to hear: "He was actually born here Matt, did you know that?"
posted by chris24 at 11:59 AM on December 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

Maybe Trump will love him so much he'll offer Obama the SCOTUS nom.
posted by asteria at 12:04 PM on December 8, 2016 [11 favorites]

Trump is just full of love.
posted by Coventry at 12:07 PM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

McCaffrey Changes Opinion On Flynn After Reading 'Nearly Demented' Tweets

Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey has changed his opinion on the incoming national security adviser, retired Army Gen. Michael Flynn, after reading his tweets.

In an interview on NBC posted online Thursday, McCaffrey acknowledged that he had initially been supportive of Flynn after President-elect Trump announced that he would be his national security adviser, a position which does not require confirmation hearings.

“But I must admit,” McCaffrey said, “I’m now extremely uneasy about some of these tweets, which don’t sound so much as if they are political skullduggery, but instead border on being demented. So I think we need to look into this and sort our what’s going on here.”

“I think that we need to aggressively examine what was going on with Gen. Flynn and his son, dealing with these transparent, nearly demented tweets that were going out,” he continued. “I think it needs closer scrutiny.”

posted by chris24 at 12:20 PM on December 8, 2016 [38 favorites]

@shaqbrewster Retweeted Jenna Johnson
.@realDonaldTrump was speaking so highly of Pres. Obama, I thought I was about to hear: "He was actually born here Matt, did you know that?"

I was really hoping this was Shaq's account.
posted by beerperson at 12:32 PM on December 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

“I think that we need to aggressively examine what was going on with Gen. Flynn and his son, dealing with these transparent, nearly demented tweets that were going out,”

This will be the most transparent administration ever!
posted by Joe in Australia at 12:39 PM on December 8, 2016

I’m the union leader Donald Trump attacked. I’m tired of being lied to about our jobs.

Trump didn’t tell people that, though. When he spoke at our plant, he acted like no one was going to lose their job. People went crazy for him. They thought, because of Trump, I’m going to be able to provide for my family.

All the while, I’m sitting there, thinking that’s not what the damn numbers say. Trump let people believe that they were going to have a livelihood in that facility. He let people breathe easy. When I told our members the next day, they were devastated.
...
What I can’t abide, however, is a president who misleads workers, who gives them false hope. We’re not asking for anything besides opportunity, for jobs that let people provide for their families. These plants are profitable, and the workers produced a good-quality product. Because of corporate greed, though, company leaders are racing to the bottom, to find places where they can pay the least. It’s a system that exploits everyone.

posted by zachlipton at 12:42 PM on December 8, 2016 [59 favorites]

Matthew Sheffield in Salon: How the alt-right became racist (part 1)

Throughout his just-concluded campaign, Donald Trump was frequently analogized to the monster created by Dr. Frankenstein. The future president — as everyone from his former ghostwriter to critics on both the left and right asserted — was the inevitable byproduct of the political culture of bravado and bigotry that Republican and conservative elites had used to gain votes from people who had no interest in cutting the government.

posted by kingless at 12:56 PM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

.
posted by Ber at 1:01 PM on December 8, 2016

More horrible bills from Ohio:

SB 331 passes 55-40. Ohio cities can not enact higher minimum wages, regulate worker scheduling or require earned sick or family leave.

Also today: bill moving forward to prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of having a concealed weapons permit. #OhLeg #SB199

(on top of the abortion ban bills passed this week)
posted by melissasaurus at 1:03 PM on December 8, 2016 [15 favorites]

Trump Team Scrambles for A-List Inaugural Performers: ‘They Are Willing to Pay Anything’

It's going to be Nickelback, isn't it
posted by mazola at 1:04 PM on December 8, 2016 [8 favorites]

DVR alert: Evan McMullin on tonight's Daily Show
posted by Ber at 1:11 PM on December 8, 2016 [7 favorites]

Great piece by James Fallows in The Atlantic: Despair and Hope in Trump’s America

And now we have Donald Trump. We have small-town inland America—the culture I think of myself as being from—being credited or blamed for making a man like this the 45th in a sequence that includes Washington, Lincoln, and FDR. I view Trump’s election as the most grievous blow that the American idea has suffered in my lifetime. The Kennedy and King assassinations and the 9/11 attacks were crimes and tragedies. The wars in Vietnam and Iraq were disastrous mistakes. But the country recovered. For a democratic process to elevate a man expressing total disregard for democratic norms and institutions is worse. The American republic is based on rules but has always depended for its survival on norms—standards of behavior, conduct toward fellow citizens and especially critics and opponents that is decent beyond what the letter of the law dictates. Trump disdains them all. The American leaders I revere are sure enough of themselves to be modest, strong enough to entertain self-doubt. When I think of Republican Party civic virtues, I think of Eisenhower. But voters, or enough of them, have chosen Trump.
...
How could his message of despair and anger about the American prospect, and disrespect for the norms that made us great, have prevailed in a nation that still believes in itself at the local level? How can Americans have remained so confident and practical-minded in their daily civic dealings, and so suspicious, fearful, and tribally resentful about the nation as a whole?

Nearly a century ago, Walter Lippmann wrote that the challenge for democracies is that citizens necessarily base decisions on the “pictures in our heads,” the images of reality we construct for ourselves. The American public has just made a decision of the gravest consequence, largely based on distorted, frightening, and bigoted caricatures of reality that we all would recognize as caricature if applied to our own communities. Given the atrophy of old-line media with their quaint regard for truth, the addictive strength of social media and their unprecedented capacity to spread lies, and the cynicism of modern politics, will we ever be able to accurately match image with reality? The answer to that question will determine the answer to another: whether this election will be a dire but survivable challenge to American institutions or an irreversible step toward something else.

posted by kirkaracha at 1:21 PM on December 8, 2016 [28 favorites]

More horrible bills from Ohio:

Counterpoint from this morning's Thǝ Guaɹdian: 'A great victory for animals': bestiality may finally be outlawed in Ohio

So workers and women may be screwed, but no longer the sheep.
posted by Joe in Australia at 1:23 PM on December 8, 2016 [19 favorites]

--bestiality may finally be outlawed in Ohio

Uh, hold up. It's not already? WTAF? Priorities, people!
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:25 PM on December 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

“This is unfortunate,” Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday morning of the terribly tragic possibility that the Republican Party might go out of its way to commit suicide.

Remember how badly things turned out for the Republican Party the last time it went out of its way to commit suicide? Geez, you'd think they'd want to avoid something like that.
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:29 PM on December 8, 2016 [9 favorites]

'Suicide' by winning 60 seats in the Senate in 2018. Just because Democrats were able to stop Bush from privatizing Social Security in 2005 doesn't mean that these Trumpublicans won't succeed in killing off Medicare.
posted by T.D. Strange at 1:34 PM on December 8, 2016 [10 favorites]

It's not so much that the Republican Party committed suicide, so much as it poked its head into a xenomorph nest, and now we're dealing with the rapidly-growing, acid-blooded organism that just burst out of its chest.

(On edit, it occurs to me that this may not be the first time I've utilized the Giger-Alien analogy in talking about Trumpism over the past year, but I'm too lazy to look it up in past election/transition threads.)
posted by Strange Interlude at 1:36 PM on December 8, 2016 [7 favorites]

Thomas E. Patterson, Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy: News Coverage of the 2016 General Election: How the Press Failed the Voters

The study found that, on topics relating to the candidates’ fitness for office, Clinton and Trump’s coverage was virtually identical in terms of its negative tone. “Were the allegations surrounding Clinton of the same order of magnitude as those surrounding Trump?” asks Patterson. “It’s a question that political reporters made no serious effort to answer during the 2016 campaign.”

Reactions from Kevin Drum and Scott Lemieux.
posted by tonycpsu at 1:38 PM on December 8, 2016 [12 favorites]

Yeah, I didn't like that Slate article. "Seniors love their entitlements", my ass. Seniors love receiving the socially necessary fruits of programs they paid into their entire lives.

If there was one message I could skywrite everywhere in the land it would be "if you don't want to end up crushed between your student loans and your parents' medical bills, don't let them privatize Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security". Everyone who has parents younger than 55 needs to understand that when their parents get too old or sick to work, those bills will be coming due to the young, healthy kids, and this will derail young people's lives.
posted by Frowner at 1:38 PM on December 8, 2016 [44 favorites]

Reactions from Kevin Drum and Scott Lemieux.

Two things from Lemieux's reaction piece hit hard and I hope put paid to narratives about Election 2016 that I hear in the MSM and in numerous MeFi comments:

1) "Especially in battleground states, [after Comey's last release] late-breaking voters broke big for Trump. Note that during this time Hillary Clinton did not become more NEOLIBERAL, the economic situation in Wisconsin and Iowa did not get worse, and Donald Trump did not become more famous."

2) "Obligatory note that complex events have multiple causes and responsibility is joint. To the argument that we should basically give the media and Comey a pass because going forward we need to focus on the fact that Hillary Clinton sucks, it seems worth observing that Hillary Clinton will not be the Democratic candidate for president again and the 2016 campaign will not ever be run again, but the media and the national surveillance state aren’t going anywhere." [emphasis added]

Word goddamn up.
posted by lord_wolf at 2:02 PM on December 8, 2016 [62 favorites]

How Donald Trump’s Web of LLCs Obscures His Business Interests

President-elect Donald Trump owns a helicopter in Scotland.

To be more precise, he has a revocable trust that owns 99% of a Delaware limited liability company that owns 99% of another Delaware LLC that owns a Scottish limited company that owns another Scottish company that owns the 26-year-old Sikorsky S-76B helicopter, emblazoned with a red “TRUMP” on the side of its fuselage.

Across Mr. Trump’s business, he uses a similar web of privately held LLCs and other entities to house his assets—everything from real estate to a vintage carousel in Manhattan’s Central Park, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of hundreds of pages of his corporate filings and personal financial disclosures. Fifteen entities, for example, are used to hold his interests in two airplanes and three helicopters.

This is good work, but why weren't they doing this level of digging during the campaign?
posted by zachlipton at 2:09 PM on December 8, 2016 [18 favorites]

> why weren't they doing this level of digging during the campaign?

Well, obviously he was a joke candidate and it would be a waste of time, but damn did he bring in the pageviews. Easier to just report on who he just insulted on Twitter.
posted by RedOrGreen at 2:11 PM on December 8, 2016 [11 favorites]

I'm not sure what difference it would have made if even more people were pointing out even more problems with Trump
posted by beerperson at 2:12 PM on December 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

Similar investigative work was done during the campaign. Even places like CNN would talk about it. 46% of American voters decided they didn't care.
posted by honestcoyote at 2:13 PM on December 8, 2016 [7 favorites]

Yeah but guys: emails.
posted by agregoli at 2:23 PM on December 8, 2016 [15 favorites]

But you have to admit Hindsight 2020 with the H-logo would be a hell of a slogan.

The arrow could point backwards even.

At least then it'd be aimed to the fucking Left
posted by EmGeeJay at 2:25 PM on December 8, 2016 [12 favorites]

The arrow would also be point backwards as we read left to right. But whatever.

As for the news, I think it wasn't so much lack of effort as it was lack of attention. Sure they'd mention TrumpU and Foundation but other than the sexual harassment/assault did anything get as much attention as either Emails!!!!! or Benghazi?
posted by asteria at 2:26 PM on December 8, 2016

Just a thought: this thread, but also the left in general, sometimes reminds me of the late -70's early -80's where the left were so busy fighting between fractions that they never saw Reagan/Thatcher and all their minions coming. Which again paved the way for Blair's 3rd way and Bill Clinton.

Now I personally believe that Hillary Clinton is far to the left of Bill, and always was, but I can understand the worries some people have had about her, not least because of her foreign-policy hawkishness. But if the next four years are to be spent re-litigating this horrible year and election, and fractioning up into tiny details, I do not think there will be a positive Democratic vision for the future. And Trump will be re-elected, as Bush was.

I get that one of the things that killed the left back in the day, both in the US and in Europe was "The Machine" - I'm old enough to have met it, and it needed to stop. But now the situation has long since reversed - the unity on the left has disappeared and has been replaced by an equivalent on the right which is far more dangerous for the majority of citizens. The Machine was a corrupt system tied with mobs, but it never compromised workers' rights. The conservative-libertarian alliance will reduce America and Europe to third world countries as fast as they can.
posted by mumimor at 2:26 PM on December 8, 2016 [10 favorites]

The Washington Post awarded David Fahrenthold the inaugural Benjamin Bradlee award for his work this year on the presidential campaign. I think it's well deserved and am happy to see him get it.
posted by Silverstone at 2:34 PM on December 8, 2016 [46 favorites]

Slate had an article about research that shows that different framings on moral arguments can have a *huge* difference in outcome.

Arg. Glip. . ffffgh

News Coverage of the 2016 General Election: How the Press Failed the Voters

*whimper* *pant*

It's going to be Nickelback, isn't it

*howl*
posted by petebest at 2:40 PM on December 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

This is good work, but why weren't they doing this level of digging during the campaign?

They definitely did.

They even had this video you might have seen where he bragged about sexual assault.

Nobody cared. Strong Daddy Smash Snob Enemy Dead! Swamp drain! HIT THE LADY. YEAH. Vote for Strong Daddy he Kill Baddies!
posted by dis_integration at 2:40 PM on December 8, 2016 [16 favorites]

This is good work, but why weren't they doing this level of digging during the campaign?

It's pretty well established that all of this pales in comparison to Hilary's email management practices, the foremost issue of our age.

Sure, Trump funnels his money through a virtually untraceable maze of unaccountable international holding companies. But you know what, at least he didn't use a private email server. He doesn't even use email. See, he can't be corrupt by definition.
posted by T.D. Strange at 2:41 PM on December 8, 2016 [18 favorites]

Vote for Strong Daddy

Exactly. The fight only ever got traction with "strong daddy" language and that's why it will always fail until "caring person" language replaces it.

And "caring person" language doesn't sell so you people better figure out how to make it either sell or get around the corporate buzzsaws. Else we'll be heiling Turdfungus for a second term before you can say community center.
posted by petebest at 2:50 PM on December 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

Trump gets one presidential intelligence briefing a week: sources. Pence, of course, is getting at least six briefings a week.

If reading Josh Marshall take on Tulsi Gabbard because she said "I found it pretty offensive for people to outright discriminate against veterans" in response to a question about having so many retired generals in the cabinet is the kind of thing that appeals to you, then you should read Something Disturbing About Tulsi Gabbard
posted by zachlipton at 2:51 PM on December 8, 2016 [10 favorites]

Oh wait I can barely even post a comment before something even more ridiculous crosses my desk. Donald Trump to Remain Executive Producer on ‘Celebrity Apprentice’

The fact that a sitting president will be on the payroll of a current TV show is another example of the thicket of potential conflicts of interest raised by Trump’s segue from private businessman and TV star to commander-in-chief. However, past presidents have published books during their time in the White House, so there is precedent for a president earning royalties while in office. In the case of President Obama’s 2010 book “Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters,” his profits from the Alfred A. Knopf publication were donated to a charity supporting the children of disabled veterans.

posted by zachlipton at 2:53 PM on December 8, 2016 [19 favorites]

email is a liberal commie pinko conspiracy.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 2:54 PM on December 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

46% of American voters decided they didn't care.

Nate Silver made an analogy during the election that if a Mitt was a unit of scandal/corruption, then Romney and Obama are one Mitt candidates. And Hillary is let's say a 5 Mitt. Trump is a 50 Mitt candidate. But both Clinton and Trump were covered as 8 Mitt candidates. So Hillary was covered worse than she deserved and Trump, while being covered negatively, was covered nowhere near the way he should have.

And yes, 46% didn't care that he was 8 Mitts. But it also would've taken less than 1% of that 46% in 3 states to change the result. So maybe covering Trump accurately would've made that difference. Or maybe not exaggerating Clinton's faults would've made that difference. Or maybe fair, accurate coverage brings out some of the 42% who didn't vote.

The media failed catastrophically and I'm surprised that people's reactions are "Eh, they said plenty of bad things about him." Yes, Trump voters are awful, but that doesn't excuse the media.
posted by chris24 at 2:54 PM on December 8, 2016 [51 favorites]

manly men tweet.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 2:55 PM on December 8, 2016

How WWE’s Linda McMahon Will Change Trump’s Administration
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:56 PM on December 8, 2016

“But I must admit,” McCaffrey said, “I’m now extremely uneasy about some of these tweets, which don’t sound so much as if they are political skullduggery, but instead border on being demented. So I think we need to look into this and sort our what’s going on here.”

That is one impressively measured circumlocution for "What the Everloving Fuck?" [golf clap]
posted by FelliniBlank at 3:08 PM on December 8, 2016 [16 favorites]

> If reading Josh Marshall take on Tulsi Gabbard because she said "I found it pretty offensive for people to outright discriminate against veterans" in response to a question about having so many retired generals in the cabinet is the kind of thing that appeals to you, then you should read Something Disturbing About Tulsi Gabbard

It sucks to be in the minority as a Democrat, especially as a House back-bencher like Gabbard, but nothing brings in the media bookings like attacking your own party and embracing the opposition's rhetoric. We saw it with Zell Miller, Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Harold Ford, Mary Landrieu... the list goes on. The GOP has even had a few (McCain, Collins, Snowe) but they were far more likely to make a few vague statements of disagreement before a party-line vote than they were to put up any substantive opposition.

So now we have Gabbard. Islamophobe. Sanders supporter. Combat veteran. Woman of color. You couldn't dream up a better bio for the role of Democrat attacking Democrats in 2016, and I'm sure now that she's all "Y U Dems hate teh troops?", her phone is ringing off the hook with media booking requests from Fox News and Breitbart.
posted by tonycpsu at 3:09 PM on December 8, 2016 [14 favorites]

Gabbard has a tough walk to walk here in Hawaii though. Lots of what she's been saying has bothered her less ardent supporters. I think she's going to be risking a revolt among her constituents if she continues in this direction. She already has a "we respect her but we don't really like her" thing going and that could easily turn into "well, we don't respect her either."
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:12 PM on December 8, 2016 [8 favorites]

Donald Trump to Remain Executive Producer on ‘Celebrity Apprentice’

I know there are basically no rules for a president's conflicts of interest, but surely NBC has written internal CoI policies, no? How is this ok from NBC's perspective? Most big companies like this have very strict conflict of interest policies that prohibit basically any kind of contractual/financial relationship with government officials (outside of their official gov't roles) without clearance by a bajillion conflict of interest lawyers.
posted by melissasaurus at 3:12 PM on December 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

The new Secretary of Labor nominee...

@greenhousenyt
Yikes--At Andy Puzder's Hardee's & Carl's Jr. fast-food chain, 60% of restaurants had at least one wage violation. https://www.bna.com/franchise-model-recipe-n57982076930/
posted by chris24 at 3:16 PM on December 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

Gabbard has a tough walk to walk here in Hawaii though. Lots of what she's been saying has bothered her less ardent supporters. I think she's going to be risking a revolt among her constituents if she continues in this direction. She already has a "we respect her but we don't really like her" thing going and that could easily turn into "well, we don't respect her either."

I completely agree. Her challenger this year, Shay Chan Hodges, had basically no money and no press and Gabbard refused to debate her, but she still managed to get some votes (including mine!) nonetheless. Gabbard's primary sort of flew under the radar because of timing and the presidential election (March caucus for pres. but local primaries in August). I'm not going to be living in Hawaii anymore by the time her next reelection rolls around, but I am definitely going to be working to unseat her. She's really a mismatch for her/my district.
posted by melissasaurus at 3:18 PM on December 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

This is germane to the discussion of the white working class male voter, because here is a guy who is vehemently anti-Trump, and eloquent about it: Self-Described "White Trash Hillbilly" Nails Exactly What's Wrong with America.

I want to add that I'm confused by and tired of the whole WWC discussion, but I enjoyed listening to this guy.
posted by maggiemaggie at 3:23 PM on December 8, 2016 [12 favorites]

Is anyone in the cabinet going to submit to public assault and ritual humiliation by shaving from President Trump, like McMahon's husband did?
posted by Coventry at 3:23 PM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

How is this ok from NBC's perspective?

The only thing that could lift NBC's ratings up from the basement is if everyone is required by law to watch their awful shows.
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:28 PM on December 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

Most big companies like this have very strict conflict of interest policies that prohibit basically any kind of contractual/financial relationship with government officials (outside of their official gov't roles) without clearance by a bajillion conflict of interest lawyers.

Sure, but why would they have a problem giving clearance for it? He's demonstrated that he has 10s of millions of loyal followers who if you'll pardon some snark have proven that they'll buy a lousy product if it has some glitzy marketing around it, which is basically what reality TV is. That's an advertiser's dream. They won't suffer any government fallout for it, at least not for four years, and the nature of how executives are incentivized these days means that they care about the stock price next week, month, and year but not four years from now.
posted by Candleman at 3:33 PM on December 8, 2016

Technically, it's MGM and not NBC, since they produce the show. That said, NBC-Universal-Comcast-SheinhardtWigCompany has a number of needs from the federal government, and certainly wouldn't mind a President who looks favorably upon them.
posted by zachlipton at 3:37 PM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Market indicator hits extreme levels last seen before plunges in 1929, 2000 and 2008
posted by futz at 3:40 PM on December 8, 2016 [16 favorites]

I'm not surprised that NBC/Comcast/whoever execs have profit-motivated reasons to waive any conflict of interest concerns regarding payments to Trump. I have full belief in their ability to be greedy people without conscience. I just think it's shortsighted and undermines their company's entire internal conflict of interest structure. They will literally be sending money to the president of the united states, but they want to tell a random office worker that she can't campaign for her neighbor's school board election without getting clearance?

I get that different rules always apply to those at the top, I just think this is a legally risky move for them that may come back to bite them. I'm not denying it will be profitable, I just thought one of their lawyers would tell them it's inadvisable. But maybe they did and the execs just DGAF.
posted by melissasaurus at 3:45 PM on December 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

I guess it's a bit late to be plumbing deeply into the clear Stockholm syndrome being exhibited by the media, but I'd think the other networks would double down on playing this as problematic. I mean, the President-Elect has announced a privileged relationship with a single media outlet. Isn't that something the other media outlets should be crying foul on?
posted by jackbishop at 3:49 PM on December 8, 2016 [13 favorites]

@RonBrownstein
Doubts haven't dispelled: per new @pewresearch Just 37% view Trump as well-qualified; 65% say reckless; 62% poor judgment; 68% hard to like
---

And a tweetstorm on the new Pew data starts here (with some highlights.)

@nickgourevitch
1: Some tweets on @pewresearch's deep dive into Trump, starting w/ his historically poor favorable rating, worse than in other recent polls:

3: A majority of Americans say Trump has done "too little" to distance himself from white nationalists. Voters ARE paying attention to this. [chart]

7: 63% say immigrants are more of a strength than a burden, HIGHEST LEVEL ON THIS IN 20 YEARS OF PEW SURVEYS (sorry for CAPS felt justified) [chart]

8: Plurality oppose Medicare privatization, but that number goes to 2/3 oppose among those who have heard a lot about the plan [chart]

9: Mike Pence getting the wrong kind of Trump coattails. The most unpopular VP-elect in recent history: [chart]
posted by chris24 at 3:50 PM on December 8, 2016 [23 favorites]

So now we have Gabbard. Islamophobe. Sanders supporter. Combat veteran. Woman of color. You couldn't dream up a better bio for the role of Democrat attacking Democrats in 2016, and I'm sure now that she's all "Y U Dems hate teh troops?", her phone is ringing off the hook with media booking requests from Fox News and Breitbart.

I remember when she was being cheered on as a progressive light because of her support of Sanders, even with her background. Which is why this is so frustrating to watch now, because in many ways, the left gave her that platform.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:56 PM on December 8, 2016 [6 favorites]

Nearly a third of Republicans don’t know that Trump lost the popular vote
posted by futz at 4:01 PM on December 8, 2016 [8 favorites]

The most unpopular VP-elect in recent history

Do you know what they call a physician that graduates at the bottom of their class?

The only polls that really matter are the elections.
posted by Candleman at 4:02 PM on December 8, 2016 [7 favorites]

Do you know what they call a physician that graduates at the bottom of their class?

Mike Pence is going to be a dentist?
posted by Talez at 4:03 PM on December 8, 2016 [17 favorites]

I was happy when Gabbard left the DNC to support Sanders, and applauded that decision; she thought it was important to endorse him and took the procedural steps necessary so that she was able to do that in accordance with the established rules. I also applaud her decision to go to Standing Rock last weekend. She does some good stuff. She just also has some really shitty views, and Hawaii is far left enough and diverse enough to have a representative with fewer shitty views. Increasing turnout during the primary could change that, and it's something I'm going to work on in 2018.
posted by melissasaurus at 4:06 PM on December 8, 2016 [10 favorites]

Mike Pence is going to be a dentist?

He does get off on the pain he inflicts.
posted by jackbishop at 4:08 PM on December 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

Mike Pence is going to be a dentist?

Maybe SNL can lure Steve Martin out of retirement to play Pence opposite Baldwin?
posted by Candleman at 4:08 PM on December 8, 2016 [16 favorites]

I'm a day late on this, but just getting around to reading Garrison Keillor's Trump column linked by y2karl above. Thank you, Trump voters, for this wonderful joke

Which contains this tidbit:

"Meanwhile, the Democrats wander in the woods, walking into trees. A wealthy San Francisco liberal is reelected as minority leader in the House, having flung millions into the wind and gotten skunked in 2014 and drubbed this fall, and a lackluster black Muslim congressman from Minneapolis is a leading candidate for chair of the Democratic National Committee, the person who will need to connect with disaffected workers in Youngstown and Pittsburgh. Why not a ballet dancer or a Buddhist monk?"

I'm a white male liberal, but holy fuck, we could do without the opinions of a number of white male liberals these days. Yeah, it's clearly that damn woman's fault and who can possibly think a black Muslim can fix it.
posted by chris24 at 4:18 PM on December 8, 2016 [25 favorites]

Lefties and Liberals have been tasked with supporting some truly weak Democrats in my day, from Joe Lieberman to Max Baucus to Joe Manchin, but Tulsi Gabbard is a bridge too far?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 4:27 PM on December 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

I thought Mike Pence looked like Hank Hill's racist dad, and then I realized that Jeff Sessions looks even more like Hank Hill's racist dad, and now I just think the whole Trump team will just be made up of Hank Hill's racist dads.
posted by zutalors! at 4:27 PM on December 8, 2016 [35 favorites]

I don't like Joe Lieberman or Tulsi Gabbard, is that allowed?
posted by zutalors! at 4:29 PM on December 8, 2016 [15 favorites]

So I'm some random person on the internet, but here's what I want to see happen. Have the Democrats draw a line in the sand. Maybe it's Flynn. Maybe it's any attempt to dismantle the ACA.

Not that I think that it will work because of the thing where the left is like herding cats, but I think we need to start talking in revolutionary terms. Yes I am listening to the Hamilton mixtape but that's not the point. We should express the idea that certain forms of repression are unacceptable.

I would draw the line at Sessions as AG, although maybe another wackadoodle is up for confirmation first. Let's Benghazi that shit. I don't care if Sessions is maybe okay in several key respects (assuming for the sake of argument). Let's paint the dude as the most racist fuck ever who would only do evil with his great powers as AG.

I would love to be all reasonable, but you know what, we tried that for eight years. The climate doesn't have four years for us to fuck around with niceties. I'm old, cranky, and don't have kids. But I have a beloved niece. So I have time and motivation, so let's draw that line in the sand and figure out what kind of firepower we have to use against oppression.
posted by angrycat at 4:31 PM on December 8, 2016 [14 favorites]

Maybe it's any attempt to dismantle the ACA.

There is no line the Democrats can draw to prevent much of the ACA from being dismantled. You can't filibuster something passed through reconciliation which is how the budgetary aspects of the ACA will be removed.
posted by Justinian at 4:34 PM on December 8, 2016

So let's see... we have a

1) person in charge of HUD who doesn't believe that government should help the poor
2) person in charge of Education who doesn't like public schools
3) person in charge of the EPA who doesn't like regulations and doesn't believe in Climate Change
4) person in charge of HHS who opposes gay rights and women's reproductive rights as well as the ACA
5) and now a Secretary of Labor who dislikes laborers and would prefer to curtail their rights. Francis Perkins must be rolling in her grave.

"The purpose of the Department of Labor is to foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners, job seekers, and retirees of the United States; improve working conditions; advance opportunities for profitable employment; and assure work-related benefits and rights. " (taken from Wikipedia) Does that sound like something Andrew Puzder is interested in doing well?

From the NYTimes link from above

He strongly supports repealing the Affordable Care Act, which he maintains has helped create a “restaurant recession” because rising premiums have left middle- and working-class people with less money to spend dining out.

Riiiight. First of all if you want a job in Trump's cabinet apparently you have to vehemently oppose ObamaCare; it must be the first question at the interview. But second and more importantly that makes no goddam sense. Just wait until the minimum wage is abolished as well as overtime as well as medical insurance coverage and see how much money people have to spend on fast food. In fact the smart money will be on opening a new franchise: RatBurgers which will sell cockroach patties for 50 cents when cheeseburgers become too expensive.

Damn though, I had hoped that Trump would throw the working class a bone or two but it looks like he is throwing us under the bus. His cabinet could not be farther to the Right. Did the WWC in Wisconsin knowing they were really voting for Ted Cruz with a side of crazy?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:36 PM on December 8, 2016 [34 favorites]

No way to shut down the government?
posted by angrycat at 4:37 PM on December 8, 2016

Gabbard is a hard pill to swallow for me because she doesn't represent a swing district. She represents one of the most solid blue districts in the country. There's no reason we (her constituents) should have to compromise in picking our Rep. So, I voted for a farther left person in the primary. But I voted for Gabbard in the general because her opponent was too racist for even the Republican party in the state and I understand how elections work. I voted for her but don't "like" her; I call her office when she does good things and I call her office when she does things I disagree with. She was better than the GOP alternative but we can and should do better. Our Senator, Brian Schatz, is a great example.
posted by melissasaurus at 4:39 PM on December 8, 2016 [14 favorites]

Riverfront Times Andrew Puzder, Trump's Pick for Labor Department, Was Accused of Abusing Wife

In her divorce filing, Henning alleged that Puzder hit her, threw her to the floor and unplugged the phone after she tried to call the police for her help. Puzder would later acknowledge in a deposition that he "grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her back," but said he did it to stop her from hurting herself.

The divorce filing also detailed two other incidents: One in the late '70s in which the neighbors called the police after a shouting match turned into a plate-throwing fight, and one in which Lisa Henning alleged that Puzder punched her in 1985 while they were driving in a car. Questioned about the incident in a deposition for the divorce case, Puzder said that he had not punched his wife, but acknowledged driving onto the curb: "I think it had to do with the liquid refreshment we had with our dinner more than anything else."

He grabbed her to stop her from hurting herself. That's a standard response by abusive husbands. But hey! I'm sure he and Steve Bannon will have plenty to talk about.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:42 PM on December 8, 2016 [16 favorites]

I'm really worried for the women who will work in this administration, especially the White House household staff. :(
posted by melissasaurus at 4:48 PM on December 8, 2016 [27 favorites]

I think we will be seeing a lot more of this sort of thing in Trump's America

Detroit Free Press Anti-union bills pass Michigan House of Representatives

One bill would increase fines against picketers to $1,000 per person per day of a picket and $10,000 per day for an organization or union involved in the picket that is deemed to be an illegal mass picket. That bill passed on a mostly party-line vote of 57-50.

The other would repeal a law that requires employers to include information about an ongoing strike when they advertise to hire employees who will replace existing, but striking employees at a company. That bill passed on a vote of 59-48 on a mostly party line vote.

First they get rid of regulations and then they bust up any remaining Unions and pretty soon that $5.00 an hour job working in unsafe conditions will be looking pretty good. So what if you lose an arm? So what if you can't afford to eat at Carl's Jr? You will be Making America Great Again!
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:49 PM on December 8, 2016 [15 favorites]

Toronto Star Belleville woman helped cook up Pizzagate

Following the spread of fake news and “Pizzagate” — which inspired a violent incident in a Washington, D.C. eatery and might have even affected the course of the U.S. election — leads to at least one surprising destination: the home of a stay-at-home mom and writer in Belleville, Ont.

Stefanie MacWilliams, a contributor to Planet Free Will, wrote an article last month that took off on social media. In it she recounted a man’s claims about a politically connected pedophile ring housed at the Comet Ping Pong pizza parlour in the U.S. capital.[...]

“I kind of wanted to put out the information that was there with the statement I’m not accusing anyone of anything, there’s no concrete evidence of anything,” MacWilliams said Wednesday, adding that her readers were very interested in it.

So just a Mom, guys, who wasn't "accusing anyone."

By the way, Planet Free Will was among the websites recently called out by the New York Times for sharing fake news. Which leads me to this list on twitter of "Fake News" sites published by Info Wars which I found highly amusing as it includes BBC News, USA Today, and NPR. Hey, these days I take my humor where I can find it.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:01 PM on December 8, 2016 [9 favorites]

Georgia Says Someone in U.S. Government Tried to Hack State’s Computers Housing Voter Data Unsuccessful intrusion came on Nov. 15 apparently via Department of Homeland Security IP address

I find these snippets hilarious...

- -In his letter, Mr. Kemp asked the department (DHS) to confirm whether a scan attempt was made, who authorized the scan and whether the department was scanning other state systems without authorization.

-- The Department of Homeland Security made a major push in advance of November’s elections to help states secure election systems against possible hacking...

-- The department (DHS) also considered declaring election systems “critical infrastructure,” which would have given the federal government additional authority to protect the systems. DHS didn’t take that step, however, as many states expressed concern...

-- Georgia was one of the states that had declined the federal government’s assistance for election security, citing state sovereignty. “Right now, we’re just demanding answers,” said David Dove, a top aide to the Georgia secretary of state. “My boss, Secretary Kemp, has been a very vocal critic of the Department of Homeland Security declaring election systems critical infrastructure.”
posted by futz at 5:06 PM on December 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

Strong Daddy Smash Snob Enemy Dead! Swamp drain! HIT THE LADY. YEAH. Vote for Strong Daddy he Kill Baddies!

This is honestly one of the most succinct summaries I've seen.
posted by triggerfinger at 5:07 PM on December 8, 2016 [10 favorites]

I'm not accusing Stefanie MacWilliams of abusing her child/ren, but maybe CPS should take a look in on them. It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
posted by rhizome at 5:11 PM on December 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

So just a Mom, guys, who wasn't "accusing anyone."

One weird trick to foment discord and chaos, discovered by a mom!
posted by en forme de poire at 5:14 PM on December 8, 2016 [6 favorites]

I just watched this entire video about a white nationalist being interviewed by the Young Turks channel on his separatist but "not supremacist" views.

(I have not seen it posted here before)

It's appalling, but so is the fact that when the Facebook comments pushed back, the reporter came in to say that America elected people with these views into power, and maybe if we had listened to "what they were offering" earlier we wouldn't have elected Trump. Sorry, what are they offering?

I kind of wish that the article about "what we can do" from the Yale professor that's been posted everywhere had some kind of advice about white people not getting seduced by stuff like this.

I noticed in the first few days after the election that white people were feeling the power, with the quick shift to focus on the white Trump voter and the stifling of minority opinion.

People are going to be talking in coded and blatant ways about how whites are better. It's going to feel really good. For relatively affluent minorities like me, we're going to feel included in that (model minorites, "the good ones") and that will feel good, too.

We must resist it. We must discuss it. It's so important, no matter how many times it gets a "whoa derail" smalltext note here.
posted by zutalors! at 5:15 PM on December 8, 2016 [11 favorites]

Republicans ready to launch wide-ranging probe of Russia, despite Trump’s stance

I'd love to believe this can happen.

I don't.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:16 PM on December 8, 2016 [14 favorites]

It's appalling, but so is the fact that when the Facebook comments pushed back, the reporter came in to say that America elected people with these views into power, and maybe if we had listened to "what they were offering" earlier we wouldn't have elected Trump. Sorry, what are they offering?

I think they wanted us to at least TRY to hate the same people they hate... (Fuck no to that!)
posted by puddledork at 5:25 PM on December 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

wait who's us?
posted by zutalors! at 5:25 PM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Georgia Says Someone in U.S. Government Tried to Hack State’s Computers Housing Voter Data Unsuccessful intrusion came on Nov. 15 apparently via Department of Homeland Security IP address

In other words, someone at DHS portscanned a bunch of Georgia state IPs and they're using this trivial thing to stir up a fight over states' rights or something?
posted by zachlipton at 5:32 PM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

his separatist but "not supremacist" views.

BRB, starting up a White Inferiorist movement.
posted by rhizome at 5:43 PM on December 8, 2016 [7 favorites]

There are tons of "can you imagine if a liberal politician did this..." situations happening right now BUT can you imagine the uproar and probable impeachment attempt if Obama (or insert name here) was as chummy with the Russians? Traitor! Commie sympathizer! Spy! Collaborator! Sleeper Agent!

Somebody please tell me what exactly is a bridge too far for the Repubs?

Take everything that Trump and the republicans have done, said, or condoned and replace the R with an L and there would be endless investigations, calls for impeachment and all sorts of fuckery.

This is insanity. Insanity. I know that all of you are already aware of the above. Just needed to point out the hypocrisy again.
posted by futz at 5:44 PM on December 8, 2016 [17 favorites]

Dang, now that I think for a sec, that's a total open door to an integrationist movement. Tons of 20th century Civil Rights practice in tackling something like that out there. "Separatists are afraid of..."
posted by rhizome at 5:45 PM on December 8, 2016

I'll just leave this here....

USA Today Boeing pledges $1 million for Donald Trump's inaugural events
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:48 PM on December 8, 2016 [22 favorites]

I'd LOVE to see a "can you imagine" article in a major publication. Wouldn't be hard to do, there is so much to choose from. Downside is that it wouldn't sway anyone and would be dismissed as fake news.
posted by futz at 5:49 PM on December 8, 2016

> I remember when she was being cheered on as a progressive light because of her support of Sanders, even with her background. Which is why this is so frustrating to watch now, because in many ways, the left gave her that platform.

Eh, she's kind of always been a squishy Democrat, and especially bad on Islam. Her DW-NOMINATE score in the 113th Congress was 161st out of 204 Democrats. I can understand that if you're trying to hold onto a tough district in West Virginia or Iowa or something, but not in Hawaii's 2nd. (Maizie Hirono, her predecessors, was the 40th most liberal member of the 112th Congress.)

We can definitely do better, and it's awesome to hear from MeFiites in the district who are going to try to do something about it.
posted by tonycpsu at 5:50 PM on December 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

There are tons of "can you imagine if a liberal politician did this..." situations happening right now BUT can you imagine the uproar and probable impeachment attempt if Obama (or insert name here) was as chummy with the Russians?

I literally don't care about that kind of back and forth. I would reply, "can you imagine if your government did this? Because I might have some bad news." Just step away from the battle and put it into general terms where what's happening is affecting us all. Because it is, and it will. Right now people are being pushed to choose sides, so I think maybe the smart money is in not choosing a side and popularizing empathy and pragmatism. A boy can dream.

Today I really started thinking that it's possible we'll find out in the next couple of years that the parties have switched roles. Democrats are all insidery and business and neocon, and Repubs are supposed to be all little-guy now. Of course most people in DC have only ever been in DC and thus are looking out for access and the cocktail weenie circuit (non-journalists do this too). DC is the elite. Retired Generals are elite (thought Don T. is trying to do an end-around there, I think because the military is ostensibly a way out of poverty). Jamie Bleeding-Asshole Dimon is elite.
posted by rhizome at 5:51 PM on December 8, 2016

Boy this story just gets better and better

CNN Carrier to ultimately cut some of jobs Trump saved

The company's deal with President-elect Donald Trump to keep a furnace plant from moving to Mexico also calls for a $16 million investment in the facility.

But that has a big down side for some of the workers in Indianapolis.

Most of that money will be invested in automation said to Greg Hayes, CEO of United Technologies, Carrier's corporate parent. And that automation will replace some of the jobs that were just saved. [...]

The company declined to say how many of the plants 800 remaining jobs could be lost to automation, or when

I wonder if in year 10 of the tax abatement scheme there will be more than a handful of jobs left. Will it have been worth $7 million if 25 jobs are left at the American plant?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:54 PM on December 8, 2016 [26 favorites]

USA Today Boeing pledges $1 million for Donald Trump's inaugural events

Of course they do! Surprised that it is only a million.
posted by futz at 5:54 PM on December 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

re: threats against the union leader today. Stolen from the internet!

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak up for I was not a socalist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak up for I was not a trade unionist. <--you are now here

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak up for I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.

posted by Justinian at 5:56 PM on December 8, 2016 [68 favorites]

o shit bye.
posted by zachlipton at 5:58 PM on December 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

Justinian, I just saw that too.
posted by futz at 6:00 PM on December 8, 2016

Wait, Boeing pledged the Million before the kerfuffle?
posted by futz at 6:12 PM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

and I did not speak up

But yo I did speak up, and to everyone who would listen, online and offline.

Didn't matter.
posted by dis_integration at 6:26 PM on December 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

We are way into General Strike territory.

General Strike is the nominee for Secretary of the Army: he is both a retired general and has a domestic violence conviction, making him an ideal candidate. [/fake]
posted by holgate at 6:28 PM on December 8, 2016 [10 favorites]

Hey, remember Susan Hutchinson, she of the delegate intimidation and antisemitism from Cleveland? Guess who claims she's being considered for a role in the Trump administration?
posted by corb at 6:40 PM on December 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

Didn't matter.

We keep talking. Hillary won the popular vote. There is no mandate. We didn't want him.

Keep talking.
posted by asteria at 6:45 PM on December 8, 2016 [16 favorites]

Wait, Boeing pledged the Million before the kerfuffle?

That's preposterous! That'd be like a presidential candidate bribing a state attorney general to drop a fraud investigation. The American people would never stand for such perfidy!
posted by kirkaracha at 6:45 PM on December 8, 2016 [8 favorites]

At this point I'm expecting to start seeing Michael Brown and Katharine Harris pop up. Maybe Monica Goodling!
posted by rhizome at 6:52 PM on December 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

Of course most people in DC have only ever been in DC and thus are looking out for access and the cocktail weenie circuit (non-journalists do this too). DC is the elite.

It's a pet peeve, but could we not do this DC = government thing please?

There are almost 700k people in this city, and adjusted for an insane cost of living most of us are pretty far from the elite. It seems like you mean "the government," not DC, but even then, most of the people who run the actual government have mortgages and student loans and are sure as fuck not rich.

The elite are the elite. Some of them schmooze here, and some of them even live here, but most people in DC are pretty much like most people in any other city this size, trending a little more diverse and overeducated.
posted by aspersioncast at 7:00 PM on December 8, 2016 [17 favorites]

Hey, has the Pussygrabber-elect sued all of the women that accused him of sexual harassment? Nah.
posted by kirkaracha at 7:00 PM on December 8, 2016

The worst and the dimmest.
posted by notyou at 7:01 PM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

From Josh Marshall, Maybe The Answer Is That He Can't Divest:

"Late this afternoon we got news that Trump will remain as executive producer of The Apprentice, now starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. That is, quite simply, weird. The presidency is time consuming and complicated, even for the lazier presidents. Does Trump really need to do this? Can he do it, just in terms of hours in the day? Of course, it may simply be a title that entitles him to draw a check. But does he need the check that bad?

"The idea that Trump is heavily leveraged and reliant on on-going cash flow to keep his business empire from coming apart and collapsing into bankruptcy was frequently discussed during the campaign. But it's gotten pretty little attention since he was elected.

"...It is certainly plausible that if Trump simply sold off his company in toto, he'd be in debt. Maybe there wouldn't be anything left to put in a blind trust."
posted by Lyme Drop at 7:03 PM on December 8, 2016 [34 favorites]

Tough to know, since he's so secretive about his finances.

Y'know, like he liked to accuse his opponent of being so secretive.
posted by Archelaus at 7:10 PM on December 8, 2016

What's exhausting, and terrifying, is that Barack Obama is still the president right now
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:14 PM on December 8, 2016 [12 favorites]

Ben Stein They’ve Gone Insane

The real problem is not Trump. The problem is the big, spoiled, sulking babies of the left who cannot believe that America made up its own mind instead of following their orders. They are the control freaks, not Trump.

Look, he wasn’t my first choice either. But he’s the guy now. Who does it help to scream and fuss and sulk, at this point? He’s here. He’s not queer. He won. You’ll have plenty of other chances to get even.

What a dick. I know that this is his schtick but it is so toxic. Also, it is Oh Hell No disingenuous.
posted by futz at 7:18 PM on December 8, 2016 [23 favorites]

Four years from now ... many states that Hillary almost won will be trending in the blue direction demographically.

Assuming the demographic splits don't change between now and then.

Remember, in 2000, the majority of Muslims were Republican.

Did the WWC in Wisconsin knowing they were really voting for Ted Cruz with a side of crazy?

They voted for Scott fucking Walker. Twice.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 7:19 PM on December 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

Another day, another Flynn conspiracy theory investigated, Michael Flynn once claimed Arabic signs on southern border guide 'radicalized Muslims' into US:

"I know from my friends in the Border Patrol in CBP that there are countries -- radical Islamist countries, state-sponsored -- that are cutting deals with Mexican drug cartels for some of what they call the 'lanes of entry' into our country," Flynn said in an interview with Breitbart News on SiriusXM radio. "And I have personally seen the photos of the signage along those paths that are in Arabic. They're like way points along that path as you come in. Primarily, in this case the one that I saw was in Texas and it's literally, it's like signs, that say, in Arabic, 'this way, move to this point.' It's unbelievable."

"This rise of Muslims and radicalized Muslims coming into our country illegally is something that we should pay very, very close attention to," he added.

Nobody's come up with any evidence of such signs. I don't even have any reason to believe that any alleged would-be terrorists coming through the Southern border wouldn't speak English.
posted by zachlipton at 7:19 PM on December 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

What's exhausting, and terrifying, is that Barack Obama is still the president right now

Will this be the biggest drop-off from great president to shit president? Worse than Lincoln -> Johnson? Worse than Clinton -> Bush?
posted by kirkaracha at 7:20 PM on December 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

Re: the picketing bill, can we use this to sue people who protest outside of abortion clinics?

I'm certain the picketers are trying to prevent customers from using abortion clinics.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 7:23 PM on December 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

Worse than Kennedy -> thing the cat left on my rug.
posted by uosuaq at 7:24 PM on December 8, 2016

General Strike is the nominee for Secretary of the Army: he is both a retired general and has a domestic violence conviction, making him an ideal candidate.

That was fake, but Trump's pick for Secretary of Labor was accused of domestic abuse by his first wife in the mid 1980s. I seem to remember one of the presidential candidates making a big deal about '80s assault charges during the campaign.
posted by kirkaracha at 7:25 PM on December 8, 2016

Trump defends wealthy Cabinet: 'I want people that made a fortune'

NBC News reported on Wednesday that the nascent administration already has a combined wealth of $14.5 billion.

“These people are giving up fortunes of income in order to make a dollar a year, and they’re so proud to do it," Trump said.

Fork me, I'm done.
posted by futz at 7:35 PM on December 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

Donald Trump acknowledged his recent title as Time magazine’s “Person of the year” but during his rally in Iowa on Thursday night but appeared to jab at the magazine for being “politically correct” with the name.

“They used to call it ‘Man of the Year’ but they can’t do that anymore — they want to be politically correct, that’s OK," he said.
posted by futz at 7:39 PM on December 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

Even the names of the four Ministries by which we are governed exhibit a sort of impudence in their deliberate reversal of the facts. The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy; they are deliberate exercises in doublethink. For it is only by reconciling contradictions that power can be retained indefinitely.
posted by kirkaracha at 7:41 PM on December 8, 2016 [13 favorites]

“These people are giving up fortunes of income in order to make a dollar a year, and they’re so proud to do it," Trump said.

Oh, THEY ARE, ARE THEY? Have you told them? Where will they be donating their fortunes to? What barriers are you putting in place to keep them from making any income while in the Cabinet?

Seriously, I know this is meant to confuse people who rely on salaries but billionaires DON'T. Drawing a salary is not how these people make money, so if they're giving up their income sources they must be divesting all their investments, right?
posted by threeturtles at 7:43 PM on December 8, 2016 [23 favorites]

They voted for Scott fucking Walker. Twice.

Three times. *sob*
posted by drezdn at 7:44 PM on December 8, 2016 [10 favorites]

Ha. Barriers. You're a funny man, turtles.

Barriers to prevent malfeasance are for -peasants-, not wealthy white people!
posted by Archelaus at 7:45 PM on December 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

(I honestly can't tell if I'm joking)
posted by Archelaus at 7:45 PM on December 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

'They used to call it "Man of the Year" but they can’t do that anymore — they want to be politically correct, that’s OK,' he said.

@realDonaldTrump

Our wonderful future V.P. Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing. This should not happen!

posted by kirkaracha at 7:59 PM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Just to be clear, not a man. :)
posted by threeturtles at 8:01 PM on December 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

Donald Trump acknowledged his recent title as Time magazine’s “Person of the year” but during his rally in Iowa on Thursday night but appeared to jab at the magazine for being “politically correct” with the name.

Trump called the people of Iowa stupid and not only did my fellow Iowans overwhelmingly vote for him, my representatives will back him all the way and my governor is up for taking a post as his diplomat to China.

Living in Iowa is like living inside of Chris Christie.
posted by jason_steakums at 8:05 PM on December 8, 2016 [31 favorites]

Trump is going to make the whole country his Chris Christie.
posted by rhizome at 8:10 PM on December 8, 2016 [6 favorites]

threeturtles Seriously, I know this is meant to confuse people

Yup, it was meant to confuse and manipulate. It all is, now.

I am not a fan of the Late Show when Colbert repeats Trump's false claims, like the 4 billion number or accepting the Carrier deal on face value. The "fake news" segment was good, insofar as to WTFCYD?

Fake sites posting "Fake Sites Listcicles" that include the BBC, USA Today, and NPR as fake news sites (is an well worn tactic) is .. just terribly frustrating.
posted by porpoise at 8:18 PM on December 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

Former Clinton staffer launches new anti-Trump site: corrupt.af

Matt Ortega, who served as Clinton’s digital director for communications until he left the campaign in June, told POLITICO that he launched the site “completely on my own and out of my own pocket.”

Unofficially, in the abbreviated argot of texting and online chatting, “af” stands for “as fuck.”

The bare-bones site is topped by a full-bleed photo of the president-elect, along with the words, “Donald Trump is corrupt AF.”

(Real lol)
posted by futz at 8:58 PM on December 8, 2016 [25 favorites]

Living in Iowa is like living inside of Chris Christie.

too dark to read?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:04 PM on December 8, 2016 [14 favorites]

Egg still doing better than most elected Dems.

@Bencjacobs:
Donald Trump is now taking shots at @Evan_McMullin as "this guy, this unknown person."

@Evan_McMullin:
.@realDonaldTrump, seems you're growing obsessed with a guy whose name you still don't have courage to say. Say it, Donald. You can do it.
posted by chris24 at 9:04 PM on December 8, 2016 [32 favorites]

Or rather [real AF]
posted by futz at 9:04 PM on December 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

Of course most people in DC have only ever been in DC and thus are looking out for access and the cocktail weenie circuit (non-journalists do this too). DC is the elite.

It's a pet peeve, but could we not do this DC = government thing please?

And "DC" meaning the corporate lobbying DC is not "the government" either. There's the swamp, if you like, of permanent fixers, lobbyists, celebrity journalists, revolving door types, ex-congressmen and highly paid lawyers. Then there's career public servants. Not the same thing.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:33 PM on December 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

Living in Iowa is like living inside of Chris Christie.

delicious pie everywhere you look?
posted by entropicamericana at 9:41 PM on December 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

Speaking of Chris Christie: Christie is out as Republican Party chairman.

The humiliation of Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey just keeps coming: He has been told he will not be named to lead the Republican National Committee, according to several people briefed on the discussions in Mr. Trump’s transition.
...
Oh, and on Wednesday, Mr. Christie got this news: At 19 percent, his job approval rating is the lowest of any governor in any state in more than 20 years.

posted by zachlipton at 9:43 PM on December 8, 2016 [12 favorites]

Reek, reek, it rhymes with he's an asshole who deserves it all.
posted by Justinian at 9:49 PM on December 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

There's the swamp, if you like, of permanent fixers, lobbyists, celebrity journalists, revolving door types, ex-congressmen and highly paid lawyers.

And they live in places like McLean and Great Falls in VA, not DC itself.
posted by holgate at 9:52 PM on December 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

I can just see Chris Christie up late at night anxiously hovering his finger over Egg's number in his phone only to chicken out and call up some third-stringer from the Bush years who knows a guy who knows a guy to try and get another in with Trump. Christie's probably good to keep an eye on, I have a feeling if you see him trying to worm his way into any nascent Republican anti-Trump faction it'll be a good indicator that it has potential. And they'll probably kick him out, too.
posted by jason_steakums at 10:01 PM on December 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

At 19 percent, his job approval rating is the lowest of any governor in any state in more than 20 years.

Wow, Christie sinks lower than Brownback, who's at 23 percent now. And Brownback is a deeply loathed motherfucker around these parts.

corrupt.af

I hope he'll keep that site running. I like it. So far, looks like it's a good one-stop summary of Donald's recent and frequent acts of corruption. Something which will be good for sharing with less Trump-skeptical relatives.
posted by honestcoyote at 10:15 PM on December 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

Christie is the one good thing 2016's given us in politics. NEVER FORGET.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:28 PM on December 8, 2016

Christie is the one good thing 2016's given us in politics.

McCrory was defeated, even though Trump took NC by a hefty margin. Catherine Cortez Masto was elected, becoming the first female latinx Senator. Let's celebrate the few real wins and learn from them rather than dwelling on schadenfreude. One awful person doing awful things to another awful person is not a win.
posted by Candleman at 10:38 PM on December 8, 2016 [10 favorites]

According to The Guardian, the National Park Service, on behalf of the Presidential Inauguration Committee, has blocked access to the landmark by filing a “massive omnibus blocking permit.” This will bar protesters from most of the National Mall, Pennsylvania Avenue, the Washington Monument, and of course, the Lincoln Memorial for days and weeks before, during, and after the inauguration, which will take place on Jan. 20, 2017.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 10:46 PM on December 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

Let's celebrate the few real wins and learn from them rather than dwelling on schadenfreude. One awful person doing awful things to another awful person is not a win.

If schadenfreude's wrong I don't wanna be right.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:51 PM on December 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

Women's March on Washington won't have access to Lincoln Memorial

For the thousands hoping to echo the civil rights and anti-Vietnam rallies at Lincoln Memorial by joining the women’s march on Washington the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration: time to readjust your expectations.

The Women’s March won’t be held at the Lincoln Memorial.
That’s because the National Park Service, on behalf of the Presidential Inauguration Committee, filed documents securing large swaths of the national mall and Pennsylvania Avenue, the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial for the inauguration festivities. None of these spots will be open for protesters.

The NPS filed a “massive omnibus blocking permit” for many of Washington DC’s most famous political locations for days and weeks before and after the inauguration on 20 January, said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a constitutional rights litigator and the executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund.

Previously, Verheyden-Hilliard has led court battles for protest access on inauguration day itself.

But banning access to public land for protesters days after the inauguration is “extremely unique”, she said in a press conference held by the Answer [Act Now to Stop War and End Racism] Coalition.

posted by futz at 11:06 PM on December 8, 2016 [8 favorites]

According to The Guardian, the National Park Service, on behalf of the Presidential Inauguration Committee, has blocked access to the landmark by filing a “massive omnibus blocking permit.” This will bar protesters from most of the National Mall, Pennsylvania Avenue, the Washington Monument, and of course, the Lincoln Memorial for days and weeks before, during, and after the inauguration, which will take place on Jan. 20, 2017.

TBH, after the massive protests at GWB's first inauguration were totally and completely ignored by the media, we may need to come up with some other sort of strategy anyway. I don't know what that would look like though.

Protests get no airtime, or they cover the 1% of people who only showed up to cause trouble.

Trump wants to provoke us, so we can't go into reactive mode, or he wins.

Being the adults in the room doesn't make for good TV. (On the other hand, at least one of the parties has to be the adults and the GOP sure as shit isn't interested right now, so it's mandatory but not necessarily helpful. Maybe it gets helpful as people tire of Trump's BS?)

I almost feel like we need to find some professor who specializes in studying reality shows to tell us what makes reality shows lose their audience, and then try to cultivate those conditions.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 11:09 PM on December 8, 2016 [17 favorites]

Oops. Sorry OverlappingElvis. Mods, please delete my comment.
posted by futz at 11:11 PM on December 8, 2016

If schadenfreude's wrong I don't wanna be right.

Really? I'd direct you to /r/the_donald if you want bathe in schadenfreude.

People need to see there are still consequences and Christie can suffer them for my amusement.

There aren't consequences. There's Trump's random whim, which is far more dangerous. People as bad or worse than Christie are being put into power and it's not any kind of justice, it's whatever happens to please Trump at the given moment.
posted by Candleman at 11:13 PM on December 8, 2016 [6 favorites]

People as bad or worse than Christie are being put into power and it's not any kind of justice, it's whatever happens to please Trump at the given moment.

It's this bizarre situation where, on the one hand, we have Cabinet nominees who know exactly what particular evils they want to promote, and a President-Elect who operates on total whim, based on who might have offended him in the media twenty minutes before.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 11:41 PM on December 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

We are starting to see some institutional push back. So far Trump has been in limbo as P-E. Total freedom. No actual power and no consequences. Today McCain and Graham began to press on the Russia influence on the election front. Small potatoes, but if you believe in the system, and the cynicism at its core (every man will press his interest), those are positive signs.
posted by notyou at 12:27 AM on December 9, 2016 [11 favorites]

This is germane to the discussion of the white working class male voter, because here is a guy who is vehemently anti-Trump, and eloquent about it: Self-Described "White Trash Hillbilly" Nails Exactly What's Wrong with America.

This guy is the best! I want to buy him a Christmas present. Right now I need to sleep, but when I wake up, I'm going to try to find him and think of what he needs. Ideas are welcome. Support for him is vital.
posted by mumimor at 1:03 AM on December 9, 2016 [8 favorites]

Here's an analysis of the twitter bubbles on both sides from MIT.
posted by stonepharisee at 2:24 AM on December 9, 2016 [3 favorites]

Of course, now the fascists have been partially dumped from twitter, they have built their own thoroughly disconnected silo in gab.ai. Don't for the love of God look in there. It is ghastly.
posted by stonepharisee at 3:04 AM on December 9, 2016

Yeah, I knew that Trump was going to fuck with the women's march in some way. Well, we'll still be there.
posted by angrycat at 3:19 AM on December 9, 2016

Can the ACLU do anything about the NPS' decision?
posted by pxe2000 at 3:27 AM on December 9, 2016 [4 favorites]

So this means the protests get pushed off NPS land and are the responsibility of DC police, right?

Does any law enforcement have specifically jurisdiction over inauguration protests, or if it's off NPS land, it becomes a DC PD issue?

I also wonder if this would exacerbate security threats.
posted by angrycat at 4:34 AM on December 9, 2016

I almost feel like we need to find some professor who specializes in studying reality shows to tell us what makes reality shows lose their audience, and then try to cultivate those conditions.

Try this professor:

"Politicization is migrating to the right side of the political spectrum where anti-establishment parties are getting better and better at organising discontented citizens dependent upon public services and insisting on political protection from international markets... But one thing [the citizens] do know is that conventional politics has totally written them off."

Wolfgang Streeck in the Guardian today. As far as I can tell he contends that capitalism is set to collapse from within like a sort of rotten fruit analogy, much like the Soviet Union/Berlin Wall did.
posted by Coda Tronca at 4:37 AM on December 9, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'll just leave this here....

USA Today Boeing pledges $1 million for Donald Trump's inaugural events

To us, this is a scandal.

To a lot of the people who voted for him, this is *exactly* what they think "tough deal-making" looks like.

The message this sends to a big chunk of the electorate is that Trump's gonna do to ISIS/libruls and elites/the RINOs/China and Mexico/"'those people" what he did to Boeing, and then some!
posted by kewb at 4:37 AM on December 9, 2016 [8 favorites]

WaPo: Donald Trump says he is not bothered by comparisons to Hitler

Trump then rattled off the numbers of some of the presidential proclamations Roosevelt issued "having to do with alien Germans, alien Italians, alien Japanese."

"They went through a whole list of things -- they couldn't go five miles from their homes, they weren't allowed to use radios, flashlights," Trump said. "Take a look at what FDR did many years ago, and he's one of the most highly respected presidents... They named highways after him."

Stephanopoulos responded: "You want to bring back policies like that?"

After a pause, Trump responded: "No, I don't to bring it back, George. At all. I don't like doing it at all. It's a temporary measure until our representatives, many of whom are grossly incompetent, until our representatives can figure out what's going on."
posted by EarBucket at 5:30 AM on December 9, 2016 [6 favorites]

Josh Marshall: Something Disturbing About Tulsi Gabbard (emphasis in original)

The issue of civilian control of the military and wariness of military or ex-military influence over the civilian government isn't some new-fangled idea from coastal cosmopolitan elites. It's deeply rooted in the American political tradition. Indeed it was even more potent earlier in the country's history. That's why ex-generals are actually barred from serving as Secretary of Defense for seven years. Mattis needs a specific waiver. Indeed, the importance of military subordination to civilian government and the penumbra of concerns like the one we're discussing here are deeply inculcated in the US military's officer corps itself - for obvious reasons.

There's no law against what Trump is doing (except kinda with the Sec Def choice). But it's an issue. It's a very legitimate criticism, whether there might be some extenuating or unique reasons for doing it in this case.

The real kicker in my mind comes at the end when Gabbard says that these men are "far more deeply personally committed to upholding and protecting our democracy than their critics." The suggestion here is not about the particular individuals, who I believe are deeply committed to America and its democratic institutions. But what Gabbard is suggesting here is that as generals they are more committed than civilians.

That is the kernel of an idea that has destroyed many democracies, the idea that career military officers are simply better, more patriotic, more efficient than civilians. That is a deeply dangerous idea that needs to be snuffed out whenever it raises up its head. It is completely at odds with the entire American tradition.

It's something I'd expect to hear from some militarist Fox News yahoo. Not from an elected members of the House, certainly not from a Democratic member of the House.

posted by zombieflanders at 5:43 AM on December 9, 2016 [21 favorites]

WaPo: Donald Trump says he is not bothered by comparisons to Hitler

Note that's from December 8, 2015, of course...
posted by XMLicious at 5:43 AM on December 9, 2016

Note that's from December 8, 2015, of course...

Huh? It says 2016, and it's talking about Trump as President-Elect.
posted by zombieflanders at 5:46 AM on December 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

TBH, after the massive protests at GWB's first inauguration were totally and completely ignored by the media, we may need to come up with some other sort of strategy anyway. I don't know what that would look like though.

Protests get no airtime, or they cover the 1% of people who only showed up to cause trouble.

It doesn't in fact matter what the efficacy of said protests would be. A massive omnibus blocking permit for weeks before and after the inauguration is a massive fuck you to the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

I thought things were bad during bush 2 when they started setting up 'free speech zones', but this is orders of magnitude worse. Crushing of dissent is one of the steps involved in realizing a neo-populist autocratic regime and if that's how they're starting out of the gate than I am terrified of what is to come in the next 4 years, especially if something 'bad' happens, cf. The Reichstag Fire.
posted by localhuman at 5:46 AM on December 9, 2016 [36 favorites]

Huh? It says 2016, and it's talking about Trump as President-Elect.

Sorry, simultaneous posting, I was responding to EarBucket.
posted by XMLicious at 5:48 AM on December 9, 2016

Are there organized groups helping fund people's transport costs (or arrange busses etc) for the Women's March?
posted by rmd1023 at 5:50 AM on December 9, 2016

Note that's from December 8, 2015, of course...

Ah, my bad. Sorry!
posted by EarBucket at 5:50 AM on December 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

‘Trump TV’ Will Participate In White House Press Briefings

Right Side Broadcasting Network’s (RSBN) announcement that they will be participating in White House press briefings is raising new questions about whether President-elect Donald Trump intends to bypass traditional media as President and create a press corps more favorable to his administration.

During their live coverage of President-elect Donald Trump’s “Thank You” rally in North Carolina on December 6, the show’s host Joe Seales announced that the network is “going to become a 24-hour network very soon.” Seales also said the network will “be in the White House” and “be at the press briefings” during the Trump administration [...]The announcement also comes as right-wing media figures are urging Trump to exclude mainstream news outlets from press briefings. Fox host Sean Hannity has repeatedly questioned why journalists from CNN, NBC, Politico, and the New York Times “have a seat in the White House press room,” claimed “it’s time to reevaluate the press and maybe change the traditional relationship with the press and the White House,”

This is truly a disturbing development. We knew it was coming but watching the future occupiers of the White House wall themselves off from the country and control access to information by throttling all unfavorable viewpoints should be alarming to all Americans. DJT cannot be allowed to rule over this Democracy like he is the second coming of Louis the XIV.


A massive omnibus blocking permit for weeks before and after the inauguration is a massive fuck you to the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

localhuman that was exactly my feeling when I read the news. How is this even possible? Why is it allowed? Have the people no recourse? Will DJT outlaw all protesting while he occupies the White House by blocking permission to assemble anywhere in Washington DC? Seriously, he is already acting like a dictator.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:52 AM on December 9, 2016 [41 favorites]

I already have plans to go to the Women's March and I feel like, yeah, this is just one more reason why I need some fucking leadership here. Some politician or activist or something needs to stand up and say, this is the level of civil disobedience we're planning, and this is how you can be a cog in that machine. I don't want to show up there feeling confused and pushed aside and stifled, I want to be one tiny piece of something that's organized. Who is it, you guys? Who is the person who is going to stand up and lead us through these next four years? Who is it going to be?
posted by pretentious illiterate at 6:06 AM on December 9, 2016 [7 favorites]

Fox host Sean Hannity has repeatedly questioned why journalists from CNN, NBC, Politico, and the New York Times “have a seat in the White House press room...

But if media outlets aren't nice to Republicans, they might lose access, right?
/sarcasm
posted by C'est la D.C. at 6:09 AM on December 9, 2016 [5 favorites]

It's a temporary measure until our representatives, many of whom are grossly incompetent, until our representatives can figure out what's going on.

Thanks, my bones weren't already chilled enough on this Midwestern December morning...
posted by Rykey at 6:10 AM on December 9, 2016 [3 favorites]

Every time I read an in-depth look into one of DJT's cabinet appointments I come to the conclusion that this person is the worst possible choice, no, wait-- I thought that guy was bad but THIS person. Case in point, I thought Pazder was bad but:

WaPo A sobering look at what Betsy DeVos did to education in Michigan — and what she might do as secretary of education

President-elect Donald Trump has made a number of controversial cabinet nominations already. But none seems more inappropriate, or more contrary to reason, than his choice of DeVos to lead the Department of Education.

DeVos isn’t an educator, or an education leader. She’s not an expert in pedagogy or curriculum or school governance. In fact, she has no relevant credentials or experience for a job setting standards and guiding dollars for the nation’s public schools.

She is, in essence, a lobbyist — someone who has used her extraordinary wealth to influence the conversation about education reform, and to bend that conversation to her ideological convictions despite the dearth of evidence supporting them.

If you are interested in the topic of Federal vouchers for the poorest students, this week's episode of The Weeds, Trump's Surprisingly Ambitious Education Agenda, is cohosted by Libby Nelson who has a great deal of knowledge about the effects of charter schools and vouchers on k-12 education.

It is not all bad news. Most studies have found that areas with limited numbers of charter schools have little impact on test scores but the parents are happier with the offer of more choices. However, once charter schools are allowed to saturate the market the effects are markedly different and student test scores plummet. Plus Nelson looks ahead to a time when the poorest students are allowed a choice via. federal and state vouchers but the rest of the low- and middle- income students are left in impoverished public schools. This could lead to greater dissatisfaction with public schools and spell the end of public education as we know it.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:18 AM on December 9, 2016 [4 favorites]

> Women's March on Washington won't have access to Lincoln Memorial

Erik Loomis, LGM: How Fascism Rises

Michigan Republicans are attempting to make protest illegal.

Expect this on the national agenda for Republicans in the next year. In the pre-New Deal era, conservatives relied upon injunctions and anti-protest laws to sweep away pesky opposition to their total control over the state. As the New Gilded Age sets in, it’s hardly surprising that conservatives would use similar tools to a century ago.

posted by tonycpsu at 6:20 AM on December 9, 2016 [10 favorites]

Michigan Republicans are attempting to make protest illegal.

Expect this on the national agenda for Republicans in the next year. In the pre-New Deal era, conservatives relied upon injunctions and anti-protest la

once we started establishing "free speech zones" it was just a matter of time
posted by entropicamericana at 6:25 AM on December 9, 2016 [23 favorites]

This is truly a disturbing development. We knew it was coming but watching the future occupiers of the White House wall themselves off from the country and control access to information by throttling all unfavorable viewpoints should be alarming to all Americans. DJT cannot be allowed to rule over this Democracy like he is the second coming of Louis the XIV.

Am I being too optimistic in thinking that this might be a good thing? Trump creates a clear channel of information he wants to be "Official", motivating other news outlets to report an alternative viewpoint, doing factual reporting, rather than regurgitating and rationalizing Trump's message/lies?
posted by papercake at 6:26 AM on December 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

Bloomberg Trump Team’s Memo Hints at Broad Shake-Up of U.S. Energy Policy

The transition team has asked the agency to list employees and contractors who attended United Nations climate meetings, along with those who helped develop the Obama administration’s social cost of carbon metrics, used to estimate and justify the climate benefits of new rules. The advisers are also seeking information on agency loan programs, research activities and the basis for its statistics, according to a five-page internal document circulated by the Energy Department on Wednesday. The document lays out 65 questions from the Trump transition team, sources within the agency said.

They are asking for a list of employees who did a certain thing? That is cause for alarm.

Trump advisers have been weighing how to revive a long-stalled plan to stash radioactive waste at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. In the document, they ask if there are any statutory restrictions to restarting that project or reinvigorating an Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management that was responsible for disposing of spent nuclear material.

Well of course they have. If there are any terrible Republican hobby horses that have been prevented or circumvented in the past 50 years, DJT's transition team is going to find them and turn them into policy.

We need to break Trump's team of the idea that we will play by the rules.

If you don't follow him, Rev. Dr. Barber is the master of peaceful protest and he does not stop just because they continue to arrest him and put him in jail. He is fearless that way.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:33 AM on December 9, 2016 [24 favorites]

Papercake: aside from the immediate damage to a free press such a move would mean, typically what follows partial control over information and dissent is near-total control (de facto or otherwise), complete with actual punishment for violations.
posted by Rykey at 6:36 AM on December 9, 2016

Am I being too optimistic in thinking that this might be a good thing?

I don't think it's a good thing, but this very bad thing could motivate the media to get their head out of their ass, yes. Or, knowing the spineless shitty media, it motivates them to suck up to Trump and makes things worse.
posted by chris24 at 6:37 AM on December 9, 2016 [5 favorites]

Am I being too optimistic in thinking that this might be a good thing?

Yeah, expecting the cable networks and newspapers to accept being shut out from direct access to Trump when their revenue depends on readership/viewers who will, they'll claim, demand such a thing is tough to imagine. It seems more likely a few will cave in and follow Trump's lead and any that don't will get worse than simply shut out after a while.
posted by gusottertrout at 6:39 AM on December 9, 2016 [5 favorites]

I don't think it's a good thing, but this very bad thing could motivate the media to get their head out of their ass, yes.

That's a better way of saying what I was thinking. I know that it's not, on the whole a "Good Thing" for all the reasons people are bringing up, but thinking some good might come from it.
posted by papercake at 6:41 AM on December 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

If not given a seat at table, I think they will rather beg for crumbs than bite their lord.
posted by tivalasvegas at 6:45 AM on December 9, 2016 [15 favorites]

Have my husband and I been rewatching The Tudors?

Yes, why do you ask?
posted by tivalasvegas at 6:48 AM on December 9, 2016 [10 favorites]

I want to be one tiny piece of something that's organized.

Then help organize it. Waiting for a strong leader to tell you what to do is a mug's game.

The Million Woman March has facebook page, and the organizers are named Tamika D. Mallory, Carmen Perez, and Linda Sarsour.
posted by aspersioncast at 6:54 AM on December 9, 2016 [9 favorites]

I'm shocked Jeff Gannon hasn't received a media position with the administration yet.
posted by drezdn at 6:58 AM on December 9, 2016 [4 favorites]

The other thing I've found shocking is how many of general predictions for what the Trump presidency would be like have already come try...

For example, "Trump will treat the presidency like a part time job." gets fulfilled by his retention of the executive producer work on "The Apprentice."
posted by drezdn at 7:01 AM on December 9, 2016 [3 favorites]

At this point I wouldn't be surprised if Ganon were named Secretary of Triforce Protection.
posted by uncleozzy at 7:01 AM on December 9, 2016 [15 favorites]

Executive Producers don't actually do anything, or much of anything. That's really the least of my concerns at this point.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:02 AM on December 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

But there will be so many advertisers to boycott and/or vandalize.
posted by uncleozzy at 7:04 AM on December 9, 2016

They are asking for a list of employees who did a certain thing? That is cause for alarm.

Sounds like a good old-fashioned purge in the offing. Oh how fun! I'm experiencing incredulity-and-horror fatigue at this point. It just keeps coming and coming with every new link and tweet, and there's not even time to catch one's breath before another wave smacks you in the head. And they haven't even DONE anything or gotten any real POWER yet.

It's like a whole collection of absurd silent-movie-era villain caricatures sit around all day in Trump Tower twirling their collective mustache and having a contest to brainstorm the most outlandish outsized possible ways to make the world more awful and hurt the greatest number of people (and animals, and plants).
posted by FelliniBlank at 7:05 AM on December 9, 2016 [26 favorites]

They're going to purge everyone who believes climate change is real and end every program that could be used to measure it.

At this point Republicans are the greatest threat to continued human existence in history.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:11 AM on December 9, 2016 [51 favorites]

According to The Guardian, the National Park Service, on behalf of the Presidential Inauguration Committee, has blocked access to the landmark by filing a “massive omnibus blocking permit.” This will bar protesters from most of the National Mall, Pennsylvania Avenue, the Washington Monument, and of course, the Lincoln Memorial for days and weeks before, during, and after the inauguration, which will take place on Jan. 20, 2017.

So go anyway and get arrested.

What? You thought civil disobedience was going to be easy?
posted by indubitable at 7:12 AM on December 9, 2016 [30 favorites]

So, once helping poors (that would be us non-billionaires) becomes illegal, what do we do in times of natural disaster? I assume FEMA will be instructed to steal valuables and kill the weak - how do we, say, get fresh water going again?

Seriously asking.
posted by petebest at 7:12 AM on December 9, 2016 [3 favorites]

I mean, I guess it's possible that once they come up against the byzantine, glurging, momentum-sucking quagmire of bureaucracy and the legislative branch (even one that's nominally on their side), that could substantially thwart them as it does most administrations, but still.
posted by FelliniBlank at 7:13 AM on December 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm shocked Jeff Gannon hasn't received a media position with the administration yet.

Well the keyword there is "yet" but remember that unlike Karl Rove, Steve Bannon is a straight alcoholic.
posted by petebest at 7:15 AM on December 9, 2016

how do we, say, get fresh water going again?

Natural gas generator hooked into the mains and desal equipment.
posted by Talez at 7:16 AM on December 9, 2016

Self-Described 'White Trash Hillbilly' Nails Exactly What's Wrong with America.

More from the same interview.
posted by kirkaracha at 7:17 AM on December 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

None of the inauguration protests have their proper permits yet. Here’s why.
posted by hydropsyche at 7:18 AM on December 9, 2016 [3 favorites]

I mean, I guess it's possible that once they come up against the byzantine, glurging, momentum-sucking quagmire of bureaucracy and the legislative branch (even one that's nominally on their side), that could substantially thwart them as it does most administrations, but still.

Rule #3: Institutions will not save you.
posted by indubitable at 7:24 AM on December 9, 2016 [15 favorites]

I really hope there is some way to effectively organize dissent during the inauguration. There needs to be booing. There needs to be chants of "fuck Donald Trump" in the background even if faintly in the distance. Watching the dude get sworn in like any other president to plain old cheers and polite applause will seriously make me ill.
posted by windbox at 7:25 AM on December 9, 2016 [4 favorites]

So go anyway and get arrested.

What? You thought civil disobedience was going to be easy?

Yeah, um, not every protest has to be civil disobedience. 1st Amendment, free speech, peaceable assembly, petitioning the govt. for a redress of grievances, etc. All legal and non-arrestable. So far.

I, for one, am not in a position where I can afford to get arrested, pay bail and attorneys fees and etc. That shouldn't stop me from being able to exercise my right to free speech.
posted by Cookiebastard at 7:30 AM on December 9, 2016 [38 favorites]

"Am I being too optimistic in thinking that this might be a good thing? Trump creates a clear channel of information he wants to be "Official", motivating other news outlets to report an alternative viewpoint, doing factual reporting, rather than regurgitating and rationalizing Trump's message/lies?"

Yes, too optimistic. They're going to use Putin's playbook which is a combination of gish-gallop, MS-FUD and the Tyson Zone. No really, they're just going to put so much shit out there that any agreement on objective truth is impossible. The conscientious will be distracted trying to set the record straight, everyone else will just give up on knowing WTF is going on and that man in the Whitehouse will go on to do any damn thing he pleases.
posted by klarck at 7:31 AM on December 9, 2016 [10 favorites]

Rule #3: Institutions will not save you.

I mean, yes, don't rest on your laurels assuming the bureaucracy will save you.

But god damn it if we aren't going to try.
posted by C'est la D.C. at 7:34 AM on December 9, 2016 [12 favorites]

None of the inauguration protests have their proper permits yet.

I know this has been this way for a while, but: fuck protest permits
posted by corb at 7:38 AM on December 9, 2016 [14 favorites]

fuck protest permits

I mean, in general, I get your point, but from the standpoint of [fair] crowd control, creating traffic routes, etc., they are really important.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:39 AM on December 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

From Politico: Obama orders a full review of election-related hacking. He wants the report by Jan 20.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:42 AM on December 9, 2016 [27 favorites]

Well......OK. But Trump better not try to quarter any troops in my house!
posted by thelonius at 7:44 AM on December 9, 2016 [8 favorites]

Yeah, but they mostly seem to me like they are used to minimize the disruption which is the point of protest. It's a way of making protests more convenient for the state, which runs counter to the purpose, in my opinion. If they know you're going to be at one entrance, they run everyone out the other one so no one has to see you, etc. In Cleveland I couldn't even see the protests from the convention.
posted by corb at 7:44 AM on December 9, 2016 [9 favorites]

But Trump better not try to quarter any troops in my house!

"With our new Trump Patriot Ambassador Initiative, you too will do your part to secure safety and security within your own local neighborhood."
posted by Servo5678 at 7:45 AM on December 9, 2016 [9 favorites]

I, for one, am not in a position where I can afford to get arrested, pay bail and attorneys fees and etc. That shouldn't stop me from being able to exercise my right to free speech.

So make a Twitter account and go nuts. You can freeze peach over there all day and nobody will bother you about it.
posted by indubitable at 7:46 AM on December 9, 2016

Trump's approval rating is lower than previous incoming presidents.

That [Trump's] 41% approval rating is lower than President Barack Obama's 72% in December 2008 and President George W. Bush's 50% in January 2001 -- in the wake of a disputed election. It's also lower than President Bill Clinton's 62% in January 1993 and President George H.W. Bush's 65% in March 1989.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 7:48 AM on December 9, 2016 [3 favorites]

BREAKING: President-elect Trump picks Goldman Sachs president & COO Gary Cohn to be National Economic Council Director - @NBCNews
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:49 AM on December 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

Trump creates a clear channel of information he wants to be "Official", motivating other news outlets to report an alternative viewpoint, doing factual reporting, rather than regurgitating and rationalizing Trump's message/lies?

Look to Putin's Russia to see what happens to media that doesn't toe the Trumpnik line. Cutting off "access" is just the start.
posted by dirigibleman at 7:50 AM on December 9, 2016 [5 favorites]

My permanent expression is pretty much this now.
posted by Fleebnork at 7:52 AM on December 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

Mine is more this.
posted by asteria at 7:54 AM on December 9, 2016 [6 favorites]

Mine's this.
Facebook won't let me set it as my permanent mood emoji.
posted by kirkaracha at 7:55 AM on December 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

@jonnysun: me at the begining of 2016 vs me at the end of 2016
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:58 AM on December 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

I mean, yes, don't rest on your laurels assuming the bureaucracy will save you.

But god damn it if we aren't going to try.

posted by C'est la D.C.

Best of luck to you. It sounds as though your fellow civil servants are girding up for the fight: “There was a knee-jerk reaction of: I want nothing to do with this administration. But now it’s like, oh, no no no! We can’t have anyone do that because then there will be only crazy people left! [...] I’m not going to run. I’m going to stay, and I’m going to stay in the State Department.”
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:01 AM on December 9, 2016 [10 favorites]

So make a Twitter account and go nuts. You can freeze peach over there all day and nobody will bother you about it.

Nah. Twitter bores me to tears. I'll keep organizing, coalition-building, and training people in advocacy for free, as I've done for years. It's hard work, but we've killed some bad bills, got some good ones passed, and made a difference.

You wanna go get arrested without having a plan for Step 2, though, go for it. I know a few groups that help people out who have been arrested in poorly-thought-out civil disobedience actions. I prefer not to use their resources on myself.
posted by Cookiebastard at 8:04 AM on December 9, 2016 [11 favorites]

Last night we were watching The Danish Girl. We've both been harboring a lot of anger since the election and two thirds of the way through my wife started one of her "if I were God I'd change..." rants starting with Repubs and their trans bathroom obsessions and going on from there. Alcohol may have been a factor.

I had a frightening epiphany that at this point I would totally support a leftist demagogue who would do the opposite of Trump, crushing McConnell and Ryan in the gears, banning Fox News and Brietbart, forcing an entire agenda of straight-up leftist wishlist through the government and courts. I could live with that. And while a liberal paradise is tempting, the fact that Trump and others have pushed me to this level of anger is just a bit disturbing. All because of a Danish Girl.
posted by Ber at 8:05 AM on December 9, 2016 [3 favorites]

Trump is now directly indicating that the Japanese internment camps are a model for what's coming.

cite please.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:10 AM on December 9, 2016 [4 favorites]

So go anyway and get arrested.

What? You thought civil disobedience was going to be easy?
...

I want to be one tiny piece of something that's organized.

Then help organize it. Waiting for a strong leader to tell you what to do is a mug's game.

The Million Woman March has facebook page, and the organizers are named Tamika D. Mallory, Carmen Perez, and Linda Sarsour.

Honestly, this makes me kind of mad. Effective civil disobedience requires organization. It requires leadership. It's not just about 'showing up to get arrested.' I am ready, I think, to get arrested, but if I do, I want to feel like it means something; that it's a part of something larger than my personal feelings of frustration and anger. Me getting arrested alone is pointless; me getting arrested along with thousands of other people might serve a purpose.

I am also perfectly happy to help organize something, because that is exactly what I recognize is within my capacity to do. I do not feel like I, a person with exactly zero background in organizing, political manuevering, crowd control, etc., is the person who ought to be in charge of determining where and how 1,000,000 angry, scared people who are descending on Washington D.C. ought to protest.

I have been to the Facebook page; the organizers have told us that "they have another site" that they think we'll "all be very happy with." This is not what feels like leadership to me.

But also, the kind of leadership I'm looking for isn't from these three people who I don't know from Adam; it's national; it's larger than the March itself, it's larger than a Facebook page. I want political leadership. I want someone I can point to and say: this is a person I trust; who knows more about politics than I do, who knows more about logistics than I do; I will devote time and energy to helping this person because I trust them and I trust their plan and I will go where they lead me.That isn't a mug's game; it's leadership. It's what leaders are supposed to do. There is a vacuum of leadership at the top right now, and I think stepping up and leading a massive act of protest would be a really great step for anyone with aspirations for leadership in the upcoming years to take.
posted by pretentious illiterate at 8:11 AM on December 9, 2016 [32 favorites]

What can we do to help ANSWER fight for demonstration space at the inauguration? Are there any other groups taking the issue to court? Do they need money?

In 2005, the ANSWER Coalition — a far-left-leaning group that stands for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism — filed suit that there were so many bleachers set up on Pennsylvania Avenue for people who bought inauguration tickets that it prevented demonstrations and kept the public from being able to watch for free. A U.S. District Court judge agreed, and there was more room along the prominent avenue at the 2009 inauguration.

Current regulations also reserve for the president-elect’s committee the sidewalk in front of Trump International Hotel in the Old Post Office Pavilion, in the 1100 block of Pennsylvania Avenue. The ANSWER Coalition is fighting in court for the public to use that space, arguing recently that the case has heightened significance at a time when thousands of people across the country are protesting Trump’s election.

A U.S. District judge has ruled in favor of the government in the case. It is now pending in a federal appeals court, and it’s still unclear whether the case will be resolved before Jan. 20.

The government estimates that 84 percent of the sidewalks along the parade route are available for protest.

posted by Coventry at 8:14 AM on December 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

In some defense of the MWM organizers, they may still be getting the permits in order and are waiting to make it FB-official.
posted by pxe2000 at 8:15 AM on December 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

I had a frightening epiphany that at this point I would totally support a leftist demagogue who would do the opposite of Trump, crushing McConnell and Ryan in the gears, banning Fox News and Brietbart, forcing an entire agenda of straight-up leftist wishlist through the government and courts.

See this is what's so weird! Why do we have to go from 'total political vacuum' to demagogue and skip actual, passionate, single-minded leadership? There is so much anger and energy right now, and it's bizarre to me that no one with maaaaaaaybe the exception of Bernie Sanders (yuck) is stepping up to channel it.
posted by pretentious illiterate at 8:16 AM on December 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

@CharlotteAlter:
There are now as many men in the Trump admin who have been accused of domestic violence as there are women
posted by chris24 at 8:17 AM on December 9, 2016 [26 favorites]

Trump is now directly indicating that the Japanese internment camps are a model for what's coming.

cite please.

roomthreeseventeen:
EarBucket has the relevant text from the article a little further up this thread but here is the link:

Donald Trump not bothered by comparisons to Hitler
posted by jbroon at 8:18 AM on December 9, 2016 [5 favorites]

it's bizarre to me that no one with maaaaaaaybe the exception of Bernie Sanders (yuck) is stepping up to channel it.

Be the change!
posted by Coventry at 8:18 AM on December 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

In an absurd turn of everything, it seems we will need social media to counter Trump's control of media.

Pantsuit Nation is a case in point.

This has been going on for a while in Denmark, where the media are both better and worse than in the US. They are better in the sense that there are less false media outlets, and worse in the sense that the false equivalence thing is validated by seemingly competent news outlets.
Today several big companies announced that they will no longer be advertising on the main fake news site here. Yay!

And there are the "Venligboerne". I've looked for English information, but not found it, you'll have to use translate. It is a FB-created grassroots group dedicated to kindness. The name is a pun on the region where the group was founded (where I am right now), Vendsyssel, where the inhabitants are called Vendelboer. Venlig means kind. Vendelboer are generally equivalent to rednecks. Unhappy with government, poor, white and left behind by globalization, but for some reason, they/we chose to stand up for human decency. It is now one of the largest popular organizations in Denmark. What the Venligboer do is organize kindness: if you need help, you can ask for it, and if you want to give, you can offer it. It is non-political by design, the idea is to engage everyone across parties. But obviously, if you want to shoot at or intern refugees, you won't be a Venligbo.

Monday, I'm going to find out about the international Venligbo activities and post it here. I'm in the original group, and ironically, that means I don't have much of an overview. But I will write to the founder for more info.
posted by mumimor at 8:18 AM on December 9, 2016 [15 favorites]

They're going to purge everyone who believes climate change is real and end every program that could be used to measure it.

At this point Republicans are the greatest threat to continued human existence in history.

In Florida, officials ban term 'climate change'

Florida isn't the only state to 'ban' climate change ...North Carolina, Louisiana and Tennessee have all passed laws that attempt to cast doubt on established climate science in boardrooms and classrooms.

The pieces have been in place for a long time, first at the state level and now expressed as National policy, to brainwash the population regarding the ramifications of the Anthropocene. Camus said there is a fundamental philosophical question: suicide. I believe one should now add: how do we resist ecocide?
posted by bodywithoutorgans at 8:28 AM on December 9, 2016 [16 favorites]

it's bizarre to me that no one with maaaaaaaybe the exception of Bernie Sanders (yuck) is stepping up to channel it.

Be the change!
posted by Coventry

This is not helpful. None of us here are political leaders with a national stage.
posted by agregoli at 8:29 AM on December 9, 2016 [13 favorites]

I'm sorry to make you mad, pretentious illiterate.

I mean, all of us are mad, and feeling helpless and disorganized etc. I wish I could offer solutions other than "let's all help each other get organized."

I do sort of believe that in a democracy, or even the half-assed version of semi-representative republic we've inherited, leaders are at least partially chosen; we don't tend to favor big swinging leader bravado as much as calls to coalition.

Maybe that's something useful we MeFites can do: Come up with lists of people the rest of us should be listening to.

I think someone like Tom Perez is a good example from the actual government side of things.
posted by aspersioncast at 8:36 AM on December 9, 2016 [4 favorites]

What can we do to help ANSWER fight for demonstration space at the inauguration? Are there any other groups taking the issue to court? Do they need money?

For the love of God do not give money to ANSWER, they are TERRIBLE with it. They also generally partner with other orgs for these lawsuits, so just wait until you see who is also involved and then donate to THAT organization.
posted by corb at 8:39 AM on December 9, 2016 [4 favorites]

Donald Trump not bothered by comparisons to Hitler

This is a cite from a YEAR ago.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:40 AM on December 9, 2016 [4 favorites]

Gay “Mike Hot-Pence” Lookalike Raises Money For Charities In Times Square [VIDEO]: Anchoring himself in the tourist mecca known as Times Square last Saturday, the 51-year-old New Yorker transformed into Mike Hot-Pence as he donned a conservative-looking suit jacket and tie from the waist up, and just a vintage pair of short-shorts down below as he held a jar seeking donations for Planned Parenthood.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:49 AM on December 9, 2016 [34 favorites]

None of us here are political leaders with a national stage.

Until a plausible leader shows up, there's plenty of patently worthwhile things to do towards turning the situation around. Getting involved in organizing a trip from your area to the Women's March on Washington, for instance. Liaising with the local NAACP chapter to organize voter registration drives (or just organizing one yourself) is another obvious one.
posted by Coventry at 8:50 AM on December 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

They are asking for a list of employees who did a certain thing? That is cause for alarm.

Sounds like a good old-fashioned purge in the offing.

Or something much more insidious, like we've seen with Comet Pizza, but way worse. It's not hard to imagine that the personal information of the employees will ~*magically*~ appear on the chans somehow, while Breitbart gins up another scandal that makes the employees out to be actual monsters. Inevitably, most or all of the employees and their families will be harassed or threatened by armed white dudes who are "concerned" about "the truth." Probably someone gets hurt, or worse. Voila! Problem solved.
posted by zombieflanders at 8:52 AM on December 9, 2016 [9 favorites]

'The Aristocrats' joke has gotten really out of hand.
posted by srboisvert at 8:53 AM on December 9, 2016 [6 favorites]

(This NYT story, on the other hand, which equates Trump supporters being called racist with a student threatened with being lit on fire because she wore a hijab as "bias incidents on both side," that displeases me.)

Late on this, but not only is the level of threat disproportionate, but the Muslim woman was not necessarily on "a side." She was like...being a person in the world.

Again why identity politics is important - it isn't the marginalized making their identity political.
posted by zutalors! at 9:03 AM on December 9, 2016 [44 favorites]

Trump nominates @cathymcmorris to Interior.

In 2011, @cathymcmorris co-sponsored bill directing Sec of Interior to dispose of 3 million+ acres of public lands to private interests

.@cathymcmorris co-sponsored bill to strip management of National Forest areas from Forest Service & prioritize logging over conservation
posted by melissasaurus at 9:08 AM on December 9, 2016 [4 favorites]

The Oregon occupiers will be proven right. It's open season on federal lands
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:22 AM on December 9, 2016 [5 favorites]

This is a cite from a YEAR ago.

The first step is believing what the Autocrat says.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:23 AM on December 9, 2016 [9 favorites]

Late on this, but not only is the level of threat disproportionate, but the Muslim woman was not necessarily on "a side." She was like...being a person in the world.

I read that as the "sides" being Trump supporters [threatening the woman] and Clinton supporters [calling people racist]. I don't think they're implying that the woman being threatened is on a "side" per se.

But you're right that there's also not symmetry on the "victims" (quotes because racists being called racists doesn't make them victims) when one side is threatening death to [people just living their lives] and the other side is calling [Trump supporters] racist.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 9:27 AM on December 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

I think the end of The Guardian article on the permits is an important note:

“The Lincoln Memorial is not possible,” said Cassady Fendlay, spokeswoman for the women’s march on Washington. She said march organizers were not associated with the Answer Coalition, and have “had no issues with the permitting process at all”.

“We are in conversation with the police. We have secured another location,” said Fendlay, declining to name where the march would now take place but saying it would be nearby.

It seems like ANSWER held a press conference to make a stink over this, but they have nothing to do with the Women's March being planned, and the actual organizers say they're making arrangements just fine. ANSWER, as usual, can insert a large garden gnome into themselves.
posted by zachlipton at 9:27 AM on December 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

The 2nd part of How the alt-right became racist by Matthew Sheffield (in Salon) discusses the alt-right's affection for Ron Paul and why his son Rand isn't so popular with them.
posted by kingless at 9:32 AM on December 9, 2016 [3 favorites]

TruthDig: Here’s The Washington Post’s Letter Responding to Truthdig’s Demand for a Retraction

@AdamJohnsonNYC: "Let us pass along incredibly provocative claims abt a Russian conspiracy to infiltrate the media but not provide a link for u to vet" -WaPo
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 9:44 AM on December 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

Not encouraging: I worked with Trump’s pick for White House counsel. He doesn’t care about corruption.

During his campaign, the president-elect characterized our political system as corrupt and vowed to “drain the swamp.” The last time McGahn’s job was to regulate corruption, he instead gleefully paralyzed the agency charged with enforcing the law. So what are the odds that a White House counseled by him will take any credible steps to drain the ethical swamp? My experience with McGahn does not offer much basis for optimism.

posted by zachlipton at 9:50 AM on December 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

They're going to purge everyone who believes climate change is real and end every program that could be used to measure it.

This is ironic considering the recent news out of Ireland. There's a link to it buried inside the new post-election US politics post.
posted by Wordshore at 10:00 AM on December 9, 2016

CNN: The pastor at Trump's rally in LA tells the audience that Trump's WH will be a place "where men know who men are, women know who women are."
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:04 AM on December 9, 2016 [3 favorites]

For those of you who are, like me, paralyzed by the deluge of deplorables being nominated for the Cabinet, Kevin Drum is running a helpful recurring series ("Swamp Watch"). Here's the latest installment, now including Cathy Rodgers for Interior.

(Yes, of course she wants to give away Federal land to private interests, and prioritize logging over conservation. For this crop of Republicans, assigning the pettiest of motivations runs the risk of being overly generous, and I find myself wondering about active malice instead. Why? I mean, yes, got mine, fuck you, but do they really hate future generations? Don't they have kids or grand kids of their own?)
posted by RedOrGreen at 10:05 AM on December 9, 2016 [7 favorites]

BREAKING NEWS: @MIHouseGOP passes bill to change state motto to: If you seek a batshit fascist peninsula, look around you. (fake)

The MittenState Deplorables, like those elsewhere, are in an orgasmic frenzy of extreme-right legislating. (Another article on the anti-protestor (and anti-worker) bills.)

Forget Obama's 9-dimensional chess. I think our Minority Tyrants have been playing a VERY long game. It's economic. It's social. And it's about control of the message, and stomping on the neck of anyone who tries to speak up/oppose. It's suppression of: 1) Information, 2) Expression (Protest), 3) Voting.

A lot of us are already teetering on the financial brink, with little time, no money to fight back. (I can't afford a $1000 a day fine if I'm deemed to be picketing/ protesting where Minority Tyrants say I can't.) And oh yeah, we've got that nice militarized police force to enforce Minority Tyrants' decrees.

But that fear is EXACTLY what they want. And we won't give it to them. Yes, there's so much to do. But the first step in fighting back is in the way WE message things. Beginning with that simple reinforcement that in many places, in the MAJORITY of the country, these people ARE the Minority Tyrants. And we won't allow them to still our voices.
posted by NorthernLite at 10:06 AM on December 9, 2016 [12 favorites]

This is ironic considering the recent news out of Ireland.

Ok, I can't even find what you're talking about in there
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:09 AM on December 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

Ok, I can't even find what you're talking about in there

wall
posted by Wordshore at 10:11 AM on December 9, 2016

aspersioncast It's okay! I appreciate your apology, and I'm sorry I got up on my high horse, because really I just expressed things poorly. I am definitely hungry for names, and I've gotten a lot of info from these threads - here was where I first heard exciting things about Kamala Harris, for example.

I'm also a little bit oversensitive on this topic, I think, because two or three days after the election, I went to a local Democrat event that was packed to the gills with a lot of really riled up, passionate people who were obviously pretty new to politics, and somebody asked a question like, "Do you have any plans in the works for coordinated statehouse protests?" and one of the Dems said back, a little tired and snappishly, "If that's something you want to see, you're welcome to make it happen!" in that 'Be the Change' way that was surface-level encouragement but actually sort of shaming, in that it implied that the person just wanted the Dems to do all the work for her instead of contributing. But the person wasn't lazy. She was new. She wasn't going jump right away into some leadership role, so she was asking what she should do, from people who had more experience, and she got shut down. It was really disheartening.

I've been in a lot of organizing situations like that, where new people come in with big ideas, and the more experienced people engage with them in this way, like in their attempts to contribute, they're actually making more work for the REAL organizers. I can understand that it must be frustrating to slog through the work day to day and then see all these bright-eyed, bushy-tailed people show up and say, innocently, "Why don't you just..." but I also think figuring out how to channel that energy into productivity and commitment must surely be a big part of the political art.

I mean, I was a Peace Corps volunteer a long time ago, and to be honest I think that people always thinking that it's up to them to "Be the Change" is the reason that, say, we have twelve million individual tiny stupid nonprofits started by 24 year olds to target the same set of social problems, instead of a single coordinated action that might actually accomplish something real in the world.
posted by pretentious illiterate at 10:12 AM on December 9, 2016 [36 favorites]

"The transition team has asked the agency to list employees and contractors who attended United Nations climate meetings, along with those who helped develop the Obama administration’s social cost of carbon metrics, used to estimate and justify the climate benefits of new rules."

The idea is not exactly new but this particular phrasing of it strikes me as one of the scarier things I've seen so far, maybe because it's so innocuously put? It's the language of technological industry and the same sort of detached and disaffected phrasing that creates enough distance for the predisposed to turn their backs on their own humanity. At the same time, really? I mean just really? I know it's popular in some circles to talk about the big widespread fraud those greedy scientists are pulling, but do enough people believe it to support a full on ideological purge, particularly when the Pentagon sees it as basically threat #1? Will these programs just end up transferred to the DoD or something? In a million years I can't see any form of satellite surveillance, even scientific, being given up on without a fight.

In order to get elected, Trump broke the media, and while everything is all nervous smiles and how-will-it-works right now, it's also true that we're in a period of surreality. Our media, this very thread, our general outlook, are all based on a quick, 24 hour news cycle, but the actual events driving the news are unfolding to their own more sedate schedule. At some point, when things get real, the replacement media is going to get to a point where they don't like what Trump's doing, they'll turn on him, he'll lash out, and the tenor will change. It's not like they can rely on norms and precedent to keep them in line. There is a lot of post hoc rationalization going around to make the Trump people look like secret oppressed geniuses after this win but they stumbled into a lot of their successes. They've totally bought into that vision of themselves, don't realize the role luck played. They've self-infected with one of the most virulent strain of engineer's disease I've ever seen. These guys are miles high on their waxen wings, but the sun's still not out yet.
posted by feloniousmonk at 10:14 AM on December 9, 2016 [18 favorites]

So make a Twitter account and go nuts. You can freeze peach over there all day and nobody will bother you about it.

unless you're a woman, of course, in which case your life becomes 24/7 rape threats and doxxing and you have less recourse than an ant run over by a car
posted by poffin boffin at 10:15 AM on December 9, 2016 [57 favorites]

It seems like ANSWER held a press conference to make a stink over this, but they have nothing to do with the Women's March being planned, and the actual organizers say they're making arrangements just fine

Thanks for digging this up.
posted by Coventry at 10:16 AM on December 9, 2016

unless you're a woman, of course, in which case your life becomes 24/7 rape threats and doxxing and you have less recourse than an ant run over by a car

Yep. Example happening right now: Hadley Freeman of The Guardian.
posted by Wordshore at 10:21 AM on December 9, 2016 [5 favorites]

Ok, I can't even find what you're talking about in there

wall

Yeah, that was SUPER-unclear since there has been so much talk about a wall between the US and Mexico and hardly any about this Irish wall.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 10:22 AM on December 9, 2016

Coventry, all that's true, but that is not what was being asked in the comment you responded to, which was where are our political leaders in this fight?
posted by agregoli at 10:25 AM on December 9, 2016

That is a dismally passive and authoritarian question.
posted by Coventry at 10:54 AM on December 9, 2016

Authoritarian? I don't understand. And its not passive at all to ask that. Please stop digging at people.
posted by agregoli at 11:06 AM on December 9, 2016 [11 favorites]

Trump nominates @cathymcmorris to Interior.

In 2011, @cathymcmorris co-sponsored bill directing Sec of Interior to dispose of 3 million+ acres of public lands to private interests

.@cathymcmorris co-sponsored bill to strip management of National Forest areas from Forest Service & prioritize logging over conservation

OK you guys, just for kicks, let's take all the remaining cabinet positions that are as yet unspoken for and, for each one, write the appalling probable [fake-at-the-moment] resumé Trump's ideal candidate for the position would have. Ready? Set? Go!
posted by FelliniBlank at 11:39 AM on December 9, 2016

In 2014, Rep. McMorris Rodgers was the subject of investigation by the Office of Congressional Ethics. It concluded that her congressional staff performed certain campaign activities — such as preparing her for campaign debates, drafting campaign speeches and traveling to her district for campaign events — using official resources. Her attorney at the time denied the OCE's findings, saying it was "was unable to conduct a full review" in the 90 days allowed.

GOP consultant admits lying to ethics investigators

USA TODAY reported in July 2013 that several top Republicans had used their office accounts to hire Brett O'Donnell, a well-known Republican debate coach who had worked for 2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney and many others

The OCE began investigating O'Donnell in August 2013 and concluded that December that Washington Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers,the head of the House Republican Conference, appeared to have improperly mixed campaign and official resources by holding a debate prep session with O'Donnell in her congressional office. In addition, the OCE concluded that McMorris Rodgers used campaign funds to pay O'Donnell for help in her congressional office.

posted by futz at 11:41 AM on December 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

"The transition team has asked the agency to list employees and contractors who attended United Nations climate meetings, along with those who helped develop the Obama administration’s social cost of carbon metrics, used to estimate and justify the climate benefits of new rules."

The idea is not exactly new but this particular phrasing of it strikes me as one of the scarier things I've seen so far, maybe because it's so innocuously put? It's the language of technological industry and the same sort of detached and disaffected phrasing that creates enough distance for the predisposed to turn their backs on their own humanity.

Yes, the passive voice there is extremely scary because it lets everyone go 'welp' and ignore what they are actually building.
posted by winna at 11:48 AM on December 9, 2016 [6 favorites]

Am I being too optimistic in thinking that this might be a good thing? Trump creates a clear channel of information he wants to be "Official", motivating other news outlets to report an alternative viewpoint, doing factual reporting, rather than regurgitating and rationalizing Trump's message/lies?

Too optimistic. The Breitbart/Trump TV whatever cluster will serve as this clear channel, but enough scraps of access and hope of access will be provided to keep the rest on the hook, and indeed slowly bring them around to a more favorable perspective.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 12:16 PM on December 9, 2016

Looks like there is a new thread?
posted by obliquity of the ecliptic at 12:36 PM on December 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

They've totally bought into that vision of themselves, don't realize the role luck played.

Eeuuhh . . . luck, da.
posted by petebest at 12:37 PM on December 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

Authoritarian? I don't understand. And its not passive at all to ask that.

If it's not the case that the people asking that are waiting for someone to tell them what to do, I apologize. That's how I read it.
posted by Coventry at 12:47 PM on December 9, 2016

The question was (paraphrasing) why aren't the people who currently have national political experience and wield national political power doing much to channel and organize the left's outrage. Pointing to things your average citizen can do on their own is not an answer to that question.
posted by en forme de poire at 1:04 PM on December 9, 2016 [11 favorites]

I agree completely with the feeling of "where is the leadership?" I think one of (the many, many) things that's been so hard about this election is that there is a bit of a power vacuum at the top at the moment for the left. It was like the election happened and boom it decapitated both Hillary and Obama, and no one at this early stage has stepped in to fill their shoes.

I don't know how other people felt on election day, but aside from despair my strongest emotion was that I had been utterly abandoned and so had the entire country. HRC basically vanished afterwards and is only now starting to occasionally poke her head out in public , but it's not as our political leader. And hey I support her right to do that, she has worked harder than anyone and she deserves the right to do whatever the fuck she feels like now. But it was hard to go from YASSSS HRC is going to be president, to no she's not, to omg where did all the grownups go?

And Obama is leaving in a couple months. He's talking about ginning up to lead some opposition stuff once he's out of office and I'm really hopeful for that because he's still an immensely effective politician and people trust and like him. But that's months away and in the meantime we've got sort of swirling ineffectual-feeling chaos at the top. I feel like there's a lot of energy and political will floating around right now on the left but it needs to be pointed at something concrete. Otherwise we just read the news, see the latest onslaught, and cycle through the stages of grief endlessly.
posted by supercrayon at 1:55 PM on December 9, 2016 [18 favorites]

If it's not the case that the people asking that are waiting for someone to tell them what to do, I apologize. That's how I read it.
posted by Coventry

You sure did! Thanks for the apology.
posted by agregoli at 5:18 PM on December 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

[Obama]'s talking about ginning up to lead some opposition stuff once he's out of office and I'm really hopeful for that because he's still an immensely effective politician and people trust and like him.

Yeah I'm not so sure. I think it's just as likely he's working to keep any frustration within the party and prevent both splintering and anti-incumbent'ism.
posted by rhizome at 7:06 PM on December 9, 2016