Monday Reading

As always, please go the the links for the full articles/ op eds.

Ever heard of Misha Tseytlin?  Matthew Yglesias explains how he was hired by unlamented Koch brothers employee Scott Walker in Wisconsin to do a particularly nasty deed at the core of rotted- out Republican "values":

A bright, funny young man named Misha Tseytlin was hired to do the job. 

When I met him earlier this year during a week-long visit to the University of Wisconsin, Tseytlin explained to me that he had no particular connection to Wisconsin when he took the position in 2015. He’d just been working as an attorney in the West Virginia Attorney General’s office (another state to which he had no personal connection) in the general field of suing the Obama administration and thought the Wisconsin gig would be a fun opportunity to expand his horizons in this regard. He cooked up this lawsuit, persuaded his bosses in state government to sign on, and eventually got twenty state governments to pursue his argument. [snip] 

But what strikes me about the case is how utterly mainstream Tseytlin’s theory became in GOP circles very quickly, and how brazenly undemocratic Republicans have been in pursuit of their goal of depriving people of their health insurance. (our emphasis)

"Oh what fun it is to take healthcare away to-night."

Jonathan Adler and Abbe Gluck on the "unmoored" Obamacare ruling by a wingnut judge in Texas:

A ruling this consequential had better be based on rock-solid legal argument. Instead, the opinion by Judge Reed O’Connor is an exercise of raw judicial power, unmoored from the relevant doctrines concerning when judges may strike down a whole law because of a single alleged legal infirmity buried within. 

We were on opposing sides of the 2012 and 2015 Supreme Court challenges to the Affordable Care Act, and we have different views of the merits of the act itself. But as experts in the field of statutory law, we agree that this decision makes a mockery of the rule of law and basic principles of democracy — especially Congress’s constitutional power to amend its own statutes and do so in accord with its own internal rules.

Democrats in 2010 assumed that, once people had access to affordable health care, it would be nearly impossible to take it away.  They didn't foresee a frothing, single- minded Republican party willing to do it anyway, damn the consequences.  (Here's a prime example.) Tuck that lesson away, and let there be consequences!

E.J. Dionne, Jr., has a hopeful projection about one of the most evil foundations of the Republican party:

Sometimes, dramatic shifts in American politics go unnoticed. They are buried under other news or dismissed because they represent such a sharp break from long-standing assumptions and expectations. 

So please open your mind to this: Taken together, the events of 2016 and the results of the 2018 election will be remembered as the beginning of the end of the gun lobby’s power.

The demise of this death lobby would help free us to engage in meaningful gun control actions at every level of government.  Ironically, we might have Russia partially to thank for that.

Speaking of Russia, a draft Senate Intelligence Committee report says Russia's disinformation efforts in the run- up to the 2016 presidential campaign were larger and deeper than commonly known, and also asserts that our Tech Overlords were, at best, useful idiots and, at worst, complicit in their efforts:

The report also offered some of the first detailed analyses of the role played by YouTube, a subsidiary of Google, and Instagram, owned by Facebook, in the Russian campaign, as well as anecdotes about how Russians used other social media platforms — Google+, Tumblr and Pinterest — that have received relatively little scrutiny. The Russian effort also used email accounts from Yahoo, Microsoft’s Hotmail service and Google’s Gmail. 

The authors, while reliant on data provided by technology companies, also highlighted the companies' “belated and uncoordinated response” to the disinformation campaign and, once it was discovered, their failure to share more with investigators. The authors urged that in the future they provide data in “meaningful and constructive” ways. (our emphasis)

Now that the House will be under new management, we look forward to these craven asswipes being hauled in to testify as to their grudging response to investigations with critical national security implications.

For an OPEC country relatively flush oil revenue, you'd think Nigeria could move faster to electrify its rural areas. And you'd be wrong:

In 2017, Nigeria was ranked second out of 137 countries on The Spectator Index of countries with the worst electricity supply. The daily average supply in Africa's most populous country averages around 3,850 megawatts. 

Despite the progress local government officials claim and a reported increase in energy output from 4,000 megawatts to 7,000 megawatts, Unguwar Dogo is among at least 8,000 villages in Africa's most populous country that are still being left to fend for themselves in the dark.

There's much more to be found at Infidel 753's link round- up, where we found the story above. Check this site out!

Republican Gerrymandering Quantified

The Associated Press conducted a study of U.S. House and State legislative races in 2016 and found, just as Donald "Rump" Trump said, the election was being rigged (but not in the way the dimbulb was suggesting):

The analysis found four times as many states with Republican-skewed state House or Assembly districts than Democratic ones. Among the two dozen most populated states that determine the vast majority of Congress, there were nearly three times as many with Republican-tilted U.S. House districts. 

Traditional battlegrounds such as Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida and Virginia were among those with significant Republican advantages in their U.S. or state House races. All had districts drawn by Republicans after the last Census in 2010. 

The AP analysis also found that Republicans won as many as 22 additional U.S. House seats over what would have been expected based on the average vote share in congressional districts across the country. That helped provide the GOP with a comfortable majority that stood at 241-194 over Democrats after the 2016 elections — a 10 percentage point margin in seats, even though Republican candidates received just 1 percentage point more total votes nationwide. (our emphasis)

Not that this comes as a news flash, of course. Sam Wang identified the effort known as "Redmap" back in 2012:

Through artful drawing of district boundaries, it is possible to put large groups of voters on the losing side of every election. The Republican State Leadership Committee, a Washington-based political group dedicated to electing state officeholders, recently issued a progress report on Redmap, its multiyear plan to influence redistricting. The $30 million strategy consists of two steps for tilting the playing field: take over state legislatures before the decennial Census, then redraw state and Congressional districts to lock in partisan advantages. The plan was highly successful.

The Supreme Court is considering a case (Gill v. Whitford) of egregious partisan gerrymandering in Wisconsin, and other cases are awaiting Supreme Court review.  While the outcome of these cases may not affect the 2018 or 2020 elections, they will certainly determine how aggressively Republicans will try to use 2020 census data to rig future State and U.S. House elections wherever they can.  Along with voter suppression actions, that's pretty much their last line of defense against popular democracy.

Portrait Of A Villain: Sen. Mitch McConnell

Long- time readers of this blog know the contempt in which we hold chinless human/ turtle hybrid Sen. Mitch "Missy" McConnell (Hypocrite- KY).  Throughout his career, he's been the perfect example of a party- before- country Republican, a cynic without a moral compass. With the advent of popular vote loser Donald "Rump" Trump, Missy's already loathsome partisan hypocrisy has been on steroids.

He's shown he's perfectly willing to let Rump destroy the fabric of our country as long as Rump lets the Republican Congress pass tax cuts for the wealthy, laws that dismantle environmental protections and voting rights, allow Wall Street to revert to the casino it was before the 2008 crash and the Great Recession, and on and on. Well, some of his constituents are letting him know that they're on to his scam (as others around the country are serving notice on their democracy- shy Republican representatives):

Nearly 1,000 people jeered Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as he drove to a speech Tuesday where he told local business leaders that "winners make policy and the losers go home." 

Protesters crowded the American Legion Post 34 Fairgrounds, kept at bay by several police officers and a chain link fence. The crowd chanted "No ban, no wall, Mitch McConnell take our call" — a reference to full voicemail boxes at the senator's offices — as McConnell drove past in a black SUV. It was the first of several scheduled public appearances for McConnell this week during a congressional recess. Protesters upset with Republican President Donald Trump's policies have vowed to follow McConnell to every stop.  (our emphasis)

"Winners make policy and the losers go home." It's awfully rich for that to be coming out of the mouth of a Republican.  Just for laughs, let's get into the time machine and go wayyy back to shortly after the inauguration of Barack Obama in 2009:

... The 15 Republicans were in a sombre mood as they gathered at the Caucus Room in Washington, an upscale restaurant where a New York strip steak costs $51. 

Attending the dinner were House members Eric Cantor, Jeb Hensarling, Pete Hoekstra, Dan Lungren, Kevin McCarthy, Paul Ryan and Pete Sessions. From the Senate were Tom Coburn, Bob Corker, Jim DeMint, John Ensign and Jon Kyl. [snip] 

"If you act like you're the minority, you're going to stay in the minority," said Keven McCarthy, quoted by Draper. "We've gotta challenge them on every single bill and challenge them on every single campaign."  (our emphasis)

And here again, in 2010:

Here’s John Boehner, the likely speaker if Republicans take the House, offering his plans for Obama’s agenda: “We're going to do everything — and I mean everything we can do — to kill it, stop it, slow it down, whatever we can.” 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell summed up his plan to National Journal: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”  (our emphasis)

Doesn't sound like a "winners make policy and the losers go home" strategy to us. Sounds more like, let's stick around and just gum up the works.

It's always helpful to keep one thing in mind when you hear this rhetoric coming from hypocrites like Missy:  Republicans weren't winners in 2016.  They lost the popular vote for President by almost 3 million, they lost six seats in the House and two in the Senate. They. Have. No. Mandate.

As for Missy McConnell, as has been said before (and before), when the history of this dark period is written, Mitch McConnell will go down as one of the real villains.

(Image: A punchable face if there ever was one.)

He Can't Handle The Truth (UPDATED)

More confirmation (if any were needed) that neo- fascist narcissistic sociopath Donald "Rump" Trump is a sick man:

Days after being sworn in, President Trump insisted to congressional leaders invited to a reception at the White House that he would have won the popular vote had it not been for millions of illegal votes, according to people familiar with the meeting. 

Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that widespread voter fraud caused him to lose the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, even while he clinched the presidency with an electoral college victory. 

Two people familiar with the meeting said Trump spent about 10 minutes at the start of the bipartisan gathering rehashing the campaign. He also told them that between 3 million and 5 million illegal votes caused him to lose the popular vote.  (our emphasis)

Let's for a moment review the symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (via the Mayo Clinic):

-Having an exaggerated sense of self-importance    

-Expecting to be recognized as superior even without achievements that warrant it     

-Exaggerating your achievements and talents     

-Being preoccupied with fantasies about success, power, brilliance, beauty or the perfect mate    

-Believing that you are superior and can only be understood by or associate with equally special people    

-Requiring constant admiration    

-Having a sense of entitlement   

-Expecting special favors and unquestioning compliance with your expectations    

-Taking advantage of others to get what you want    

-Having an inability or unwillingness to recognize the needs and feelings of others    

-Being envious of others and believing others envy you   

-Behaving in an arrogant or haughty manner

Ding- ding- ding! We have a winner!  Twelve out of twelve, a perfect score for Cheeto Benito!

Now, getting back to the alternative facts at hand, this continual need to lie, even when telling a lie to the faces of sophisticated people who know you're lying, is the mark of someone with a serious mental illness.  But rather than continuing to practice psychiatry without a license, we'll defer to Steve Benen's analysis:

The rationale for the president’s brazen lying is easy to understand. Americans were given a choice between two major-party candidates; Trump lost by nearly 3 million votes; and he lacks the tools necessary to deal with the implications of the results. 

As a result, the president apparently finds it necessary to keep reality at arm’s length, because the truth hurts his feelings. It leads him to embrace a comforting, albeit ridiculous, lie – or to use the Trump White House’s preferred parlance, alternative facts. 

That said, this is the sort of lie that should give pause to all Americans, including Trump’s most ardent Republican followers. 

The idea that Trump secretly won the popular vote after excluding illegally cast ballots is plainly bonkers. After he made the claim the first time, it was thoroughly researched and proven to be demonstrably wrong. Trump’s own lawyer said, in print, under penalty of court sanction, that the claim isn’t true. 

Trump, comforted by the fiction he created, nevertheless still believes his lie, raising as-yet-unanswered questions about the new American president’s critical thinking skills, discipline, and capacity for evaluating evidence. (our emphasis)

We would take issue with Benen's formulation of "as- yet- unanswered questions": we believe those questions about Rump's capacities, unfortunately for humanity, have been answered long ago. Simply put, he's unfit for the office of president. What must happen going forward is that he not be pampered or indulged. It's going to be an ongoing struggle to keep rebutting his simpleton lies while at the same time fighting the very real reactionary policy and legislative agenda that's emerging from his Russo- Republican administration. We can and must be prepared to do that, while we put forward a smart, progressive agenda (like this, for starters) that we can run on in 2018.

*UPDATE:  Rump's lapdog Mike "Dense" Pence can't handle the truth either, judging from this whopper (which, as a participant in the DC march, I can testify is 100% lie):

Vice President Mike Pence is getting in on the "alternative facts" fun. 

Pence or his team made the claim that "well over half" of the huge crowds out protesting Trump's inauguration during Saturday's Women's March in Washington were actually fans of the new president in a Facebook post, the latest example of top Trump administration representatives choosing to misstate basic facts.

"Our Administration is proud to stand with American women and of our supporters' significant role in this cause. Despite the misleading Liberal Media's claims, we clearly saw that well over half of the participants in yesterday's march were Trump supporters," reads a post on Pence's official Facebook page posted on Sunday.

*[Ed. Note:  We picked up on the Pence story which was also run in the New York Daily News, but it turns out it's a spoof -  Snopes has the debunking here.  We apologize for spreading the (unfortunately credible given the past few days) fake news.]

Riiiight!  So why was Rump reportedly "enraged" at the size of the Women's March crowd?

UPDATE II:  "Baghdad Sean" Spicer doubles down on the lie in today's press conference. The madness is all around.

Firehose. Of. Falsehoods. 

Quote Of The Day - Putin's Willing Accomplice

"Without Trump’s own willingness to make false claims and misuse Russian-provided information, the Wikileaks material would have deflated of its own boringness. The Russian-hacked material did damage because, and only because, Russia found a willing accomplice in the person of Donald J. Trump." -- Conservative David Frum on neo- fascist Putin poodle Donald "Rump" Trump's willing collaboration with Russia's intelligence services (and its stooge Wikileaks) to distort largely innocuous leaked material (with the help, let us not forget, of the puerile mainstream media).

Final Presidential Vote Results

There is No. Trump. Mandate:

With the presidential election results now certified in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., Hillary Clinton won a total of 65,844,610 votes ― 48.2 percent ― compared with Trump’s 62,979,636 votes ― 46.1 percent ― according to David Wasserman of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. Other candidates took 7,804,213 ballots, or about 5.7 percent of the popular vote.

Clinton’s margin of victory in the popular vote is the largest in raw numbers for any candidate who has gone on to lose in the Electoral College. Her margin of victory is almost six times larger than that of Democrat Al Gore, whose popular vote win in 2000 is now the second-largest in this category. Gore received about 500,000 more votes than Republican George W. Bush, but came up short in the Electoral College after a hotly contested race in Florida. 

Trump’s substantial deficit in the popular vote makes his margin by percentage of votes the third-worst among winning candidates since 1824 (when the popular vote was first officially recorded), according to an analysis by The New York Times published earlier this week. (our emphasis)

As far as neo- fascist pathological liar Donald "Rump" Trump and his minions continuing to call his electoral college victory a landslide, according to PolitiFact:

... Trump’s percentage doesn’t rank near the top. In fact, it ranks near the bottom, belonging somewhere between the lowest one-fourth and the lowest one-fifth of all Electoral College victories in history. 

"If your share of the electoral vote ranks behind Martin Van Buren's, then you did not win in a landslide," Pitney told PolitiFact. 

Every lie has to have pushback. We have to get used to at least four years of this crap, so be prepared.

"Useful Idiots Galore"

Paul Krugman's op/ ed today is about "useful idiots galore" and is worth a read.  Here's an excerpt:

The pro-Putin tilt of Mr. Trump and his advisers was obvious months before the election — I wrote about it in July. By midsummer the close relationship between WikiLeaks and Russian intelligence was also obvious, as was the site’s growing alignment with white nationalists. 

Did Republican politicians, so big on flag waving and impugning their rivals’ patriotism, reject this foreign aid to their cause? No, they didn’t. In fact, as far as I can tell, no major Republican figure was even willing to criticize Mr. Trump when he directly asked Russia to hack Mrs. Clinton. 

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. It has long been obvious — except, apparently, to the news media — that the modern G.O.P. is a radical institution that is ready to violate democratic norms in the pursuit of power. Why should the norm of not accepting foreign assistance be any different?

Krugman offers some "now what?" ideas that are crucial, starting with the observation that "the first step is to admit the awful reality of what just happened," especially by the media that played useful idiots to Rump and his Russian partners' subversion of the election. (Good luck with that.)

BONUS:  Stormtrumpers ("useful idiots") have fallen in love with Putin, too. The triumph of tribe over country:

Tweet Of The Day

TRUMP: I wish Russia would hack us!
CIA: Looks like Russia did hack us.
TRUMP: Don't believe our CIA!
TROLLS: FINALLY A REAL LEADER

— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) December 12, 2016

Neo- fascist narcissist and pathological liar Donald "Rump" Trump continues his strategy of lies, misdirection and "firehoses of falsehood."  See below.

BONUS:  Don't feel helpless!  Mock Paper Scissors provides an action template.

Today's Infographic: Alt-Reality

Via Democratic Underground, selected results from a new poll by Public Policy Polling (click on graphic to enlarge):



To the corporate and right- wing media:  job well done!

Be Resolute And Resist!

Charles Blow reacts to neo- fascist demagogue Donald "Rump" Trump's being named Time magazine's "Person of the Year," and the ease with which demagogues can distract and obscure as Rump forms his administration around plutocrats and military brass:

I feel like America is being flashed by a giant neuralyzer, à la “Men In Black.” We are in danger of forgetting what has happened and losing sight, in the fog of confusion and concealment, of the profundity of the menace taking shape right before us. 

That is our challenge: To see clearly what this deceiver wants to obscure; to be resolute about that to which he wants us to be resigned; to understand that Time’s man of the year is, by words and deeds, more of a madman of the year.

It's important to be resolute in opposition, because as E.J. Dionne, Jr., writes --

For the next two and probably four years, a majority of Americans will be governed by politicians largely elected by a minority of us. With the country already sharply divided, this is a problem that can no longer be politely ignored. Worse still, a government put in place by the peculiar workings of an outdated system is threatening to pursue quite radical policies destined to arouse considerable resistance from the disempowered majority. 

Never, never forget that the shitgibbon and his toxic white nationalist movement were rejected by over 54 percent of American voters.  As Dionne says, we're the disempowered majority. Rump, his white nationalist morons, and Congressional Republicans will try to "govern" as an extremist minority that will seek to stifle dissent and intimidate opposition (see here and here for recent examples). The next 4 years are going to test many of us in our resolution to stand up for the values of tolerance, inclusion and equality that have been under siege by Republicans for decades.

Don't look for many allies in the corporate media.  Don't expect elected "let's compromise" Democrats to realize the enormous stakes and suddenly grow a spine.  For better or worse, this is likely to be a battle initially engaged at the grassroots level (and, btw, here are some good warriors that could use your help now more than ever!).  We're already seeing battle lines being drawn around Obamacare/ Medicare/ Medicaid, women's health, global climate change and voter suppression. We gain nothing by playing on Republicans' terms, only to have everything we've stood for disassembled by a gang of cutthroat Social Darwinists and white nationalist authoritarians.

These are not "normal" times, and we're not dealing with politics- as- usual.  Let's stay sharp and keep our eyes on the ball.

BONUS:  Did we say "never, never forget"? --

See, when you're making the point that Trump won despite his flaws, that's a good place to note the popular vote. pic.twitter.com/C2MVmpjFRr

— Schooley (@Rschooley) December 8, 2016

How The Media Helps Republicans -- And Helped Elect Trump

There's an important study out by the Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard that confirms what many of us saw as indisputable:  the media failed us terribly in the 2016 election.  There's a lot of data on how the media handled both Hillary Clinton and neo- fascist shitgibbon Donald "Rump" Trump, but some of the general conclusions are worth a lengthy excerpt (the entire study is worth a read):

The real bias of the press is not that it’s liberal. Its bias is a decided preference for the negative. As scholar Michael Robinson noted, the news media seem to have taken some motherly advice and turned it upside down. “If you don’t have anything bad to say about someone, don’t say anything at all.” A New York Times columnist recently asserted that “the internet is distorting our collective grasp on the truth.” There’s a degree of accuracy in that claim but the problem goes beyond the internet and the talk shows. The mainstream press highlights what’s wrong with politics without also telling us what’s right. 

It’s a version of politics that rewards a particular brand of politics. When everything and everybody is portrayed as deeply flawed, there’s no sense making distinctions on that score, which works to the advantage of those who are more deeply flawed. Civility and sound proposals are no longer the stuff of headlines, which instead give voice to those who are skilled in the art of destruction. The car wreck that was the 2016 election had many drivers. Journalists were not alone in the car, but their fingerprints were all over the wheel. [snip] 

False equivalencies abound in today’s reporting. 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. The press historically has helped citizens recognize the difference between the earnest politician and the pretender. Today’s news coverage blurs the distinction. [snip] 

An irony of the press’s critical tendency is that it helps the right wing. Although conservatives claim that the press has a liberal bias, the media’s persistent criticism of government reinforces the right wing’s anti-government message. For years on end, journalists have told news audiences that political leaders are not to be trusted and that government is inept. And when journalists turn their eye to society, they highlight the problems and not the success stories. The news creates a seedbed of public anger, misperception, and anxiety— sitting there waiting to be tapped by those who have a stake in directing the public’s wrath at government.

There's nothing more corrosive than cynicism in politics and nothing that better characterizes the "business model" of the Republican Party over the past 40 years than its creating, nourishing, and benefiting from that cynicism.

In another long read excerpt, Rick Perlstein amplifies the finding with specifics:

Trump boogied his way to Pennsylvania Avenue to the tune of the extraordinary finding by a Washington Post-ABC News poll that “corruption in government” was listed by 17 percent of voters as the most important issue in the presidential election, second only to the economy, and ahead of terrorism and health care—and that voters trusted Trump over Clinton to be better on the issue by a margin of 48 to 39 percent, her worst deficit on any issue. This is the part of my article where rhetorical conventions demand I provide a thumbnail sketch of all the reasons why it’s factually absurd that anyone would believe that Donald Trump is less corrupt than Hillary Clinton. I have better things to do with my time than belabor the obvious.

Yet somehow, the great mass of Americans believed Clinton was the crook. Might it have something to do with the myriad articles like, say, “Smoke Surrounds the Clinton Foundation,” by The Los Angeles Times’s top pundit Doyle McManus? This piece, all too typically, despite endeavoring to debunk Trump claims of Clinton corruption, repeated charges like “Doug Band, who helped create the Clinton Global Initiative, sought access to State Department officials for Clinton Foundation donors”—even though donors did not get that access). And that donors harbored the “assumption” that they would “move to the head of the line”—even though they never did. 

And what were pundits like McManus smoking? The vapors from a cunning long-term disinformation campaign run by the man Donald Trump appointed as his chief White House political strategist. Steve Bannon chartered a nonprofit “Government Accountability Institute,” whose president, Peter Schweizer, hacked out an insinuation-laden tome, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, then offered its “findings” on an exclusive pre-publication basis to the Times, which shamefully accepted the deal—with, predictably, the public’s perceptions of Clinton’s trustworthiness cratering in tandem with our national Newspaper of Record’s serial laundering of Steve Bannon’s filth.

So, here we are with Rump and the Republicans in charge of the government they so want to break even further.  Thank a "journalist!"

BONUS:  Driftglass has a good read on how the media ignored the successes of the Obama Administration in the manufacturing sector.

(h/t LGM)

Sunday Cartoon - Down For The Vote Count (UPDATED)

(click on image to enlarge)


(Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press)

Always remember, the only "mandate" delivered in this election was that of the majority of Americans who wanted Hillary Clinton as President, not the shitgibbon.

UPDATE:  The sick, whining Giant Toddler has an alternative reality he'd like to foist on you --

In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2016

Loser.  Sad!

Afternoon Reading - "There's No Such Thing As A Good Trump Voter"

We're rather tired already of the corporate media's fetish -- extensive throughout the campaign, but still obnoxiously arising this morning in such places as the once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle  -- for chin- strokers about "The Trump Voter" and their "economic anxiety" and sense of (white) loss. Jamelle Bouie tells us what we need to hear amidst all this normalizing of the abnormal: "There's No Such Thing As A Good Trump Voter."

Whether Trump’s election reveals an “inherent malice” in his voters is irrelevant. What is relevant are the practical outcomes of a Trump presidency. Trump campaigned on state repression of disfavored minorities. He gives every sign that he plans to deliver that repression. This will mean disadvantage, immiseration, and violence for real people, people whose “inner pain and fear” were not reckoned worthy of many-thousand-word magazine feature stories. If you voted for Trump, you voted for this, regardless of what you believe about the groups in question. That you have black friends or Latino colleagues, that you think yourself to be tolerant and decent, doesn’t change the fact that you voted for racist policy that may affect, change, or harm their lives. And on that score, your frustration at being labeled a racist doesn’t justify or mitigate the moral weight of your political choice. 

In the same way that the election-year demand for empathy toward Trump supporters obscured the consequences of Trump’s support for his targets, this demand for empathy does the same. It’s worse, in fact. In the wake of Trump’s win, the United States was hit with a wave of racist threats, agitation, harassment, and violence, following a year in which hate crimes against Muslim Americans and others reached historic highs. With Trump in office, millions of Americans face the prospect of a federal government that is hostile to their presence in this country, and which views them as an intrusion, even if they are citizens. Even if they’ve lived their entire lives as Americans. 

To face those facts and then demand empathy for the people who made them a reality—who backed racist demagoguery, whatever their reasons—is to declare Trump’s victims less worthy of attention than his enablers. To insist Trump’s backers are good people is to treat their inner lives with more weight than the actual lives on the line under a Trump administration. At best, it’s myopic and solipsistic. At worst, it’s morally grotesque.  (our emphasis)

In Bouie's piece he notes a comment from the reptilian Chris "Lizard" Cillizza to the extent that (hot take alert!) we shouldn't treat all the shitgibbon's supporters as racists, misogynists, etc.  But, as Bouie says, the choice they made in voting for a racist, misogynist, etc., makes it "morally grotesque" to empathize with them.

Rest assured, we won't be giving out any cookies to these slugs, nor should anyone else.  In the meantime, as Bouie suggests, how about a little less attention to the Stormtrumpers and a little more to the current (a running compilation here) and future victims of the shitgibbon's white nationalism?

(Photo:  One of the more G-rated photos of good 'murrican Stormtrumpers - heil!)

Today's Tomorrow Cartoon - Off The Cliff

(click on image to enlarge)


(Tom Tomorrow, via Daily Kos)

Of Barricades And Walls

E.J. Dionne, Jr., writes about what America needs to remember before false narratives are written by Republicans and their media accomplices:

Let’s be clear: The United States of America is not Donald Trump’s country. 

When all the returns are in, Hillary Clinton will emerge with a popular vote lead of some 1.5 million to 2 million votes, according to estimates by both Nate Cohn of the New York Times and Henry Olsen, a conservative voting analyst whose pre-election predictions were close to the actual results. 

Given what Trump has said in the past about the electoral college, we know what he would say if the roles were reversed. 

To point out Clinton’s popular-vote advantage is not a form of liberal denial. It’s a way of beginning to build a barricade against right-wing triumphalism — and of reminding immigrants, Muslims, African Americans, Latinos and, yes, our daughters that most Americans stood with them on Election Day. 

It is also not true that the emerging political coalition that elected President Obama died on Nov. 8. That alliance maintained its national advantage, as the popular vote shows, and came within a whisker in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan of delivering the election to Clinton despite an onslaught of partisan congressional investigations, Russian meddling and the last-minute political intervention of the FBI. (our emphasis)

This is all the more important to note with the rising right- wing violence and intimidation since the election.  Another reason for vigilance concerns the staffing of the Rump transition team and administration:

President-elect Donald Trump's decision to appoint Stephen Bannon as his chief strategist in the White House has drawn a sharp rebuke from political strategists who see in Bannon a controversial figure too closely associated with the “alt-right” movement, which white nationalists have embraced.  [snip]

The announcement has produced intense hand-wringing in Washington and sharp denunciations from political observers and strategists critical of Breitbart News's close association with the alt-right, a fringe conservative movement saturated with racially insensitive rhetoric and elements of outright white nationalism. 

If the despicable Bannon weren't enough, there's this slug:

Kris Kobach, the secretary of state of Kansas and a leading architect of draconian anti-immigrant and voter suppression laws around the nation, will reportedly be serving on Donald Trump’s presidential transition team as an immigration adviser. As the Wall Street Journal notes, Trump “has vowed to cancel President Obama’s promise to protect from deportation undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children, and start deporting as many as two million undocumented immigrants with criminal records.” 

According to the Journal, the transition team “includes a unit dedicated to figuring out how to build Mr. Trump’s wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.” Back in April, Kobach took credit for Trump’s plan to blackmail Mexico into paying for a border wall by impounding remittances that immigrants send home to their families. A few months later, he was responsible for getting the wall into the Republican Party platform. 

So far, with these appointments and his pledge to begin the "immediate" deportation of up to 3 million immigrants, neo- fascist shitstain Donald "Rump" Trump is on his way to fulfilling the wet dreams of every low- information knuckle dragger that voted for him. Now is not the time to give up or despair, but rather fight this ugliness with all our energies.

BONUS:  A Republican strategist's take --

The racist, fascist extreme right is represented footsteps from the Oval Office. Be very vigilant America.

— John Weaver (@JWGOP) November 13, 2016

Actually, there's a representative soon to be in the Oval Office itself.

Letters We Wish We'd Written - No Rewarding, No Kumbaya

From this morning's Washington Post Letters to the Editor:

While I appreciate the editorial kumbaya moment, I will not be one of those people who now reward abuse and disrespect [“Keep America big-hearted,” Nov. 10]. Republican Donald Trump was chosen by an electorate that through its votes supported xenophobia, racism, religious intolerance and even disdain for the disabled. It is not politics as usual for a candidate to demean women.

You cannot separate the candidate from the voter. Any voter who felt comfortable voting for someone who boasted about grabbing women’s crotches is not anyone I care to even acknowledge. Nope.

It’s time to stay strong for my friends who have been victims of Mr. Trump’s hate. I don’t see those who voted for Mr. Trump as American casualties. They have been duped by a man who lacks a sense of boundaries and morals. Perhaps they should be pitied, but they don’t deserve to be embraced. Respecting another’s opinion is one thing; rewarding bad behavior is something else.

Pamela Kincheloe, Manassas


During this presidential campaign, the Republican nominee aligned himself with the leader of Russia while openly calling the president of the United States incompetent and stupid. The Republican nominee, with whom white supremacy groups aligned, maligned women, Hispanics, African Americans and Muslims. The battle cries “We want our country back,” “Make America great again” and “Build the wall” are laced with the flames of bigotry and hatred.

In the aftermath of the election, the political pollsters and reporters ponder how their estimates could have been so inaccurate. As during the campaign, there is the failure to acknowledge the obvious: A racism-based campaign was waged, and racism trumped qualification in the end.

Now I am being asked to “unite.” Did the Republican Party “unite” and allow President Obama to lead when he was elected in 2008? No. It questioned the legitimacy of Mr. Obama as a U.S. citizen. It became the “party of no” and opposed everything the president proposed. Republicans now seek to overturn initiatives supported by Mr. Obama. And I am expected to join hands with them now.

J.C. West, Silver Spring

Stay strong and do what we can to help those who feel threatened; remember who was "elected" and who "elected" him and why; and please don't let the normalizers in the amoral corporate media and punditocracy tell you it's time to "unite." They have lost nothing in the aftermath of November 8. And by the way, where were they 8 years ago (or even a month ago)?

Coping

While we each work our way through the five stages of grief at the reality of the Loathsome Rump and his likely administration of deplorables, we're starting to find comfort? companionship? solidarity? in what we're seeing and reading in the aftermath of November 8.

First and foremost, it's healthy to remind ourselves (especially in the face of smarmy, arrogant talk of "mandates" by the likes of Squeaker of the House Paul "Lyin'" Ryan) that Hillary Clinton Won. The. Popular. Vote. * Democrats gained seats in the Senate and the House. Don't let anyone get away with saying the Loathsome Rump was swept into office on a popular wave; he groped his way in thanks to an arcane mechanism that has delivered the White House in two of the last five elections to a Republican who lost the popular vote to a Democrat.  Don't let these basic facts be lost in finger- pointing or in Republican triumphalism.

Our own Kubler- Ross journey in the past 36 hours moved fairly quickly through denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance (though we still find it impossible to watch the Loathsome Rump on television or see his face in the newspapers).  We know we can't change what has happened, but we sure as hell can fight for what's right.

In that spirit, we'd like to share some of what we're finding today:

Catherine Rampell on giving the Stormtrumpers what they asked for (anger/ bargaining stage?):

One reason we got things wrong is that we assumed most Americans had come around to realizing just how dangerous Donald Trump and his bad ideas were. After all, hadn’t we convinced our audiences of this many times over? Like many other “elites,” I’ve spent the better part of the past 17 months warning the public about Trump’s bigotry, misogyny, magical thinking and authoritarian impulses. 

Unfortunately, also like many other “elites,” I have since learned that those I wanted most to heed these warnings did not. And in an increasingly siloed media environment, reaching — let alone persuading — those undisposed to listen to and agree with us appears increasingly impossible. [snip] 

Fortunately, I retain faith in another powerful tool: democracy. By which I mean democracy as defined by H.L. Mencken: “the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” 

Maybe the only way for Americans to really, truly understand how toxic, wrong-headed and futile Trump’s policies are is to let him provide proof of concept. 

That is, to give us Trumpism, good and hard.  (our emphasis)

Rampell is quick to point out, as we would, that in instituting our Loathsome President- elect's policies, a lot of people would get hurt or worse.  That's never a good thing, regardless of the political implications. Also, blame- shifting is an art in the Republican Party which, even though it will control all branches of the government (Supreme Court to come), will find ways through Fox "News" and the rest of the right- wing media bullhorn to somehow blame the "libruls" and Democrats for any resulting pain.  Still, we're getting some fleeting gratification in imagining the possibilities.

Next, Garrison Keillor is also foreseeing that the Stormtrumpers didn't bargain for what's coming:

The Trumpers never expected their guy to actually win the thing, and that’s their problem now. They wanted only to whoop and yell, boo at the H-word, wear profane T-shirts, maybe grab a crotch or two, jump in the RV with a couple of six-packs and go out and shoot some spotted owls. It was pleasure enough for them just to know that they were driving us wild with dismay — by “us,” I mean librarians, children’s authors, yoga practitioners, Unitarians, bird-watchers, people who make their own pasta, opera-goers, the grammar police, people who keep books on their shelves, that bunch. The Trumpers exulted in knowing we were tearing our hair out. They had our number, like a bratty kid who knows exactly how to make you grit your teeth and froth at the mouth. 

Alas for the Trump voters, the disasters he will bring on this country will fall more heavily on them than anyone else. The uneducated white males who elected him are the vulnerable ones, and they will not like what happens next.  [snip] 

We liberal elitists are now completely in the clear. The government is in Republican hands. Let them deal with him. Democrats can spend four years raising heirloom tomatoes, meditating, reading Jane Austen, traveling around the country, tasting artisan beers, and let the Republicans build the wall and carry on the trade war with China and deport the undocumented and deal with opioids, and we Democrats can go for a long, brisk walk and smell the roses. 

Somehow, that helps us today, in this time.  But the reality to come may be very hard to escape, not just for the Stormtrumpers but for millions of others in America and around the globe.  Best we fight it as much as we can, however we can, every day.

*

Trump mandate? NYT now projects that Clinton will win the popular vote by 1.2 points. That's about 1.5 million votes.

— Alan Abramowitz (@AlanIAbramowitz) November 10, 2016

VOTE!

We're Hackwhackers and, again, we approve this message:

On Election Day, the Miami Herald's Editorial Page makes a bold statement: ENOUGH SAID. pic.twitter.com/RrUKzCgdDx

— Miami Herald (@MiamiHerald) November 8, 2016

Tweet Of The Day

We're Hackwhackers, and we approve this message:

Years from now you may be asked what you did when an authoritarian racial arsonist tried to become America's Putin. Be proud of your answer.

— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) November 7, 2016

Pre-Election Sunday Cartoon Threefer

This kind of sums up where we are.

(click on images to enlarge)


(Matt Wuerker, Politico - w/ apologies to H. Bosch)


(Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal- Constitution)


(Nick Anderson, Houston Chronicle)

BONUS:  Andy Borowitz has an amusing, as always, angle on the subject of that last cartoon.