Across The Universe, Cont. - "A Subtle Swarm"

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From NASA/ESA November 14, 2016:  This Hubble image shows NGC 4789A, a dwarf irregular galaxy in the constellation of Coma Berenices. It certainly lives up to its name — the stars that call this galaxy home are smeared out across the sky in an apparently disorderly and irregular jumble, giving NGC 4789A a far more subtle and abstract appearance than its glitzy spiral and elliptical cousins.

These stars may look as if they have been randomly sprinkled on the sky, but they are all held together by gravity. The colours in this image have been deliberately exaggerated to emphasise the mix of blue and red stars. The blue stars are bright, hot and massive stars that have formed relatively recently, whereas the red stars are much older. The presence of both tells us that stars have been forming in this galaxy throughout its history.

At a distance of just over 14 million light-years away NGC 4789A is relatively close to us, allowing us to see many of the individual stars within its bounds. This image also reveals numerous other galaxies, far more distant, that appear as fuzzy shapes spread across the image.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

Acknowledgements: Judy Schmidt (Geckzilla)

That Was Then, This Is Now

Then:

Here's what I know. Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. (1/2)

— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) March 3, 2016

He's playing the American public for suckers: He gets a free ride to the White House and all we get is a lousy hat. (2/2)

— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) March 3, 2016

Now:

No word on whether sociopath Donald "Rump" Trump grabbed Willard "Mittens" Romney by the p*ssy during yesterday's meeting, or whether he got that "lousy hat." Rethugs are nothing if not amoral hypocrites.

(photo: Associated Press)

Photo Of The Day - Here's The Swamp That Just Oozed Into Washington

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That's person semi- known for being semi- known Tila Tequila on the right (luckily her right arm isn't incapacitated for saluting) at this weekend's gathering of anti- Semites, alt- righters, neo- Nazis, "white nationalists" and other assorted misfits and loons at the white supremacist National Policy Institute's annual meeting in Washington, DC.  The other two saluting nitwits are unidentified.  (This picture is from her Twitter, and includes the mis-spelled message "Seig heil!")

Feeling emboldened by the "election" of their hero, neo- fascist demagogue Donald "Rump" Trump, they're emerging from trash heaps, from under rocks and, of course, the swamp, to pledge their loyalty and take credit for Rump's election, when they're not busy spray painting swastikas, assaulting non- whites, or otherwise Making America Great Again.

This is what over 60 million Americans voted for, whether they want to admit it to themselves or not. This is "white nationalism," though it looks an awful lot like Nazism, salutes and all.

(h/t Little Green Footballs)

Sunday Collection Plate

We're introducing an ongoing feature today: a "collection plate" for organizations that will be crucial to defending our rights, and the rights of the powerless, and protecting the environment during what promises to be a severely reactionary regime in the next four years. We'll provide links directly to those organizations' donation site so that you can contribute what ever sums you can -- either one time or sustaining -- to help them push back on the disastrous policies that are sure to come. So, here's to passing the first "collection plate":

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

Planned Parenthood.

Emily's List.

The Natural Resources Defense Council.

The American Civil Liberties Union.

Southern Poverty Law Center.

Union of Concerned Scientists.

We urge you to give whatever amounts you can for the sake of our future.

The Media Will Continue To Largely Downplay Trump's Illegalities

As we and others have pointed out, the story of neo- fascist con artist Donald "Rump" Trump settling his various fraud suits regarding Trump "University" for the princely sum of $25 million has largely escaped the notice of our bloodhounds in the corporate media.  Mark Sumner notes,

On Friday, the President-elect of the United States agreed to pay $25 million for defrauding students of his not-a-university. That settlement includes $1 million in payments to the State of New York for violations of state law. During the campaign, Trump had denied he would ever settle, saying it was “a matter of principle.” However, he’s now treating the $25 million payout as a victory, calling it a “fraction” of his potential losses. 

But less than 48 hours later, you won’t find the story on the front of the New York Times, despite New York AG Eric Schneiderman’s dogged work in assembling the case. You wont find it on the front of the Washington Post, despite the outrageous implications of a president paying out tens of millions weeks before taking office. You won’t find it on the Miami Herald, despite the connection between Trump’s “university” and contributions to Florida’s AG that had all the earmarks of old-fashioned bribes.  (our emphasis)

Imagine if this were a story about the Clinton Foundation's finances instead of the transparent, multi- million dollar con that was Trump "University."  (Scott Lemieux does.) We've had over a year to see that the ethical bar is so low for Rump in the corporate media that it essentially doesn't exist.

Think about that when you read this:

Friday evening, the Washington Post reported * that about 100 foreign diplomats gathered at President-elect Donald Trump’s hotel in Washington, DC to “to sip Trump-branded champagne, dine on sliders and hear a sales pitch about the U.S. president-elect’s newest hotel.” The tour included a look at the hotel’s $20,000 a night “town house” suite. The Post also quoted some of the diplomats saying they intended to stay at the hotel in order to ingratiate themselves to the incoming president. 

“Why wouldn’t I stay at his hotel blocks from the White House, so I can tell the new president, ‘I love your new hotel!’” said one diplomat from an Asian nation. “Isn’t it rude to come to his city and say, ‘I am staying at your competitor?’” 

The incoming president, in other words, is actively soliciting business from agents of foreign governments. Many of these agents, in turn, said that they will accept the president-elect’s offer to do business because they want to win favor with the new leader of the United States. 

In an exclusive exchange with ThinkProgress, Richard Painter, a University of Minnesota law professor who previously served as chief ethics counsel to President George W. Bush, says that Trump’s efforts to do business with these diplomats is at odds with a provision of the Constitution intended to prevent foreign states from effectively buying influence with federal officials.  (our emphasis)

Combine this with Rump's children being heavily involved in the transition (including meeting with foreign leaders) and his curious understanding of what a "blind trust" is, and it's not hard to get the sense that Rump fully intends to proceed with enriching himself and his family while in office. We know his ego is wrapped up in the trappings of wealth, and he's not going to miss any opportunity to trade on the Presidency to enhance that wealth. He. Has. No. Ethics.

Given the low bar that the corporate media has provided Rump throughout his foray into politics, it's also not hard to get the sense that -- Democrats' howling notwithstanding -- he'll bluff and shamble his way through, with the media giving short shrift to his business- as- usual scams and violations of the Constitution.

* By the way, what should have been a front page story ended up on the Post's Business page.

Sunday Cartoons

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(Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)


(Jim Morin, Miami Herald)


(Rob Rogers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)


(Steve Sack, Minneapolis Star Tribune)

Pence Booed At "Hamilton;" New York Times Wankers Appalled

By now you've likely heard homophobic vice president elect =choke=spew= Mike "Dense" Pense attended the highly acclaimed musical, "Hamilton," last night on Broadway. As you also probably know, the audience booed him lustily on his arrival at the theatre, and following the performance, the cast had a message, delivered by Brandon Victor Dixon:

“We have a guest in the audience this evening. Vice President-elect Pence I see you walking out, but I hope you will hear us just a few more moments. There’s nothing to boo here ladies and gentlemen. We have a message for you sir. We hope that you will hear us out. I encourage everyone to pull out your phones and tweet because this message needs to be spread far and wide.

Vice President-elect Pence we welcome you and we truly thank you for joining us here at Hamilton, an American Musical. We really do. We sir, we are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, out children, our parents or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir. But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us. All of us. We truly thank you for sharing in this show, this wonderful American story told by a diverse group of men, women of different colors, creeds and orientations and we truly hope that you heard our message sir, because you all represent all of us."

So, what was the elite media's hot take to the booing before and after this perfectly reasonable and patriotic appeal?  Let's hear from two of the guardians of the First Amendment and frontline normalizers of neo- fascist gargoyle Donald "Rump" Trump and his mini- me (who inexplicably are employed at the "liberal" New York Effing Times).  First, there's culture reporter Dave Itzkoff, then adding to the appalling wankery we have crack political writer and Clinton e-mail scourge Maggie Haberman (the NYT's "amateur etiquette expert"):

Pence getting booed at Hamilton bums me out. Whatever you think of him. He’s trying to engage. Could get ideas from far worse places. https://t.co/gn7j25Nuy7

— Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) November 19, 2016

"Engage"! Someone got Dense an effing ticket to the hottest show in America so he could sit in a seat and stare dumbly at the stage, you clown. Try engaging your brain.

He's also the VP-elect. A level of disrespect https://t.co/Xgfbb0EpBH

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) November 19, 2016

We leave it to our betters to point out a few things to the clueless Itzkoff and Haberman:

After the way President Obama has been treated the past eight years, and after the way people are being violated now, today, a lusty boo is apparently beyond the pale. 

Miss Manners — the actual one, not the poor imitation above — says it is perfectly acceptable to boo performers on a stage; surely one can, without throwing a tomato, calling him a cracker, or beating his ass like he was a common Muslim cabbie minding his own business in a post 11/9 America, express equal displeasure with a man whose lifelong ambition is to denude gay people of not just equal protection under the law but funding for AIDS that didn’t line the pocket of a conversion therapist instead, and who is about to run both foreign and domestic policy under a president-elect already staffing his cabinet with overt white nationalists, and it is just as acceptable.

Maggie Haberman does not belong in polite society. And whoever that Dave Itzkoff schmuck is he’s a idiot too.

The Twitter feeds of both these dolts are full of pithy responses that explain why it was perfectly righteous to boo a slug like Dense Pence, who has a long history of anti- LGBTQ activism.  What's clear to us is that these two guardians of freedom have lived very sheltered and privileged lives that have robbed them of their capacity for empathy -- well, except for the likes of Dense Pence.

BONUS:  With the right- wing fee- fee umbrage machine working overtime (including Rump's asinine "demand" for an apology), we're with David Waldman, who detects a double standard:

What? He got booed? pic.twitter.com/oq2JU9SSS8

— David Waldman (@KagroX) November 19, 2016

Today's Cartoon - The Swamp

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(Jack Ohman, Sacramento Bee)

This is just the transition.  Wait until they start to run the government (though if they run the government like this, it may be our best hope).

Trump Pays $25 Million To Settle Trump "University" Fraud Suit (UPDATED)

He who never settles, settles:

President-elect Donald Trump on Friday agreed to pay $25 million in fines and restitution to settle three fraud lawsuits on behalf of the former customers of Trump University, the businessman’s now-defunct real estate seminar program. 

Under the terms of the settlement, Trump will not admit fault, a common bargain in civil cases like this one. 

“My office sued Donald Trump for swindling thousands of innocent Americans out of ​millions of dollars through a scheme known at Trump University,” Eric Schneiderman, New York’s attorney general, said in a statement Friday. “Donald Trump fought us every step of the way, filing baseless charges and fruitless appeal​s​ and refusing to settle for even modest amounts of compensation for the victims of his phony university. Today, that all changes. Today’s $25 million settlement agreement is a stunning reversal by Donald Trump and a major victory for the over 6,000 victims of his fraudulent university.”  

The settlement covers two class-action lawsuits pending in California, as well as the civil case brought by Schneiderman. It also marks the end of a six-year legal battle that began when thousands of people across the country alleged that Trump University had defrauded them with false advertising and deceptive business practices.  (our emphasis)

"Swindling ... scheme... phony... fraudulent university."  Words that should have stuck to this shitgibbon and been disqualifying for voters, but =mumble mumble= economic anxiety =mumble=mumble=.

Our bet is that he tries to use any excess campaign funds to pay all or part of the fine, or otherwise finagles to not pay out of pocket.  That's just who he is.

Unfortunately, now we won't be treated to the spectacle of the shitgibbon- elect showing up in a California court on November 28 for a jury trial.  Sad!

UPDATE I:

What's got more critical coverage, a fraud scheme that resulted in $25 million in fines or raising money for a charity that saves lives?

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) November 18, 2016

UPDATE II:  John Cole points out that the media completely buried this story;  in Saturday's once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle, it was on page 5 of the print edition.  The Trump Honeymoon.

Weekend Something Better Beginning Song

In 1965, one of our favorite "comfort" bands, The Kinks, released their second album, "Kinda Kinks." It included such cuts as "Tired of Waiting for You," and this song written and sung by Ray Davies, with a light lead guitar line by brother Dave Davies on his Gibson Flying V. Here's "Something Better Beginning," which asks the age- old question that applies to more than just dancing and dating,

"Is this the start of another heartbreaker,  

Or something better beginning?"

Tweet Of The Day - The (Un)Beloved

Something to keep in mind (h/t No More Mister Nice Blog):

Gallup finds Trump has the worst favorability of any president-elect in modern American history. pic.twitter.com/2D0tbiJuvF

— Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) November 17, 2016

A "honeymoon" provided him by the supine corporate media might bring those numbers down between now and the inauguration.  We're already seeing happy/ smiley "everything's normal" news about inaugural preparations and stocking his Cabinet (with loons).

Rump's Royal Court (UPDATED)

There are growing signs that neo-fascist sociopath Donald "Rump" Trump is confusing the Presidency with a monarchy, specifically in the roles his "royal" family are playing in the transition and beyond. From asking about Government security clearances for his grown children, to son-in-law Jared "Christie Jailed My Dad" Kushner's role as vengeful hatchet man and horse's ass whisperer to Rump, and now to daughter Ivanka's sitting in on yesterday's meeting between her father and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, clearly because of her foreign policy experience. Whether King Rump wants his princess and princelings to run the government while he sleeps late at Trump Tower remains to be seen (they will be in competition with extremist and royal jester Mike "Dense" Pense for the delegated Presidency).

Beyond the optics of a royal "court" are the serious questions of conflicts of interest, from the fairly trivial (Ivanka's hawking of her jewelry) to the significant (Rump's possible dealings with Russian oligarchs beholden to his friend Vladimir Putin). Rump trusts that he'll be able to get away with the conflicts because he'll have his reality-averse cult followers backing him up, and threatening Rethugs who break ranks. Let's hope that officials in the "permanent" Government -- the Justice Department, Treasury, CIA, etc., if not the Rethug Congress --  won't be unpatriotic in looking the other way while Rump mixes business with governing, always for his financial benefit.

BONUS:

Ivanka is Trump's Dick Cheney, right?

— Schooley (@Rschooley) November 18, 2016

2. But who is in the room when Trump has his first meeting with the Japanese. Ivanka!

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) November 18, 2016

4. Lets say later Ivanka wants to build a hotel in Japan and needs permits. Think she'll have a problem?

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) November 18, 2016

(photo: Reuters)

Another Inmate Will Be Helping To Run The Trump Asylum (UPDATED)

As they say, if you're shocked by any of this, you haven't been paying attention. (Also, "elections have consequences.")

The appointment of alt- right anti- Semite Steve "Assputin" Bannon as chief strategist and senior counselor to neo- fascist wig stand Donald "Rump" Trump was a yuuge tell.  Then there was Putin- curious Michael Flynn as National Security Advisor, a crackpot and a person whose shrouded, conflict- of- interest background mimics a Russian Matryoshka nesting doll. Now, here comes the latest inmate of the fringe right asylum reportedly ready to take his place in a critical government position.

Meet reported front- runner for Attorney General, Alabama Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, an early Rump supporter and immigration hardliner. A person once deemed too racist to be appointed a Federal judge (by a Republican Senate!), Beauregard has a nasty history, as one might expect from an Alabama Republican:

Back in the mid-1980s, when Sessions was U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, President Ronald Reagan nominated him to become a federal judge. But during the nomination process, allegations emerged that Sessions had called a black attorney “boy,” that he suggested a white civil rights lawyer was a race traitor, that he joked he liked the Ku Klux Klan until he found out they smoked marijuana and that he referred to civil rights groups as “un-American” organizations trying to “force civil rights down the throats of people who were trying to put problems behind them.”

You were expecting Eric Holder?

More recently, here's where Beauregard stands on the issues:

-  Voted no on reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act;

-  Voted yes on Constitutional ban on same- sex marriage;

-  Voted no on adding sexual orientation to definition of hate crimes;

 -  Voted yes on loosening restrictions on wiretapping cell phones;

-  Voted yes on ending special funding for minority- and women- owned businesses;

-  Rated 20% by the ACLU, indicating an anti- civil rights record;

-  Rated 0% by the HRC, indicating an anti- gay rights record;

-  Rated 7% by the NAACP, indicating an anti- affirmative action record.

Clearly, Beauregard stands firmly in the 19th Century.

So, we think it's safe to say Beauregard won't be looking after the best interests of women, minorities, or justice in general.  As a bonus, he seems the kind of AG that FBI Director Comey, his New York field office and Milwaukee County's skeevy Sheriff David Clarke (new Homeland Security Secretary?) can play ball with, though.

UPDATE:  Adding to the crackpottery at the most sensitive levels of government, there's this teabagger pol who's in line for CIA Director.  Nice. You think there'll be any pushback on Russia now?

UPDATE II:  Martin Longman takes a somewhat deeper dive into Flynn, Sessions and Pompeo (though, shall we say, the pool is rather shallow).

"Oh, And Can I Call You Terry?"

“If you travel to the US you should let me know." -- clueless stumblebum Donald "Rump" Trump, on a phone conversation with British Prime Minister Theresa May, showing an utter lack of sophistication and knowledge of protocol and diplomatic sense. He's already viewed as a buffoon by foreign leaders, and this type of breezy informality -- he also asked May to give his regards to Queen Elizabeth saying that he was "a big fan" -- shows how unprepared he is for the job. But we already knew that.

Today's Cartoon - No, America, There Isn't A Santa Trump*

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(Rob Rogers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

* Apologies (?) to Francis Church and the Trump voters of America.  Also, see below.