Nancy

Documentation. Witnesses. Facts. Truth. That's what they're afraid of.
Showing posts with label #OhTheHorrors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #OhTheHorrors. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

The Daily Combover - February 14, 2017

The goal here at the Combover isn't necessarily to cover little known evils of the Trump Administration but it's to serve as a reminder of all the many atrocities that have been occurring. Sometimes that involves the biggest news item of the day, but other times it might not. What's big for media ratings sometimes has nothing to do with what has the greatest marginal impact on society.

Today we watched Trump draft his 45th Presidential Order (Presidential Memos and Executive Orders). It probably had something to do with loving himself as the 45th President on Valentine's Day.

Barack Obama actually had more at this point than Trump had but his pace dropped considerably after the first 100 days. It does not appear Trump is willing to switch to a higher gear or press his cruise control button any time soon. And who could blame him? He may not even have a full term to enact his agenda.


Heck, he's going to lose at least 8 hours recombing-over that comb-over.

Today the majority of the media has laser-guidance on what is unquestionably the most important story of the day: Russian Influence in the Trump Administration.  No, they're not all doing it correctly. I'm looking right at you CNN. But they are all (except for the NY Times) aware that the Russian involvement doesn't end with Flynn. And there's no doubt about it that this is at the very least a huge embarrassment for Trump and at most an indictment of his entire pres regime (you didn't really think I'd use the P-word, did you?).

So where does it end? Last week, when Japanese Prime Minister Abe visited, he gave Trump's ass such a deep tongue bath that he found himself kissing Sean Hannity. Trudeau definitely wasn't going to sink to that level. He even avoided The Handshake entirely by grabbing Trump by the shoulder:
How long before world leaders start snubbing us? Remember when Netanyahu snubbed Obama and it caused quite a bit of outrage? SNL put together a skit a few weeks ago where the President of Zimbabwe threatens Trump and then hangs up on him. Side note, you all do know where that came from right? If not you can "go and hang on a banana tree."

So as Trump deals with the "Real News,"
Remember that the biggest issue is that our government is officially compromised. Not just in terms of Russian interference, but also in terms of our image. We're no longer going to be respected. Just how much of an impact that will have on us depends on how long we allow this charade to go on. What if the US Dollar loses Reserve Currency status? Here's a good discussion on the history and repercussions. Can we withstand another major recession within a 10 year period? Not if you pair a loss of reserve status with a 20-35% tariff.

I know what you're all thinking: Will Mnuchin be ok? That massive investment he has in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will collapse if the economy crashes again. But don't worry. He's probably going to sell as soon as they are allowed to earn a profit again. Who gets to make that decision? The Treasury Secretary. For the life of me I can't recall Mnuchin's relationship with the Treasury Secretary... It'll probably hit me as soon as this article goes up.

Until then. I'll catch you on the flip side.

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Wednesday, February 8, 2017

The Daily Combover - February 8, 2017

Today it looks like the Fontange Fuhrer finally realized there's a White House blog that collects all of his readouts and transcripts. Because suddenly it's running propaganda ads like this repost of a WSJ opinion column on Neil Gorsuch. (And by the way does anyone else feel like that graphic looks like a credit score and interest rate ad taken from a bank page?)

In any case, it's not like it's an illegal move by any means but it's strange given the typical role of the White House blog.

Trump began his day with the usual Tweetstorm of Hate and then conducted his first official act of the day following the likely-confirmation of Jeff "I left my hood in my other car" Sessions: Listing the members of a recent meeting of Grifters Anonymous Announcing his cabinet:

President Donald J. Trump today formally announced the 24 people who will be serving with him on his Cabinet. 
Vice President Michael R. Pence
Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson
Secretary of the Treasury-designate Steven T. Mnuchin
Secretary of Defense James Mattis
Attorney General-designate Jeff Sessions
Secretary of the Interior-designate Ryan Zinke
Secretary of Agriculture-designate Sonny Perdue (announced)
Secretary of Commerce-designate Wilbur L. Ross, Jr.
Secretary of Labor-designate Andrew F. Puzder
Secretary of Health and Human Services-designate Thomas Price
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development-designate Benjamin S. Carson, Sr.
Secretary of Transportation Elaine L. Chao
Secretary of Energy-designate James Richard Perry
Secretary of Education Elisabeth Prince DeVos
Secretary of Veterans Affairs-designate David J. Shulkin
Secretary of Homeland Security John F. Kelly
White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus
U.S. Trade Representative-designate Robert Lighthizer
Director of National Intelligence-designate Daniel Coats
Representative of the United States to the United Nations Nikki R. Haley
Director of the Office of Management and Budget-designate Mick Mulvaney
Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Mike Pompeo
Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency-designate Scott Pruitt
Administrator of the Small Business Administration-designate Linda E. McMahon


I could end right now with a "We're Doomed!" and then cry myself to sleep but unfortunately there's still more to this show. From flaunting his post-Muslim Ban strategy of blaming the dishonest corrupt media and liberals, to promoting crony-capitalism while sitting in the Oval Office, to shitting on the Constitution's Emoluments clause, it's pretty clear that Bannon may have his influence but Trump is going to make sure he comes out of this with money and power.

So let's peek over at Twitter and hopefully end today's column on a high note. Trump still can't get over the fact that some judges had the audacity to protect the Constitution and Name of this Country against his onslaught:

While that was going on, he made sure to keep the grift going with a pair of Tweets helping out his family's investments into Intel and his daughters' chintzy clothing and accessory lines.

You didn't really believe he'd separate himself from his business, did you?

And then finally capping it off with a series of Tweets bashing the media.
About that high note? Never mind. 49% of this country believes Trump is truthful.

We're doomed!

I'm going to cry myself to sleep now. Catch you on the flip side.

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Tuesday, February 7, 2017

The Daily Combover - February 7, 2017

Surely one out of 50 of the Senators who voted to confirm Betsy DeVos isn't going to sleep well tonight, right? I mean they must have some compassion, right? Or is American Conservativism an actual mental disorder? It's pretty clear that in today's America, the inmates are running the asylum.

We, here at the Combover, recognize that for every glimmer of hope we have in resisting Trump, there are countless evils being done in its place.  Yes, we managed to put enough pressure on the administration to put it on the defensive with the Muslim Ban.  But we're essentially going to be helpless as the Department of Education is about to be shut down in favor of school vouchers and other-such profit-first schemes in the name of Betsy DeVos's version of Jesus. You know the one that enjoys higher crime rates, lower economic productivity, oh and what every conservative really wants at heart -- more abortions. You see, schooling builds human capital. It's something economists have researched since the dawn of industrialization (though that last Mincer link is to one of the most cited papers in all of economics and it's only about 70 years old). But it's more than just that. human capital doesn't just mean people will earn higher wages. It means they are less likely to commit crimes. They are more likely to continually build on their productivity.  And, yes, more schooling means more sexual education which, in turn, leads to fewer abortions.

But Trump and DeVos will be sure to put an end to that because private education has potential for short run profits. And in our cutthroat capitalist system, short run profits are better than life itself.

And then the morning comes.

You'd think Trump would be in a good mood. His buddy Robert Kraft just made millions off of his 5th Superbowl championship. One of his biggest donors, Betsy DeVos, gets her wish of getting to lay off half a million teachers as she destroys the public school system that our country has been languishing under since Jesus was riding around on his pet Stegosaurus.


But, no, instead he had to tell a lie about terrorist attacks being under-reported and then after being called out on it, it was time to double down and then even triple down. Luckily, he had O'Reilly around on Sunday to get people to lose interest on that because during the handjob O'Reilly was giving him, he decided that he wanted to ask Trump about Some Dude named Putin. Look, Putin sounds like a real nice guy and all, but it's pretty clear Trump doesn't know him. Know how I know? Because Trump said so this morning:
Trump's so amazing that he even started a hashtag for it: #1in. What a guy!

Know how awesome Trump is? He could lie to a sheriff association about murder rates and those spineless sheriffs would just lap it up. Heck, he could probably talk to them about destroying someone and they would just sit there and laugh. I hope it was worth dislodging Sean Hannity from Trump's ass to get a good lick. But Trump doesn't laugh at stuff like that. when he says he's going to end someone, he means it. And that's why I haven't set foot on 5th Avenue my last few visits to the City.

So remember Republicans. When you vote in the next member of the cabinet, presumably Jeff Sessions, this is what you are enabling. And that doesn't just make you a Nazi sympathizer, it makes you every bit the Nazi that Trump and Bannon are. Sleep well tonight but remember, Nazis always lose.


Catch you on the flip side America. Hope your children still is learning by the time we get there.



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Friday, February 3, 2017

The Daily Combover - February 3, 2017

Another week down, 214 to go. This week we learned the Fontange Fuhrer really does want the world to end. Clearly Shadow President Bannon has wrested control of the circus peanut Trump calls a brain, and is enacting his vision for the world. Thankfully the Indonesian press is willing to go where our media won't go and has uncovered exactly what that vision is:
This is a fact that should concern every American.
In the book, authors William Strauss and Neil Howe theorize that the history of a people moves in 80-100 year cycles called “saeculum.” This is an idea going back to the ancient Greeks. They believed that at a given saeculum’s end would come “ekpyrosis,” a cataclysmic event that destroys the old order and brings in a new one in a trial of fire.
This era of change is known as “The Fourth Turning,” and Bannon, like Strauss and Howe, believes we are in the midst of one right now.
According to the book, the last two Fourth Turnings America experienced were The Civil War and Reconstruction, and then The Great Depression and World War II. Before that, it was the Revolutionary War.
All of these periods were marked by periods of dread and decay in which the American people were forced to unite to rebuild a new future, but only after a massive conflict in which many lives were lost. It all starts with a catalyst event, then there’s a period of regeneracy, after that there is a defining climax in which a war for the old order is fought, and then finally there is a resolution in which a new world order is stabilized.
Keep that in mind as you try to comprehend the motivation behind Trump's actions. With that caveat in mind, let's explore Trump's second Friday in office.

We'll begin with the overnight news that a major terror cell committed unspeakable atrocities in Bowling Green, KY. It was so bone-chilling that only one person was willing to stand up and talk about it in the press.
Breaking news: Kellyanne retracts her lie changes her story.



Yesterday Trump decided to pick a really dumb fight with Governor Schwarzeneggar at the Prayer Breakfast because he couldn't read his prepared remarks since he refuses to wear his glasses in public and couldn't remember what he was supposed to talk about. After being introduced by Mark Burnett, Trump called on people to "pray for better ratings" for Governor Schwarzeneggar. And thus we begin our day with the response:

Followed by Trump's 4:30AM counter:

Which predictably led to more trolling from Governor Schwarzeneggar:

Infuriated, Trump lashed out against Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull again, forcing Turnbull to just go along with Trump's side of the story.

Very nice indeed.

Still not satisfied, he reissued sanctions against Iran while removing them from Russia.  And then it was time for breakfast and the morning news. This morning, along with the first Friday of every month, the BLS issued its monthly jobs report.  In it, we learned that in the last month of the Obama Presidency, the US added 227,000 new jobs.  Trump salivated as he read those numbers. Quickly he dispatched Dumb Spice to make sure Trump would get the credit that Trump deserved for such amazing job numbers. Big League!

The rest of the day was filled with more condemnations of the attempted terror attack at the Louvre while continuing to pretend like the attack in Quebec never happened.
Final thoughts for the weekend:
I agree and let's start with the guy killing Lady Liberty:

Keep up the pressure this weekend. Catch you on the flip side.
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Tuesday, January 24, 2017

The Daily Combover - January 24, 2017 - The Dam Has Broken

It's Day 5 of Dear Leader's tenure and it looks like the past four days have just been practice.

Fine AI, not practice. Let's call it warm-ups.

As the #DailyCombover was going up yesterday, Dear Leader was working on another massive shutdown. This time he put a gag order on the EPA (similar to the one placed on NPS a few days ago) and suspended their grants. More on this below.

And you may ask yourself, 'how did I get here?' And the answer is by being distracted. Just as the Tennis Ball Machine of Terror was on auto-fire during the campaign season, now Trump has his underlings distracting us with stories of #CrowdSize and #VoterFraud which keep the media off-kilter. Today's false narrative delivered by Baghdad Bob Spicer was about conflicts of interest. Oh the irony. Luckily, the interwebs know all.

Today Trump began his day even earlier than yesterday. At 2AM as he was headed to the salon, he notified us that he was preparing for a 9AM meeting with automobile executives.
That meeting couldn't have lasted too long because a little before 11 AM Trump showed us why he gagged the EPA when he signed an order authorizing his first major American Infrastructure project -- pipeline expansion.  Well at least he created jobs... for Canada's TransCanada Corp.
Now that EPA gag order makes sense, right? But what about the impact on commercial agriculture? Oh yeah, Trump also gagged the USDA and apparently stopped them from making new agricultural and economic reports via ARS and ERS. Your diligent chronicler now has to find a new project for his students. (Side note: Couldn't they have said something other than 'this database is no longer being updated'?)

On to the appointments. Trump got a clean sweep today of all of his nominees. From sending Nikki Haley to the (soon-to-be-defunct) UN to keeping Comey on for another term, Trump really has had so much winning that my head is spinning.

UPDATES:
1. Trump is threatening to send in the National Guard into Chicago because of the 24 gun murders they had last year. Why not just pass and enforce a gun ban? Now more people will die.

2. Trump just banned visas to individuals from 7 Muslim countries. He'said fulfilling every one of his twisted promises.

Keep up the pressure on your Senators and Congressmen and remember to stay safe out there.

Catch you on the Flip side.

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Friday, January 20, 2017

The Daily Combover - January 20, 2017 - Inaugural Atrocities Edition

Think of the one thing that, in your opinion, the government does best. Now brace yourself because there is a good chance that the government won't be doing it any more by Monday if not already today.

You might not know it if you've been watching CNN coverage gushing over the Trumps and comparing them to the Kennedys, but the minute Trump took his hand off the Bible, a series of destructive actions were set in place that would make any Bond or Batman villain jealous. "The Trumpster" has been unleashed.

When we learned that Trump had only made 4% of his appointments most probably assumed that was out of laziness or incompetence. But what if it was to avoid dissenting opinions? Trump has proven himself to be every bit the authoritarian Mussolini was at his gatherings. And now he's putting it into practice.

Some call it corporatism, others oligarchs, and others simply call it libertarianism. Regardless of your preferred nomenclature, the outcome is the same: extract as much value as you can out of the resources at hand (land, labor, and capital) and maximize short run profits with no regard for future implications. To you, the worker, that means you are going to be expected to put forth maximum effort at the lowest possible pay they can get away with giving to you.

In case you're in the 32% of the country made up of leftwing ideologues and Trump voters that are happy about Trump right now, it's important that, as you read this list, you realize both sides are far from the same thing. His policies will directly and indirectly lead to the death of millions by increasing poverty and uninsured levels.

With no further ado, here are today's atrocities:
1. An executive order "easing of the burden" of the Affordable Care Act. Read this as going as far he he possibly could under the law to empower the Republicans to prevent people from receiving health care coverage.

2. His Chief-of-Staff, Reince Priebus, issued a memo halting the passage of any new regulations at the Federal level.  All signs point to this being the first stage of a rollback of federal regulation across the board.

3. An executive order eliminating the fee discount under the FHA that most middle class households took advantage of when buying a home.  This will have a huge drag on home sales. Existing home sales (which are the primary units affected by this) currently make up about a $900 billion annual impact on GDP. That's roughly 5% of our GDP.  If sales slow down by 20%, that's a 1% reduction in GDP.  Historically a reduction in home sales is often always followed by a recession.

Give a hug to someone who needs it and then get on the phone with your Senator urging them to stand up against this administration's egregious overreach. Catch you on the flip side. 
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Wednesday, January 4, 2017

The Federal Minimum Wage is on the Chopping Block

Back in 2013, the Obama White House put out a fact sheet detailing the impact of raising the minimum wage to $9. Eventually the President realized the GOP didn't want to play ball so he did the only thing he could do and raised it for Federal contractors  (to $10.20/hour).

At the time there was some contention about minimum wages lowering employment and at the same time not affecting any significant number of workers.

But as the linked fact sheet shows, most research has found no significant negative impact of minimum wage hikes on employment thanks to the monopsonization of our workforce.  Furthermore, raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $9 for 5 million people has a direct impact on the wages of 10 million other people as well (those between $7.25 and $9). There may also be an indirect spillover as minimum wage workers increase consumption and therefore wages in other sectors also rise but that typically takes a bit of time to unfold. This is what the White House referred to as the "ripple effect."

Jump ahead 4 years to today and the opposite proposal is coming from our incoming government. They want to axe the minimum wage entirely. They cite statistics from the BLS showing that the number of minimum wage workers has fallen below 3 million people and they claim the states can deal with that <1% of the population. What they ignore are the 20.6 million people who are near-minimum wage. While under 3 million people are earning $7.25 or less, 10 million people earn between $7.25 and $9, and another 8 million people earn between $9 and $10.10 per hour.

So who would be affected by the reverse?: While 29 States plus DC have minimum wages above the Federal minimum and therefore wouldn't be affected by this, 21 states are at or even below the Federal minimum. So those 3 million or so workers are mostly clustered in those 21 states.  And just as others would find their wages rising when the minimum wage increases, so would we see the wages of others falling when the minimum wage decreases. As a result, at least 10 million people would immediately be looking at a smaller paycheck once the repeal is enacted. Who would be worst off?

Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin all have State Minimum Wages at the Federal level of $7.25. So workers in those eight States will not be directly impacted.

And Indiana and Kansas use the Federal Minimum but have a sub-minimum wage of $4.25 for teenagers. That brings us up to 10 of the 21 that will not be directly impacted.

Major impacts on wages will be felt on the following States:
Georgia and Wyoming have a State Minimum Wage of $5.15. And Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Virginia all use the Federal Minimum Wage but do not have a State Minimum Wage -- which means they basically view $7.25 as a ceiling and not a floor.

And using BLS statistics,  what we can see is that 20% of the workers in those 11 states will see their wage fall. The only one of those 11 states that has a Democratic governor who wields enough power to prevent a collapse of the wage structure is Virginia. Workers in the other 10 are in big trouble. 
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Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Cutting Taxes without a Tax Cut

As Jason pointed out recently, eliminating Obamacare would provide a huge tax cut to the top 0.1% -- about $154,000 on average. Republicans also have plans to cut taxes beyond that through a massive cut to the corporate rate, but even that won't be enough for their big money donors. So how do Ryan, Trump, and the rest of the GOP continue to cut taxes when such policies are incredibly unpopular?

Just as eliminating Obamacare would provide a massive tax cut, privatization of our social safety net (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and disability assistance) would provide billions in tax cuts to individuals and businesses.

For 99% of their employees, corporations pay 7.65% taxes for their share of FICA. The top 1% of workers have incomes that exceed $118k, and therefore employers will only pay 1.45% on the portion of income for workers exceeding that threshold (this is a mirror of what workers pay).

The average Fortune 500 company employs 52,900 workers. The bottom 99% of earners would be 52,371 workers. And the average earnings per worker is $48,098.63. So, ignoring the top end (the executives), we can see that a typical large company wold save $192.7 million if Paul Ryan is able to eliminate FICA. Add it up and you hit $100 billion per year just to the Fortune 500 companies. Now that's a tax cut.
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Friday, December 16, 2016

A Visit to North Carolina, or a Reminder that Republilcans are Never the Good Guys Anymore

Ever.

I'm not going to go too much in depth on this story; Josh Marshall and the local NC press are covering it really well.

I just thought that in the context of how Republicans conduct themselves in the context of a close race (see Trump's Nuremberg Rall... er, I mean Thank You Tours while trying to kill recounts) while the Democrats remain incredibly respectful of democracy, our readers should know what the Republicans are doing in North Carolina.

The sitting Republican governor Pat McCrory, lost a narrow race to Democrat Roy Cooper. He tried to pull out all the stops to have a recount (which is fine by me), but after not getting his way there, here's what the Republican legislature is up to:

The GOP gambit in the short term would deny the governor certain powers right before Democrat Roy Cooper is sworn in, tilting the political playing field to the advantage of the GOP legislature. But the move also defied recent trends toward a stronger governor in North Carolina.
"The trend, over the last, I would say, several decades, has been for the office of governor to get stronger," Eamon told TPM, adding that if passed, the new proposals would mark a big reversal.
The extraordinary power grab by the lame-duck GOP legislature comes after Cooper defeated Gov. Pat McCrory (R) in a bitter election battle that dragged a month past Election Day. After a special session this week to address disaster relief legislation, the Republican-led state General Assembly called an additional surprise special session and proceeded to introduce legislation that would strip the governor's authority when it comes to political appointees and reduce his power over the election system.
In a proposal from North Carolina House Republicans, the governor's cabinet appointees would now be subject to approval from the state Senate, which Eamon said would be a "dramatic change." The legislation would also reduce from 1,500 to 300 the number of "exempt positions" — which are often political in nature — appointed by the governor. This comes after the same Republican legislature in 2013 increased the number of exempt positions McCrory could appoint by about 1,000 jobs. The bill would also allow many of the political employees appointed by McCrory to stay on as permanent staffers under Cooper's administration.
Michael Bitzer, a political science professor at Catawba College, told TPM that the proposal would shift political appointees from the governor to other elected officials, many of whom are Republicans.
State GOP lawmakers in particular gave more power to the state superintendent now that a Republican has been elected to the office. Bitzer said that shifting power to the state superintendent "would basically be a slight against the governor-elect." Under the proposal, the governor would no longer have control over charter schools and would not be able to appoint members to the state education board or the University of North Carolina system's board of trustees.

They lost the Governorship, so they take power away from the governor. When they control an executive branch, they give power back to it. It's SOOOO Machiavellian. They they arrest anyone who complains.

They do not believe in democracy, and they cheat. Let me say it again. They cheat. So when Democrats say that the Russians may have hacked our election (they did in some sense or another)  and that they need to put hurdles in front of minority voters seeking to vote, they're just coming up with another way to cheat. Just keep that in mind and never forget it.

#BothSidesDont
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Wednesday, December 14, 2016

Fight, Dammit! (UPDATED)

I'm sitting about two blocks from the White House as I type this...




I only have a minute, but Dahlia Lithwick and David S. Cohen have a piece up at the NYT about the Democrats' possibilities of overturning this election:

There’s no shortage of legal theories that could challenge Mr. Trump’s anointment, but they come from outsiders rather than the Democratic Party. Impassioned citizens have been pleading with electors to vote against Mr. Trump; law professors have argued that winner-take-all laws for electoral votes are unconstitutional; a small group, the Hamilton Electors, is attempting to free electors to vote their consciences; and a new theory has arisen that there is legal precedent for courts to give the election to Mrs. Clinton based on Russian interference. All of these efforts, along with the grass-roots protests, boycotts and petitions, have been happening without the Democratic Party. The most we’ve seen is a response to the C.I.A. revelations, but only with Republicans onboard to give Democrats bipartisan cover.
Take the recount efforts in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. While the Democratic Party relitigates grudges in the press, Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate who received about 64 million fewer votes than Mrs. Clinton, has led the effort. The Democrats have grudgingly participated from the sidelines, but only because public perception forced them to. This effort has proved feeble, with a Pennsylvania judge denying the request because it was “later than last minute.”
Contrast the Democrats’ do-nothingness to what we know the Republicans would have done. If Mr. Trump had lost the Electoral College while winning the popular vote, an army of Republican lawyers would have descended on the courts and local election officials. The best of the Republican establishment would have been filing lawsuits and infusing every public statement with a clear pronouncement that Donald Trump was the real winner. And they would have started on the morning of Nov. 9, using the rhetoric of patriotism and courage.
There are so many conflicting opinions and stories, but what I do know is, when Dahlia Lithwick writes about the law, you listen. Democrats, FIGHT!

UPDATE (12/14/16. 6:41 PM): Rude Pundit has more on exactly why this is so urgent:

After all the lunatic conspiracy theories of this stupid century that's in its hormonal teenage years, the 9/11 insider job, the climate change "hoax," birtherism, and the multiple nefarious crimes of Hillary Clinton and her cronies, we are facing something that is more real than any of it. Right now, there is more evidence than all of those combined times 1000 that Russia, a nation that is antagonistic to the United States, might have, at the very least, taken advantage of a trove of hacked emails to push the needle just enough to get a dangerously inexperienced egomaniac with business ties to Moscow elected president. (This is not to mention the assist from the Republican FBI director.) It's also entirely possible that Russia fucked with the election on multiple fronts, up to and including manipulation of a candidate. And the evidence is not coming from internet savages and talk radio masturbators, but from sources at intelligence agencies and major media outlets. Yeah, the CIA has done a shit-ton of evil in the world. But they sure as hell aren't always wrong.
So all of this is scary, man. Like stomach-dropping scary. One preservation instinct that will kick in really quickly is to try to forget about it, to just let the installation of the Trump presidency happen and go about our business. We all pretended that George W. Bush actually won in 2000 and didn't burn the joint down. Except this time is different. People across the political spectrum understand that Trump is a real and present danger to Americans, whether through eliminating their health insurance or getting us into more idiotic wars. We need to know the extent of Russian interference as quickly as possible. And, if such interference existed, the election itself needs to be challenged on every possible front. Take things to the Supreme Court. If President Obama has evidence that the Trump campaign had any coordination with Russia in regards to the hack, the response needs to be forceful and direct, possibly including arrest of those involved. Either we give a damn about democracy or we don't. At the very least, let us believe that Trump was elected without foreign intervention. Let us just be disappointed with his idiot hordes as he sends us to the reeducation camps.
Not one word in there is hyperbolic.

There is no "proof" of Russian interference (i.e. no smoking gun), but based on the kind of evidence that's come out over the course of months or even years, there is no court in the country, including conservative ones, that would not put a stay on any actions going forward until things are sorted out in any other context.

If Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi do nothing about this, it will change my opinion of  them and their legacy drastically for the worse. I do not want the first set of political heroes I've ever had in my 36 years (man, I've been cynical) to go down as cowards who allowed a hostile foreign government to have caused every goddamn thing that they've accomplished to be flushed down the toilet and then have that toilet stuffed with dirty, fetid baby diapers.
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Sunday, December 11, 2016

The Evidence, Presented

Two really comprehensive posts to share on Russia's interference with this election...

Marcy Wheeler provides a very detailed, somewhat technical roundup of the evidence:

At a minimum, to blame Russia for tampering with the election, you need high degree of confidence that GRU hacked the DNC (item 2), and shared those documents via some means with Wikileaks (item 8). What is new about Friday’s story is that, after months of not knowing how the hacked documents got from Russian hackers to Wikileaks, CIA now appears to know that people close to the Russian government transferred the documents (item 8). In addition, CIA now appears confident that all this happened to help Trump win the presidency (item 13).
On Twitter (I've become a Twitter junkie for the first time ever), Grudge (@grudging1) lists everything that he/she can think of that ties Trump to the Russians, beginning here:

I'm not going to editorialize much here; it's safe to say that I was in the Obama camp of being pretty sure (in his case, it seems he outright knew) that Russia was trying to manipulate the election in Trump's favor but that I didn't think it would be worth bringing up more than Clinton and her people did because I didn't think he had a chance of winning (and if I'm kicking myself now, I can't imagine how Obama will ever forgive himself).

Ultimately it is the President, invested with the powers as Commander-in-Chief, who could have chosen to act aggressively against Moscow. But he wanted to present a unified front across the American political spectrum. He wanted bipartisan support—and when McConnell rebuffed this effort (more on that in a bit), the White House decided to take the cautious route to “name and shame” the Russians.
This was, to put it mildly, an ineffective strategy.
The White House should have pulled out all the stops to halt this obvious threat to the electoral process, and let the political chips fall where they may. Obama is well aware of the GOP’s massive resistance strategy against his policies—just ask Merrick Garland—but this serious challenge to our civilization should have stiffened this President’s resolve. But it didn’t.
Obama could have retaliated brutally, clandestinely, mercilessly, creatively, painfully, unilaterally—but he didn’t.
Ultimately, a mild reaction was Obama’s decision; a poor decision. But it was his decision.

It all adds up to Trump's illegitimacy, according to Justin Rosario:

The time for debate is over. Donald Trump's "win" is not legitimate by any definition and every position he fills, law he signs or executive order he pens must be considered an illegal power grab by the Republican Party.
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Legitimizing the slow moving coup Republicans are on the verge of pulling off means the end of the American Experiment. We allowed our election to be stolen by a foreign power and the greedy Republicans enabled it with no thought to the cost. The Democratic Party is all that stands between the world and a super power now turned rogue nation. If they can't fight back, we're facing a new Dark Ages we may not recover from.

I still see only one solution to pursue. Say it with me: #LockThemUpandRunItBack
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Saturday, December 10, 2016

Quick Thought: Did Putin expect retaliation?

I'll ask it again, did Putin expect retaliation?

Two months ago in little covered news, we learned:

Russia is ordering all of its officials to fly home any relatives living abroad amid heightened tensions over the prospect of global war, it has been claimed. 
Politicians and high-ranking figures are said to have received a warning from president Vladimir Putin to bring their loved-ones home to the 'Motherland', according to local media.
As we know, we did nothing to retaliate against the email hacks. It's possible that emboldened Putin to follow up with hacks on Germany as well.

In any case, it's time for President Obama to act.
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#LockThemUpandRunItBack

Someone was talking about the Republicans as traitors a few hours ago...

Been waiting for something good to be written about tonight's big news, and Karoli at Crooks and Liars did that.

Shall we take a moment to allow that to sink in? Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader, sworn to uphold and defend the United States Constitution, chose to threaten the White House with a smear if they disclosed this information to the American people.
What happened to defending against enemies, domestic and foreign, Senator McConnell? Is this treason?
What makes this really interesting is what we can see in the rear view mirror. The Trump campaign fought tooth and nail to end the Michigan recount, in a state where there is some evidence seals were broken on voting machines there.
We don't know if malware was installed on those machines. We do know many machines in Detroit malfunctioned on Election Day, however. But what we don't know is how that impacted the final counts in Michigan, mostly because they ended the recount.
Yes, we had reports of Russian hacks. We had daily dribbles from Wikileaks, clearly intended to drive a wedge between Bernie and Hillary supporters while painting Hillary Clinton as Satan in a pantsuit.
But there's more. There's always more. You may recall the day that Rep. Michael McCaul inadvertently slipped during an appearance CNN and said the RNC was hacked by the Russians, too.

We must be getting closer to the Democrats really doing something. From what I've read so far tonight, Trump (and by extension, probably Pence), McConnell, Ryan, Comey, and others could be implicated. Can Obama cut a deal to kill the investigation in exchange for a Clinton Presidency? Probably not, so we really need a new election.

It's gonna be an interesting next few days... I don't think this story is going anywhere.
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Friday, December 9, 2016

Normal

Hot off the presses from TPM...

Republicans apparently aren't going to be satisfied with phasing out Medicare. They're going to try to pass huge cuts to Social Security this year too. Not Bush-style partial phaseout but just big, big cuts. And you're out of luck even if you're a current beneficiary.
More shortly. (JASON'S UPDATE, 12/9/16, 5:02 PM: Here's the more)
I'm about to lose my lunch. They need to be stopped cold.

And here's a reason to do it.

President Barack Obama has directed U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct an investigation into hacking attacks related to the U.S. election and issue a report before he leaves office next month, White House counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco said.
The report, which will be provided to Congress but not necessarily made public, will examine what impact hacking by Russia may have had on the election last month, Monaco said Friday at a breakfast in Washington hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.
Reiterating what I said yesterday, only now 100X so:

This cannot be about "grace," or "hashtags," or "the burden of being the President of the United States." Donald Trump doesn't give a shit molecule about your "concerns" or "fears." It can't be about a "Sincere and Inspiring" farewell speech. It can't be about crossing our fingers and hoping Mitch McConnell doesn't end the filibuster or begging three Republicans to stand on the side of good on some issues when there is not a single issue or nominee on which the other side is pushing abject evil.
We need to hear more from how the top of our party plans to handle this and what we should be doing, because we're fighting the top of theirs. This is a state of emergency. No more words. Plans. Actions. Barack, Hillary, Joe, Tim, Nancy, Chuck... do something. 
Back to the Bloomberg story:

"We may be crossing into a new threshold and it’s incumbent upon us to take stock of that," Monaco said. The report will “impart lessons learned,” she said.

This also cannot be about "imparting lessons learned." This has to be about stopping history from repeating itself. All of the times the Republicans have gotten away with treason. Treason. No exaggeration.

Nixon and Vietnam:

President Johnson had at the time a habit of recording all of his phone conversations, and newly released tapes from 1968 detailed that the FBI had “bugged” the telephones of the South Vietnamese ambassador and of Anna Chennault, one of Nixon’s aides. Based on the tapes, says Taylor for the BBC, we learn that in the time leading up to the Paris Peace talks, “Chennault was despatched to the South Vietnamese embassy with a clear message: the South Vietnamese government should withdraw from the talks, refuse to deal with Johnson, and if Nixon was elected, they would get a much better deal.”

And Johnson let him off because:

Though the basic story of Nixon’s involvement in stalling the Vietnam peace talks has been around before, the new tapes, says the Atlantic Wire, describe how President Johnson knew all about the on-goings but chose not to bring them to the public’s attention: he thought that his intended successor, Hubert Humphrey, was going to beat Nixon in the upcoming election anyway. And, by revealing that he knew about Nixon’s dealings, he’d also have to admit to having spied on the South Vietnamese ambassador.
And Nixon became President for the next two terms.

Reagan's "October Surprise":

In January 1992 I published my first journalistic article ever. Published in Puerto Rico’s Claridad weekly newspaper, it was titled “The October Surprise”. In it I affirmed that the 1980 Reagan-Bush campaign bargained secretly with Iranian radicals for the postponement of the liberation of 52 Americans that they were holding hostage. These hostages were employees of the US embassy in Iran’s capital city of Teheran, which had been stormed by militants loyal to the Ayatollah Khomeini in November 1979. This secret deal, known as the October Surprise, frustrated the attempts of US president Jimmy Carter to obtain the hostages’ release in time for the elections in November. This failure cost Carter his reelection, and swept Republican candidate Ronald Reagan into the presidency. Polls carried out before the election showed that the hostage issue was of top importance in the minds of the American electorate.
The Republican campaign’s main negotiators in this deal were George H. W. Bush, vice presidential candidate and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director, and William Casey, the campaign’s director and veteran spook who spied for the Office of Strategic Services during World War Two. Once elected, president Reagan appointed Casey to direct the CIA.
The hostages were freed the same day Reagan was sworn in as his nation’s fortieth president on January 1981. What was in it for the Iranians? Weapons, tons of them. Iran needed them badly in order to repel an invasion by Iraq.

This one's not confirmed like the others, but given the context of the others, particularly the next one, is pretty damned likely. And Reagan ended up President for two terms.

Iran-Contra:

The Iran–Contra affair (Persian: ماجراي ایران-کنترا‎‎, Spanish: caso Irán-Contra), also referred to as Irangate,[1] Contragate[2] or the Iran–Contra scandal, was a political scandal in the United States that occurred during the second term of the Reagan Administration. Senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, which was the subject of an arms embargo.[3] They hoped thereby to secure the release of several U.S. hostages and to fund the Contras in Nicaragua. Under the Boland Amendment, further funding of the Contras by the government had been prohibited by Congress.
The scandal began as an operation to free the seven American hostages being held in Lebanon by Hezbollah, a paramilitary group with Iranian ties connected to the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution. It was planned that Israel would ship weapons to Iran, and then the United States would resupply Israel and receive the Israeli payment. The Iranian recipients promised to do everything in their power to achieve the release of the U.S. hostages.[4][5] Large modifications to the plan were devised by Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North of the National Security Council in late 1985, in which a portion of the proceeds from the weapon sales was diverted to fund anti-Sandinista and anti-communist rebels, or Contras, in Nicaragua.[4]
While President Ronald Reagan was a supporter of the Contra cause,[6] the evidence is disputed as to whether he authorized the diversion of the money raised by the Iranian arms sales to the Contras.[4][5][7] Handwritten notes taken by Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger on December 7, 1985, indicate that Reagan was aware of potential hostage transfers with Iran, as well as the sale of Hawk and TOW missiles to "moderate elements" within that country.[8] Weinberger wrote that Reagan said "he could answer to charges of illegality but couldn't answer to the charge that 'big strong President Reagan passed up a chance to free the hostages'".[8] After the weapon sales were revealed in November 1986, Reagan appeared on national television and stated that the weapons transfers had indeed occurred, but that the United States did not trade arms for hostages.[9] The investigation was impeded when large volumes of documents relating to the scandal were destroyed or withheld from investigators by Reagan administration officials.[10] On March 4, 1987, Reagan returned to the airwaves in a nationally televised address, taking full responsibility for any actions that he was unaware of, and admitting that "what began as a strategic opening to Iran deteriorated, in its implementation, into trading arms for hostages".[11]
Several investigations ensued, including those by the U.S. Congress and the three-person, Reagan-appointed Tower Commission. Neither found any evidence that President Reagan himself knew of the extent of the multiple programs.[4][5][7] Ultimately the sale of weapons to Iran was not deemed a criminal offense but charges were brought against five individuals for their support of the Contras. Those charges, however, were later dropped because the administration refused to declassify certain documents. The indicted conspirators faced various lesser charges instead. In the end, fourteen administration officials were indicted, including then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. Eleven convictions resulted, some of which were vacated on appeal.[12] The rest of those indicted or convicted were all pardoned in the final days of the presidency of George H. W. Bush, who had been vice-president at the time of the affair.[13] The Iran-Contra Affair and the ensuing deception to protect senior administration officials including President Reagan has been cast as an example of post-truth politics.

And we ended up with three terms of Bush presidencies.

There are others that are less talked-about, like Dana Rohrabacher's adventures in Afghanistan and his support of Russia in Crimea. And he's rumored to be up for Secretary of State.

So checking back in with "Cheeto Benito" (TM Rick Wilson),

“Why not get along with Russia?” Trump said, adding the Russians can help defeat Islamic State. On the perpetrator of the cyber attacks, he said, “it could be Russia, and it could be China, and it could be some guy in his home in New Jersey.”

This is what Trump sounds like when he's doing what Chez Pazienza calls acting like "the kid in their class who never studies and forgets to do his homework and so basically just wings it." We know very well by now that if he's doing it in reference to something where the truth has been totally established, he's lying. Just like Rudy Giuliani lied about his contacts with the FBI, which fit in perfectly with all of the above, and meanwhile using the following projection over and over about Clinton:

Giuliani, who said that he prosecuted and jailed thousands of people for doing a fraction of what Hillary Clinton did, said the Wikileaks emails prove the Clinton camp intended to break the law.

Which Trump also did regarding Donna Brazile (and about Hillary other times on the stump):

“She should be fired from the DNC. By the way, could you imagine if I did that? Bobby what would happen to me if I did that?” Trump said, turning to Knight, who was off to the side. “Electric chair, I think. The electric chair. If I did that, can you imagine?”
And Qusay Trump took to the absolute lowest level with this:

"The media has been her number one surrogate in this. Without the media, this wouldn't even be a contest. But the media has built her up. They've let her slide on every indiscrepancy, on every lie, on every DNC game trying to get Bernie Sanders out of the thing," Trump Jr. told Philadelphia-based conservative talk radio host Chris Stigall on Wednesday.
"I mean, if Republicans were doing that, they'd be warming up the gas chamber right now. It's a very different system -- there's nothing fair about it," Trump Jr. added.

Let's call them on it. Hillary did nothing wrong with her e-mails and they made references to gas chambers and execution. They are traitors and all of them should at least be in jail. LOCK THEM UP!

So, you know what? I'm not going to say this isn't normal, and I'm not going to say it's the new normal. It's been normal for 50 years, and we have to end it. Now. Democrats, are you listening? For all of our sakes, I really, really hope so. President Obama, call a State of Emergency, and sort this out. It may seem dictatorial, but we've got precedent.
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Thursday, December 8, 2016

I Don't Think Our Leaders Get It

#sorrynotsorry that my first day posting in a couple of days has been all doom and gloom, but this is where we really are.

Despite my initial well-documented skepticism (it's nice to have my archive back), Barack Obama is easily the favorite U.S. President of my lifetime. Hillary Clinton would've made a phenomenal successor and I think that her team is not getting enough credit for the job they did. It looks like Hillary may exceed Obama's 2012 vote total despite the fact that there were a huge number of third-party voters and that she was running to succeed a two-term President. Jennifer Palmieri and her team deserve a lot of credit for the job they did, despite the fact that they were institutionally cheated out of the election (forgetting anything hinky happening on Election Day at the polls, or the Electoral College).

In today's WaPo, Palmieri wrote:

I know how to be a gracious loser.
I could have let it go last week when Kellyanne Conway, Donald Trump’s campaign manager, challenged me to look her in the eye and say she ran a campaign that gave white supremacists a platform. I considered for a split second. I knew you were supposed to be gracious when you come for the post-election forum at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. But I decided this was a year where normal rules don’t apply. Speaking the truth was more important. 
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Our candidate gave us a good model to follow. She had the grace to call Trump on election night to congratulate him and concede. But in her concession speech she also challenged all of us to defend our rights and principles under the Constitution — rights and principles that she and many of the people who voted for her feared could be under threat in a Trump presidency. The campaign has ended, and we accept that Trump won. But we are not laying down our principles or abandoning our supporters.
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If we are not to take Trump’s words literally, he needs to explain what he does mean. The Trump team likes to tell Clinton supporters “hashtag ‘he’s your president.’ ” But this isn’t a one-way street. If Trump expects the Americans who did not vote for him to accept him as president, he needs to show that he accepts all of them as Americans. He needs to show that he understands their concerns and hears their fears.
I suggest he and his team try “hashtag ‘we are all Americans.’ ” We all have a role to play here. But it’s the winner who carries the burden of taking the lead in uniting the country. It’s the burden of leadership. It’s the burden of being the president of the United States.
 
I know Hillary had to make a concession speech. She lost, and she was following protocol. And Obama had to at least start working on a peaceful transition, because that's protocol too, and we (Team Blue) are CLEARLY the good guys. But once the Bannon and Sessions nominations happened, that had to be it. From Ari Berman:

And then, of course, Labor Department against labor.

This isn't normal. This is the complete destruction of everything that makes America prosperous, things that keep millions off the street, out of the hospital, and from death. On top of that, it disenfranchises voters to the point where democracy is a joke, and potentially sows the seeds of mass persecution. Hell, forget isn't normal. This is light years beyond that.

In the face of that, I feel like everything I've seen and heard from the Democratic leadership is bringing a pen to a nuke fight. We can't continue to ignore the fact that we've been put in a place where a majority of Americans vote for Democrats for the Presidency, the Senate, and the House (often by huge margins) and are ignored. It can't be about having a conservative Supreme Court only because the Senate Republicans were willing to flout the crap out of "advise and consent."

This cannot be about "grace," or "hashtags," or "the burden of being the President of the United States." Donald Trump doesn't give a shit molecule about your "concerns" or "fears." It can't be about a "Sincere and Inspiring" farewell speech. It can't be about crossing our fingers and hoping Mitch McConnell doesn't end the filibuster or begging three Republicans to stand on the side of good on some issues when there is not a single issue or nominee on which the other side is pushing abject evil.

I stumbled upon a post from Edge of the American West from Election Night 2008 where the poster wrote, "The arc of the moral universe feels unbearably long right now, even as a I celebrate President-elect Obama." That's because the other side is doing every goddamn thing they can to bend it towards injustice, and that arc is on the verge of breaking.

We need to hear more from how the top of our party plans to handle this and what we should be doing, because we're fighting the top of theirs. This is a state of emergency. No more words. Plans. Actions. Barack, Hillary, Joe, Tim, Nancy, Chuck... do something.

I'm going a little further than how I ended my last post... If the seat of your pants isn't brown, you're not paying attention. Because that's the color of the shirts the other side might wearing if we don't act in proportion to the gravity of the situation.
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Friday, December 2, 2016

Trump won the election - as far as we know

Yes, Trump won by an effective 107,000 votes on election day (and as of today, quite a bit less than that) but there were many questions about the win that just didn't sit right. For one, the polls on the final day were remarkably clustered around a 3 point Clinton lead. Not just nationally, but in many of the swing states as well. For another thing, the final results were well outside of the margin of error of the exit polls. So we're looking at a result that, while mathematically possible (for two related events to both fall into the margin of error we are talking about fractions of a percent likelihood), just seemed outside of the realm of possibility to most observers.

So what caused it? Logic says it must be one of four possibilities:
1. Bad poll sampling all the way through including on election day itself; 
2. Voter suppression that didn't show up in the polls;
3. Human error in recording results;
4. Tampering of election results.

Regardless of the reason, I think we all deserve to know what happened, if nothing else than to preserve the sanctity of the voting process itself.

But you'll never guess who doesn't want that to happen.
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Wednesday, November 16, 2016

The Avocado

Have you noticed that if you add avocado to anything people will want it more? So let's try talking about Trump's trade policy but focus it on the avocado.  A recent CNBC report highlights the recent increase in avocado supply which is good news for you guac-lovers out there.  The CEO of Del Monte, Mohammad Abu-Ghazaleh noted that the high price had been unsustainable because "And that was actually by design of the [Mexican] growers, that they stopped picking fruit and stopped picking the avocados, which made a huge shortage in the pipeline. And that pushed the prices up to $70, $80 a box, which is really absurd."

Stop and think about that for a moment. How does that affect you personally? At $80 a box, the average retail price for a single avocado approaches $3. But what if we begin to restrict trade with Mexico? What if we impose a tariff on Mexican produce? The global average tariff on produce according to the USDA Economic Research Service is about 50%. Suddenly that $3 avocado is now $4.50. And in the winter, when almost all of our avocados are imported, that probably means fewer stores will stock avocados because that is a lot of money to spend on fruits that probably will not sell very well at retail given its exorbitant price.  

Just the first of many examples of micro-level impacts of Republicanism on our economy.
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