By Lambert Strether of
Readers, I’m still a little fried from last night’s election live blog — I don’t know if there’s a Guiness world record for comments at Naked Capitalism, but if there is, 975 is surely up there — and then I went out for a drink and to wind down. So this Water Cooler is a bit shorter than usual. –lambert
TPP/TTIP/TISA
“President-elect Donald Trump has promised a radical set of actions for his first day in office, including withdrawing from the TPP, announcing his intention to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement and directing his Treasury secretary to label China a currency manipulator” [Politico]. “Even if congressional Republicans demonstrated the will and actually managed to approve the TPP in the lame-duck session that begins Monday, the chances of which appear next to nil with Trump headed to the White House, the president-elect would not implement the 12-nation pact, University of California-Irvine Professor Peter Navarro, a Trump adviser, told Politico in August. That makes the Trump presidency the worst-case scenario for the Obama administration and other trade proponents who have been clinging to the hope that the Asia-Pacific pact could pass before the end of this year.” Sad!
“‘I think the TPP is dead, and there will be blood all over the floor if somebody tries to move that through the Congress any time soon,’ Sessions said. ‘Both candidates opposed it, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump'” [Observer].
2016
The Rending of Garments and Gnashing of Teeth
“An American Tragedy” [David Remnik, The New Yorker (2:40AM). “That the electorate has, in its plurality, decided to live in Trump’s world of vanity, hate, arrogance, untruth, and recklessness, his disdain for democratic norms, is a fact that will lead, inevitably, to all manner of national decline and suffering.” Notice the flaccidity of the language: “democratic norms”; “all manner of”; “a fact… that will lead to.” Remnik really needs an editor. Sad.
“Homeless in America” [Thomas Friedman, New York Times]. “How do I explain Trump’s victory? Way too soon to say for sure, but my gut tells me that it has much less to do with trade or income gaps and much more to do with culture and many Americans’ feeling of “homelessness.'” And then Friedman spirals off into abstractions about the “feelings” people have when they lose their homes, while somehow omitting to mention the fact that millions of Americans literally lost their homes in a foreclosure crisis caused by scamming banksters Obama never brought to justice, and who, if they were foolish enough to enter Obama’s “foam the runway” HAMP program, were further screwed.
“Americans are not and have never been united by blood or creed, but by allegiance to a democratic system of government that shares power, cherishes the rule of law and respects the dignity of individuals. We hope our newly elected president will show respect for that system. Americans must stand ready to support him if he does, and to support the system whether he does or does not” [Editorial Board, WaPo]. Would that any of those things were true. Perhaps for the individuals on WaPo’s editorial board, they are.
“Political scientists have long recognized that most ordinary citizens have only a tenuous grasp of ‘the presuppositions and complex obligations of democracy, the rights it grants and the self-restraints it imposes.’ Thus, political elites ‘serve as the major repositories of the public conscience,’ if anyone does” [Larry Bartels, New York Times]. I’ve always wondered why the Democrats never really work to extend the franchise. Here at least we have the ideological justification: They don’t believe it woudl be a good idea.
“Today the world has seen the end of two centuries of Anglo-Saxon dominance – a hundred years of Britain, from the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 to the Battle of the Somme, and a hundred years of the United States, ending today, with the election as president of the US of a fascist ‘television personality’ married to a nude model” [Splash 247]. “‘Decadence’ is the term that we need, here – decadence on a scale not seen in the world since the fall of the Roman Empire – which fell in much the same way, for much the same reasons.” And now that the author’s gotten into his stride:
We have now seen a hat trick of ‘democratic’ events in which men who come from the elite, and who have betrayed their class – Roderigo Duterte, in the Philippines, on May 9, was the straw in the wind, he was followed by Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage in the UK, on June 23, and today by Donald Trump in the US, and they have, with the use of the internet social media, most especially Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook, successfully suckered the soggy mass of lazy, ill-educated, ill-read and ill-informed proles, and a good supply of what V.I. Lenin called “useful idiots”, in three nations, into putting them into power, by telling lies and by promising the proles what they want.
What the proles want is ‘good jobs’ but with the ability to buy the stuff they buy now at cheap prices, because it is made by under paid, hardworking, men and women in other countries who have ‘stolen their jobs’, and they want ‘no foreigners’. They can’t have this, of course, but no matter, they don’t read, they just look at ‘memes’, and the damage is done.
Leave it to the Brits to work in the class angle, quote Lenin, and toss in an Orwell reference!
“Trump voters will not like what happens next” [Garrison Keillor, WaPo]. “America is still the land where the waitress’ kids can grow up to become physicists and novelists and pediatricians, but it helps a lot if the waitress and her husband encourage good habits and the ambition to use your God-given talents and the kids aren’t plugged into electronics day and night.” Help me.
“Americans have done a very dangerous thing this week. Because of what they have done we all face dark, uncertain and fearful times” [Guardian].
“‘Dear God, America what have you done?’: How the world and its media reacted as Donald Trump became US President-elect” [Telegraph]. A nice round-up of front page images.
Policy
“Trump won largely because people couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Clinton, and not so much because anyone like him or his presumed agenda. And along the way he destroyed the Republican party, which may or may not sit so well with Republicans in Congress” [Mosler Economics]. “So it’s not like he has a mandate to do anything or that he can rely on Republican support for anything.” I’m not so sure; I see the Republican primary and the general taken together a repudiation of both party establishments and the political class in its totality. That said, this is important:
Regarding his proposed tax cuts, under current law bills can’t be introduced in Congress unless they are ‘paid for’, so, for example, to introduce a tax cut it has to be paid for by spending cuts. Yes, Congress could change the law or override it but that would require Senate approval, and that takes a 60% majority that Republicans don’t have.
So my point is that at best it’s going to take a very long time to get anything done. And the way all the charts are decelerating it could all get pretty ugly waiting for the kind of fiscal adjustment needed to reverse course.
“The new Senate’s Republican majority will remain short of the 60 votes needed for a full repeal. But Congress demonstrated in the past year that it could use the upper chamber’s reconciliation process — requiring just 50 votes — to send a bill undoing major ACA elements to the White House. Last winter, President Obama vetoed that legislation” [WaPo]. Meaning, of course, that the Democrats could have done exactly the same thing in 2009, but passed HR676 or SB703. That, throwing a bankster or two in jail, and a decent stimulus package instead of the one Larry Summers deked Obama into approving, and the Democrats might control all three branches of government today. And so it goes.
The Voters
“As of 11:55 a.m. ET, Clinton had amassed 59,458,295 votes nationally, to Trump’s 59,265,380 — a margin of 192,915 that puts Clinton on track to become the fifth U.S. presidential candidate to win the popular vote but lose the election” [NPR]. But the first woman!
From the Department of Butterfly Wings in Brazil:
Trump won 75 electoral votes by getting a total of 150,000-200,000 more votes in Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) November 9, 2016
So much for Clinton’s ground game.
In the great state of Maine, Trump won Maine Second, and Clinton won Maine First [Politico]. Maine voters also passed the following ballot measures:
- Legalize Marijuana
- Increase Minimum Wage
- [Ranked] Choice Voting
- Legalize Marijuana
- New Income Tax For Public Ed
- Issue Transportation Bonds
So please, enough with the “America is a center right country” whinging, mkay? Things are more complicated than that.
The Trail
“All along, Mook was dialing David Plouffe, the Obama 2008 campaign manager who was the person who could see the long game, who could mock the bed-wetters. Plouffe had pushed Clinton to hire Mook for the top job in 2015, and in the spring, when Clinton nearly lost Iowa, got creamed in New Hampshire and was so on edge about Sanders in Nevada that Mook could have gotten fired, Plouffe moved in to save him. He’d become Mook’s campaign therapist” [Politico]. And the bed-wetters were right. Robbie, Dave, take a bow. And the whole article makes the Clinton campaign sound like a death march. Which it was, wasn’t it? Sad.
Realignment
“There are very few opportunities for powerless non-elites to register their disapproval of the nation’s Ruling Elite and the corrupt status quo. Voting for an outsider in a national election is one such rare opportunity” [Of Two Minds].
“The Democratic Party establishment has beclowned itself and is finished” [Jim Newell, Salon]. “I think of the lawmakers, the consultants, the operatives, and—yes—the center-left media, and how everything said over the past few years leading up to this night was bullshit…. It may still be true that in the long term, Republicans can’t win with their demographics, but we found out Tuesday that the long term is still pretty far away. Democrats have to win more white voters. They have to do so in a way that doesn’t erode the anti-racist or anti-sexist planks of the modern party, which are non-negotiable.” To which the author adds: “If only there were a model for this.”
What he said. Now let me turn to Country Joe and the Fish for inspiration, and if you will indulge me for one moment:
Gimme a S! S!
Gimme a C! C!
Gimme a H! H!
Gimme a A! A!
Gimme a D! D!
Gimme a E! E!
Gimme a N! N!
Gimme a F! F!
Gimme a R! R!
Gimme a E! E!
Gimme a U! E!
Gimme a D! D
Gimme a E! e!
What’s that spell? Schadenfreude!
What’s that spell? Schadenfreude!!
What’s that spell? Schadenfreude!!! [cheers].The Democrat establishment was warned about their weak candidate, and they were presented with a popular and well-funded alternative: Bernie Sanders. Instead, as the Podesta emails show in lavish detail, they used their control of the party machinery and their service providers in our famously free press to rig the primary in their favor at every turn. When their candidate was nominated, the Democrat establishment tacked right, and proceeded to explain to Sanders voters that their votes were not needed or even desired because, as #BernieBros, they were racist and sexist. Sanders supporters have every right to say #WeWereRight and #WeToldYouSo.
If this were Japan, we’d be seeing Democrat Party leaders committing seppuku, or cutting off their little fingers or — supposing them not to be gangsters — ritually and tearfully bowing to the people they betrayed. This being America, and these being Democrats, they are feverishly deploying the Blame Cannons at racist and sexist #BernieBros, Johnson, Stein, and the dogs who wouldn’t eat the dog food. These assclowns will only leave office if they’re whipped out with scorpions. So get to it, Sanders supporters. This is your time.
Stats Watch
MBA Mortgage Applications, week of November 4, 2016: “Purchase applications for home mortgages rose a seasonally adjusted 1 percent in the November 4 week as activity by home buyers stabilizes following a decline to the lowest level since January in the previous weeks” [Econoday].
Wholesale Trade, September 2016: “Inventories at the wholesale level rose 0.1 percent in September vs a revised 0.1 percent decline in August: [Econoday]. “In a special positive, wholesale inventories of autos fell 1.7 percent in a draw, based on last week’s very strong results for October vehicle sales, that will have to be rebuilt. The risk that inventories may be too high are a key concern for the economic outlook, specifically that high levels of unwanted inventories could slow fourth-quarter production and employment growth.”
Wages: “The Atlanta Fed’s Wage Growth Tracker came in at 3.6 percent in September, up from 3.3 percent in August and 3.4 percent in July, but the same as the 3.6 percent reading for June. By this measure, there are no obvious signs of an acceleration in wage growth for continuously employed workers during the last few months” [Econintersect]. “However, the headline wage growth tracker is a three month moving average of each month’s median wage growth. Interestingly, for September, the median wage growth (using data that are not averaged, sometimes called “unsmoothed”) was 4.2 percent, up from 3.6 percent in August, and the highest since late 2007.”
Real Estate: “Leading Index for Commercial Real Estate “moves higher” in October” [Calculated Risk]. ” According to Dodge, this index leads “construction spending for nonresidential buildings by a full year”. In general, this suggests further increases in CRE spending over the next year.”
Retail: “With the US holiday shopping season now in full swing, the latest monthly Global Port Tracker report produced by the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates predicted major US retail ports would handle 4.4% more imports this month than a year earlier. And volumes are expected to show a 4.5% year-on-year gain in December” [Lloyd’s Loading List]. That’s the retailers story and they’re sticking to it.
Shipping: “The number of idle containerships has reached yet new highs, even with the current acceleration of vessels heading to the breakers. According to the latest survey conducted by Alphaliner, there were as many as 397 ships above 500 teu awaiting employment on October 31” [Lloyd’s List].
Shipping: “Who needs a warehouse when you have a printer?” [DC Velocity]. “Will demand for warehouse space shrink as manufacturers print the parts they need on demand instead of making them ahead of time and storing them in DCs? Will express parcel carriers see a drop in business as shippers e-mail digital designs instead of mailing physical parts? Or will 3-D printing be reserved mainly for filling niche demand for prototypes and replacement parts (the approach taken by a New Zealand airline that prints out replacement tray tables)?”
Shipping: “The American Trucking Associations, the largest group representing trucking companies in Washington, said Wednesday it has already started meeting with the Donald Trump transition team as the industry prepares for a possible new look at regulations due to hit operators next year” [Wall Street Journal, “Trucking Group Starts Meeting With Donald Trump’s Transition Team”]. “Trucking companies are preparing to meet a Dec. 31, 2017 deadline to equip all trucks with electronic logging devices measuring their hours on the road. The rule has divided segments of the industry, with smaller truckers complaining about the cost and shipping customers arguing that it will drive some companies out of business and leave bigger operators free to raise prices.”
Shipping: “Airlines for America (A4A) has welcomed Donald Trump as US President-elect and said that it looks forward to collaborating with his Transition Team on ‘modernising the infrastructure of the skies to meet the needs of a growing US economy'” [Air Cargo News]. They want to reform the Air Traffic Control system…
Honey for the Bears: “The growth in U.S. imports of goods has been stubbornly low since the second quarter of 2015, with an average annual growth rate of 0.7 percent. Growth has been even weaker for non-oil imports, which have increased at an average annual rate of only 0.1 percent. This is in sharp contrast to the pattern in the five quarters preceding the second quarter of 2015, when real non-oil imports were growing at an annualized rate of 8 percent per quarter” [Liberty Street]. “How has the recent slowdown in U.S. investment affected U.S. imports? The next chart shows that U.S. capital goods imports are very highly correlated with equipment investment—a category that excludes intangibles, residential investment, and changes in inventories. Equipment investment has been unusually weak, with its four-quarter percentage change falling into negative territory, which is unusual outside a recession period. These data suggest that the slowdown in import growth likely stems from whatever is behind the weakness in equipment, rather than from trade-specific factors such as trade policies or higher trade costs.” Well, we do have a capitalist economy…
Political Risk: “Trump’s victory in the US presidential race adds an exclamation mark to the concerns over anti-globalisation and protectionism expressed by the shipping industry in Copenhagen at the end of October, Norden chief executive Jan Rindbo told Lloyd’s List on Wednesday” [Lloyd’s List]. Globalization has been weakening for some time. It’s not just Trump.
Political Risk: “It really does now look like President Donald J. Trump, and markets are plunging. When might we expect them to recover? If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never” [Paul Krugman, New York Times]. Sure, “first pass” is faux Nobel-worthy weasel wording. But come on.
Political Risk: “Dow Makes Miraculous 1,000 Point Recovery From Trump-Fueled Overnight Lows” [ETF.com]. “The most short-lived major market crash of all time ended as quickly as currency manipulator” [Politico]. “Even if congressional Republicans demonstrated the will and actually managed to approve the TPP in the lame-duck session that begins Monday, the chances of which appear next to nil with Trump headed to the White House, the president-elect would not implement the 12-nation pact, University of California-Irvine Professor Peter Navarro, a Trump adviser, told Politico in August. That makes the Trump presidency the worst-case scenario for the Obama administration and other trade proponents who have been clinging to the hope that the Asia-Pacific pact could pass before the end of this year.” Sad!
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 40 Fear (previous close: 30, Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 18 (Extreme Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Nov 9 at 11:38am. Life goes on.
News of the Wired
“How a 24-Year-Old Blogger Became China’s Pig Whisperer” [Sixth Tone].
Readers, feel free to contact me with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, and (c) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. And here’s today’s plant (Jim Haygood):
Haygood writes: “In the center is a beautifully twisted juniper with a yucca below. At left is an Arizona cypress. Leaves at right turning from autumn yellow to winter birch-leaf tan I don’t know.”
I’m all for the beautifully twisted…
Readers, Water Cooler is a standalone entity, not supported by the very successful Naked Capitalism fundraiser just past. Now, I understand you may feel tapped out, but when and if you are able, please use the dropdown to choose your contribution, and then click the hat! Your tip will be welcome today, and indeed any day. Water Cooler will not exist without your continued help.
415 comments
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Speaking of “beclowning,” the Arizona Republic — which broke a century-old tradition by endorsing Hillary — ran an “election winners and losers” editorial today.
Among the “winners” — I am not making this up — are “Barack Obama” and “Chelsea Clinton.”
“Losers” include — again, I’m not making this up — the “Republican party” and the “alt-right, with their fetid subculture of white supremacy and anti-Semitism.”
If the deplorables refuse to conform to the orders of their media-elite betters, they will just have to be abused and insulted until they do.
[The overlords of this site have expunged this comment because the author fully deserved it. Fact free bigoted invective against Latinos].
Displacement occurred because of US policy namely NAFTA and our drug policy in relation to Central America and Mexico.
“Whether my Latino neighbors hate me or not – they showed their true allegiance which, like blacks before them, is ethnocentric and genetic.”
Seriously? Is this what it sounds like?
Those terrible n^%$ers, invading, invading I tell you, the pure ancestral homelands of the Heartlandishly-Hued Euro-Americans heck, even Iowa has this inferior mud race!
(serious, serious /s tags).
When I read this (unchallenged at the time)) I was about to delete Naked Capitalism from my reading list if this is how the comments sections devolve. I mean, I know Hillary sucked (I am terrified at how some don’t recognize how bad Trump is, though), but geeez.
that has got to be the ugliest comment I have ever seen in Naked Capitalism.
The writer was serious?? I thought it was biting satire…. apparently I still have a little naïveté left. I don’t know if that is a good or bad thing….
I agree. It was about the most disgusting comment I have read on NC….
Agreed, this should get removed
PULEASE…this site is strong enough to handle many angles of argument. the reason this site is so strong is because it doesn’t follow thru with puritanic comments like yours!!
“All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let’s get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States — and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!”
~Kurt Vonnegut
Yes, the site is strong enough, but yes, that (GMoore’s, not yours aby) is the single foulest comment I’ve ever seen here.
“A population almost displaced by migrants” beggars belief. Immigrants don’t “displace” population, we are population wherever we happen to be. We physically, demonstrably exist, which is more than can be said for abstractions like “nation”, “culture” and so on.
I’m sure the irony will fall on the deaf ears of Mr. Haygood, and many others around here who continue to insist, in spite of the plain truth staring them in the face, that all is well in Trumpland.
I don’t know how we got so out of touch with what’s actually going on. I know this election’s been tough on us, but let’s see if we can get back to some basics here.
I’m of actual Viking descent, didn’t vote for either blonde 1%er oligarch from NY, and your comment is disgusting.
Keep the race war to your own front yard. You embarrass all of us, but most of all, yourself.
x1000!!
actually, i think they are just trying to block a pipeline.
“A population almost displaced by migrants decides to throw em out and save themselves.”
Wounded Knee Anyone? Which population and which migrants is he talking about anyway.
Seriously, though it is time to cut through the PC and realize how much ethnic privilege and ethnic cleansing are major issues of our time. Doesn’t help to be holier than thou. The disdain that the elites feel for the deplorables doesn’t have an ethnic component? Aren’t identity politics a form of racism? What place does cultural cohesion have in society? Are Europeans the only proponents of racism, are hispanics and blacks immune? The gentleman above was sincerely expressing a legitimate concern. The answer is not about shaming him but rationally addressing his concerns. Ethnic conflict in the Ukraine, Turkey, Palestine. Denial is not a part of the solution.
When I worked in AZ and some poor Mexican field worker fell off the fence (that fence) and broke their back, leg or feet, they had 2 border patrol guards (highly paid) guarding them 24/7 till they were moved to the detention center. People from jail only get one guard.
I heard that at these detention centers migrants that were caught had to work for the private company until they were sent home, as in tax payer funded slave labor.
http://www.workers.org/2014/05/29/federal-govt-employs-immigrants-slave-labor-detention/#.WCQAC8lHRyg
Sorry, poor Mexicans didn’t ruin the US economy our Corporations, politicians & elites are to blame-that is the type of democracy they are spreading.
Stop picking on the weak.
It’s morning in Europe and this comment still pollutes NC with nativist racism. Very hateful. Please Yves or Lambert? At least say something.
Saw this only now. Was dealing with health issues with my mother long distance, plus my inbox. Apologies to readers. Have banned this commentor and expunged the body of his comment, which takes less work than ripping out the thread.
Thank you.
This election was a repudiation of Clinton, Obama, and DC in general. That article is clown shoes.
I studied macro with Navarro. Interesting to see he’s a Trump advisor. Navarro’s been trying to make a name for himself for years as a critic of our economic dealings with China.
More than Trump winning, Clinton lost. Really. States she shouldn’t have.
Bernie predicted this (in part) 14 months ago from MN DNC in August 2015
I noticed that Trump garnered a lot of the independent vote in many states. Trump v Sanders would have been a much more competitive match up (but we knew that already so, Debbie, if you are watching…).
that’s right, clinton lost. and now p.t. barnum’s got hold of the big red button:
“Xi Jingping, YOU’RE FIRED!”
but seriously, i can speak for all of humanity in breathing a sigh of relief that the spectre of chappaqua will not be (but is the FOUNDATION truly finished?) holding the reigns of destruction.
i do not fear mr. trump’s misinformedness (at times) as it can’t possibly be worse than the current colonial splattering of so many poor people as performed by the oh so sage clique of demonic sociopaths punching under the beltway.
i hope.
i’ve always seen the electoral college as somewhat odd, unfair to the power of each vote.
sure worked great last night, though.
With respect to the electoral college, I have always stated
1. The fact that small states have the same number of senators as more populous states is worse. In the electoral college, larger states at least have more electors.
And I will add now
2 A dynamic analysis would include that fact that actors would act differently without the electoral college. Campaigns would have allocated resources if the goal is changed, from winner-take-all battleground states to getting total nationwide votes. There is no guarantee that we see lat night’s totals stay the same. (This second point implies the time to talk about electoral college is before an election, not after)
without the electoral college, the campaign would take place in about 5-6 cities and the rest of the country (the Districts, per se) would just pound sand (or mine coal, grow corn, whatever).
The founding fathers did something right.
Every Trump hater should direct their anger at the DNC for screwing Bernie supporters after taking their money.
Every vote would count. Democrats would stump for votes in cities, whether in red or blue states. Republicans would stump in rural areas and small towns, whether in red or blue states. No more focusing on a handful of swing states. The electoral college is an anachronism and an international laughing stock. And woefully anti-democratic and subject to manipulation.
And yet, it saved democracy yesterday. That’s reality. It’s easier to rig the vote in densely populated cities. I have always been opposed to the electoral college, but it did something important yesterday.
If we get rid of the electoral college, we have to have in place paper ballots, counted by hand, in public, nationwide, and publicly financed elections.
How did it ‘save democracy yesterday’? And having paper ballots counted in public and publically financed elections would be a bad thing why?
It makes no sense however to require paper ballots to choose the president by popular vote. The federal government ought to be in charge of federal election rules not the petty lumpen running things in each state now. Example being Helen Purcell the thousand year old right wing Republican who massively bollocked up the AZ primary this year. ( I live in PA right now but we lived and raised our family in AZ for years. This woman is one of the worst political hacks in a state full of them)
All that is needed is a standard mechanical machine style manufactured by a totally government run entity( not subcontracted out to private firms). This would not take that long to spool up either. The numbers of machines for the presidental election in each precinct would be tightly controlled by a non- appointed federal election bureaucracy so reducing the long lines designed to discourage voting.
Yeah, I know, like this will ever happen…. but it IS doable if there would be a will…
Clinton was an illegitimate candidate. She had committed crimes against the state, including selling government access that then enabled her to buy key players in the justice system to avoid indictment for her crimes. She then rigged the Democratic primary, including actual election theft in several primaries.
All those people being starved in the hinterlands might have had no way to get their grievances heard by their rulers if Clinton had been able to use her massive cash advantage to just commit election theft in large cities to run up the popular vote. So you need to get rid of the potential for wide scale election theft, and the 1% being able to massively outspend its opposition, if you are also going to get rid of the electoral college. And I believe the evidence is clear that the gold standard for protecting the vote is paper ballots, counted by hand, in public, same day.
DT is a save for democracy?
#SMDH
More like a save from endless wars and potential thermonuclear conflict. But we will have to see how many neocons still have policy positions in Trump’s team. Also, I would hope that all the members of the Muslim Brotherhood in the WH will be gone; never understood why they were there in the first place.
This is irony, right? Or sarcasm? Or wry humor? I’m not very good at decoding these. Muslim Brotherhood in the White House? LOL!
One of the more ridiculous conservative talking points.
IIRC, the MB is “moderate,” so if they were in Syria, we’d be giving them weapons to sell to ISIS and Al Quaeda.
but those of us in non – swing states enjoy the dearth of political ads; rather, we get just local or state-wide ones.
too bad the rest of you have to suffer for our peace.
Felt safe voting for neither in CA last night.
Popular vote instead of Electoral College? I would have voted differently.
True. I would absolutely have voted for Trump in California if the popular vote mattered. But then my Secretary of State would have stolen my vote, like he did in the primary.
Because the electoral college is not our biggest problem.
My sister is enraged with me because I wrote in Bernie Sanders ( I’m in California) and she blames the people who voted 3rd party for Trump’s win.
Both she and another friend are convinced that Trump’s victory means that end of Roe VS Wade “It’s baked in the cake”.
I disagree, the collapse of the major parties has left a power vacuum and Trump is ill equipped to grab the reins, I see opportunity here, especially if people stop pointing fingers at deplorable people like myself, get off their smug butts and start working for positive change NOW.
There’s a window of opportunity here, it won’t stay open forever.
Yep!!!
hey tom, does your sister know my brother? he’s in the East Bay and is blaming me, who didn’t vote because Sanders was cut off at the knees, for Trump’s victory. and he blames my mom for voting for stein.
i said hey if hippy punching makes you feel better, have at it. i can sleep at night. can you?
it’s civil war in the kociolek family!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Do these people not understand how the system works? Clinton won California. Your choices didn’t hurt her at all.
Good luck if you try civics lessons!
It would be nice if this election leads to a renewed interest in getting rid of the electoral college. Or at least people understanding what it is. Shame that it probably won’t.
It will never be changed. Small pop states have an advantage, they will never agree to change.
In 2000 it turned out bad, IMO good this time because Clinton, Tpp, WWIII, not necessarily in that order.
Wonder if she is informed better to shut down foundation… Contributions going to 0 anyway.
That’s one thing they’re right about. Roe v. Wade will last maybe another few years.
Because the Clintons rose to power, and created a party that only allows corporatists and conservatives to run as Democrats. Corporate Democrats have been HAPPY to sell out things like reproductive rights and access to birth control. Since their rise, reproductive rights have receded, and there’s nothing surprising about it. NARAL and Planned Parenthood, in this election, backed someone who said on TV in 2016 that she’d be fine with a constitutional amendment restricting abortion.
Before Roe v. Wade, rich women could get abortions and poor women couldn’t. Right now, rich women can get abortions and poor women can’t. Under a Hillary Clinton administration, that would not have changed.
Tell them to look at Ohio, count up the third party voters, look at Trump’s margin of victory, and then respectfully tell them to %&*! off.
In most places the Libertarians (who probably took votes from Trump) did better than the Greens (who probably didn’t take many votes from Clinton). Third parties didn’t change the outcome.
Why we can’t blame Clinton voters for not writing in Sanders?
Don’t they understand that voting for Hillary was a vote for Trump.
I love political logic games.
It might force state and local politics to the forefront.
Clean energy is made possible by state renewable portfolio standards and related incentives — that require and financially support renewable power. This has been the biggest driver of green power for 2 decades.
Living wage is another where local action can make a difference.
If successful examples of clean/green/living wage/good health care policies can be created on a local or regional level, they can be models for others.
The federal government doesn’t have to be the solution to every problem. Other types of governments have ability to act. Maybe the culture is at a point where experimentation will be possible.
I hope this turns out to be true, but not in the sense that it was understood by Dr. Mengele!
This is just entirely ignorant for California. Don’t these people even bother with facts at all? California went over 60% for Hillary. Your vote and those of every single other 3rd party candidate had no effect on the results of the presidential election.
….convinced that Trump’s victory means that end of Roe VS Wade “It’s baked in the cake”……
Let’s party like it’s 1999!
I see opportunity here, especially if people stop pointing fingers at deplorable people like myself, get off their smug butts and start working for positive change NOW.
There’s a window of opportunity here, it won’t stay open forever.
Exactly this!
Cognitive dissonance. Trump opponents insist that he is a liar but then take as gospel everything he says. He was for choice before he was against it and it’s very possible he will be for choice again before it is all over. It is amazing to watch the hysteria generated by the mass media, kind of like watching a chicken dance after its head has been severed. The demonization machine at work, delegitimize your opponents. Nobody is either all good or all bad, with the possible exception of the Clintons and the Saudi Royal Family.
The election was a repudiation of the political class as a whole.
The Republican establishment got nuked in the primary, by Trump. The Democrat establishment got nuked in the general, also by Trump.
I think a legitimacy crisis is coming at Trump just as much as it would have come at Hillary.
Of course, the die-in-the-last-ditch Clintonites are muddying the waters by focusing on hate (as they they didn’t) as opposed to concrete material benefits for the working class, but presumably that’s not going to get enough traction. I mean, marches? Really?
The question of whether to rebuild / re-Bern the Democratic Party or start a new party hangs in the air here and in other quarters.
I’ve never seen so many *Progressives* crying in their cappuccino (thinking of you Cenk / Young Turks) in my life! Gnashing indeed.
If one looks at the Dems as a business up for sale (yes, I know it’s already burnt to the ground, but bear with me) you pay for actual stuff, equipment, etc. and a lot of blue sky: Goodwill, Client base, intangibles.
Dems have name recognition–big plus– but their mission statement is so shot to hell that few people remember what it ever was.
People seem to love existing institutions and are terrified to start all over. But I think this is the way forward. If you think of the substance behind the Nomenklatura / DP Bubble, it’s the revolving door. All the money, careers, connections, and influence peddling between industry and the political establishment comprise the perfect picture of politics captured. I just don’t think this can be undone from the inside. Too many entrenched interests– And especially not regulated into ethical behavior.
Instead of a sale, their creditors should force the Party into bankruptcy because their self-interest and incompetence has rendered them utterly insolvent. Perhaps this is well underway.
The advantage to buying the Democratic Party is primarily its automatic ballot access and federal funding. Its brand identity is battered, but could recover.
I was going to make a joke about doing to the Democratic Party what Mitt Romney did to American companies, but the comparison isn’t apt. Destroying the party for the cash is kind of what the Clintons actually did.
Mitt for DNC chair!
> automatic ballot access and federal funding
Also voter data, though to some extent Sanders duplicated that.
But those are big advantages.
GREAT IDEA – LET’S KICKSTART IT AND MAKE IT A COOP!!!!!!!!
Same here in WI. A lot of people were wondering why Feingold didn’t endorse Bernie during the primary… He withheld any endorsement for a long time, waited until too late, then hitched his horse to the $hillary apple cart that got turned over last night.
In my part of the state we got carpet bombed the last few weeks with anti-Feingold ads, the most prevalent one being that when Feingold was in the Senate he cast the DECIDING vote passing the ACA and that Wisconsinites should “fire” Russ “AGAIN.”
So they did.
Really so sad, because people are going to be seriously damaged by Johnson remaining in the Senate, but Feingold only has himself to blame on this one. He could’ve endorsed Bernie in the primary who had yuuuuge support here long before the actual primary, then distance himself from the $hill’s trade deals and finally gone full-in on single payer (saying that ACA was a failure that it is…but was worth trying at the time because that’s all they could pass and now he knows that single payer is the ONLY way to go… blah blah blah), and I think he wins. People here are seriously pissed about trade and health care.
The DNC abandoned Feingold in 2010 and the $hill did it again in 2016 by not coming once during the general election, only sending surrogates like Chelsea who could draw 2-300 senior women and college dems (largely female as well).
What the heck was he thinking? He had to know that he was being abandoned with WI being one of the Hillary Victory Fund states sending money to “Her” all the way back to the beginning of this year.
Sheesh, the HVF vacuumed up all the money from the state parties and now there is no $$ and no farm system at all to take on flagrantly awful repubs in what should be winnable seats.
That will be the epitaph on the tombstone for the Democratic Party:
“Live by the Clintons, die by the Clintons”
We had the same ad in Indiana about Evan Bayh passing “the deciding vote” for the ACA and the ad likely contributed to Bayh’s loss (although Bayh was a far weaker candidate for many other reasons).
Thanks Lambert!
I spent last night avoiding all things related to the election. After the unmitigated waste of Obama’s presidency, I simply could not work up an emotional connection to yesterday’s fare. I was stunned to learn the outcome this morning and went back to read through your live blog to see how it unfolded last night.
Like others, I take no joy from Trump’s success, but am enormously relieved to see the voters show Team Clinton the door. Unlike many, I am not the least bit surprised by this outcome and for that, I owe you, Yves, other posters, and the commentariat my thanks. Avoiding the MSM made it possible to see beyond the bubble.
I’ll be popping out to run a few errands later today and given my growing aversion to digital commerce, will toss a little something into your hat via the US Postal Service. With deepest gratitude to you and your yellow waders : )
Yeah, me too, past time to tip the hat.
Yeah, me too, past time to tip the hat. Check in the mail on Friday. Thank you so much for NC.
++++++++++++++++++++++ Lambert deserves the Hat Tip of the Year (FULL OF MONEY) Thank You Lambert and you’ll see my gratitude in the form of $$ at the end of this week.
Whitman has your # ‘))
“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”
~Walt Whitman
perfection. maybe i will print this quote up and hand it out as per Uaahensa’s (sp?) idea of a card to hand everyone who tries to pick a fight with me over the outcome of the election.
thanks, Aby
i heard a quote recently…it imprinted me so i pass it on to you n yours:
‘as we learn we’re not perfect we can just be good’ ~i don’t know who
Walt worked out the outcome…your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.” …Peace with Awareness
>toss a little something into your hat via the US Postal Service
Please tell me how! I don’t do PayPal, and when I only clicked the hat hoping for more information my anti-virus started having hysterics about suspicious activity.
Send Lambert an email and he’ll send you his p.o. box number. That’s what I did anyway : )
Alternatively, you could send the check via Yves’ Aurora Advisors mailing address, I’m sure they would forward it on to Lambert.
Thanks!
lambert,
¿may i please post a link to zh? it’s very funny. please??
frosty
Oh, frosty, I do love you dearly, but really, Zero Hedge? Haven’t we all suffered enough already today?
(unless, of course, it’s really really funny)
Perhaps though our gracious host is too weak from his recent exertions to care anymore. I certainly would be.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-09/these-are-celebrities-who-vowed-leave-america-if-trump-wins
just once.
you do know zh lifted it from the Hill…i posted it over in links at noon
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/11/links-11916-2.html#comment-2703274
hadn’t seen it there. i usually try to find the original source, but today my brain is scrambled.
your reply gave me courage. i tried; it didn’t work.
“These Are The Celebrities Who Vowed To Leave America If Trump Wins”
for those who dare.
Is there a Go Fund Me page where I can contribute to this worthy cause? Do they want for packing materials, moving blankets, boxes? I will bring them what I’ve got and get more.
Don’t forget therapy for their maids, gardeners, cooks and chauffeurs . The emotional suffering must be traumatic for these people.
Those of us who can hire their help, should. Honest work heals much.
Are there countries robust enough to take them in though?
The only safe place, as far as I can imagine, is Mars.
How many container loads of Katy Perry H–> themed costumes should we “emigrate” too?
What about all the logo’d hats and t-shirts and fleece jackets?
Or her highness’ pantsuits?
They’re probably better than most fast fashion (at least the Perry stuff), so maybe some countries will take them…except Haiti, Honduras, Libya and Syria of course…
Oh no, not Barbara Streisand! Don’t do it Babs. Your country needs you. I think you’ve still got some more great movies in you.
But seriously, we’ll trade you Adele if you send us Nicki Minaj.
I like Adele, sorry if that makes me corny. Throw in Russell Brand and we will have a deal.
I’d throw in a ‘Bourne Despondency’ … and call it good ! ‘;]
polecat
November 9, 2016 at 4:01 pm
We talk Trump now – its Bourne sad :(
Is this the one about the traders booing Clinton on the NYSE floor? If so, I vote: link. It is very, very funny.
I want that link.
Edited to add: Is it this? http://money.cnn.com/2016/11/09/investing/wall-street-traders-boo-hillary-clinton/
Thanks so much Lambert for last night.
A couple things:
Also, in Maine
· legalize marijuana ;-)
And is it legal to send scorpions through the mail?
ask a scorpion
You can buy them online right here!
only if they’re rubber scorpions …..
Thanks for your endurance Lambert! One hour of sleep here, no worries.
I ended up staying awake through Trump’s speech and some brief water testing after too see what kind of reactions were floating around. I have some friends and acquaintances that are pretty riled up but many seem to be slowly coming to terms. This kind of ramped up, hype train being met with a loss will take a while to pan out.
i, frosty, an avid follower of all these mania, found myself listening to the pbs heads filtered through a fog of rather painful pain originating inexplicably from my lower back, unable to move, drifting in and out.
it seemed to make more sense than usual; david brooks was going to cry.
Did you watch long enough to hear Judy Woodruff blame the Russian hackers for HRC’s loss? Paraphrasing, “17 intelligence agencies agree.”
she is the epitome of the classic ‘stepford news person’…..
I’ll betcha Judy tumbles outta bed every mourning ….. grasping a bottle of Stolichnaya …. on the way to her breakfast plate
I was switching between PBS for the laughs, MSNBC to watch the anger and frustration build on all their faces, and Fox to witness just how nimbly they were able to handle it all. It was quite a delectable selection of confusion, dismay, and consternation.
The angst on PBS pleased me most of all. Brooks was in top-form fluster, searching for excuses, Woodruff was just astonished the entire night with each passing result reported, and the supposed pundits and campaign reporters they brought out were buffoons, as well, particularly Cornell not-West and his quickness to blame the results on an unexpectedly high turnout of non-educated angry white men.
Full credit is due to Megyn Kelly over at Fox for keeping it on the straight and narrow when pundits and fellow anchors started to drift into fantasy-land about supposed uncounted votes in places like FL and OH that might tip the scales, or when one dimwit didn’t figure that the mail-in votes had already been tallied into the numbers on the screen and proposed that those, when counted, might turn the scales in the end.
What a show it all was– it’s fun to see how the pundits are still trying to explain it all.
CNN seemed to be in denial, showing maps of individual blue states (and even counties) while avoiding the mostly red U.S. map…
Given that within MINUTES of hearing that Hillary had conceded, everybody called the election (without any new tranche of votes coming in), I think they were all stalling until they were allowed to state what they’d known for hours. At least, I was watching CNN by then (I know; but Tapper was good last night), and that’s how it seemed there. He, King, and Bash clearly knew hours before the call that Trump had won, and were delicately hinting and preparing their viewers for the call.
I’m surprised that Cornell West was piling on the ‘non-educated angry white men’, because he knows better. He was in the Democratic Socialists of America with Bernie Sanders in the ’80’s and 90’s.
I know his position was ‘gouge your eyes out and vote for Clinton’, but what happened to his class-based analysis? The ‘fear factor’ was ginned up so strongly this election, otherwise rational people lost their minds.
No that was not his position. His position was vote Jill Stein. He did not lose his mind, not at all. I’d love to see Cornel West run for President. Oh it might never go over with most, but what the hey, on the Green party ticket. Only getting 1% as is.
http://www.democracynow.org/2016/7/18/why_a_member_of_the_democratic
No, not Cornell West. Cornell Not-west. His name was Cornell something-or-other and his grey hair matched the jacket he was wearing. He was sitting on the right side of the newsdesk, to Judy Woodruff’s left.
The good Dr. Cornell West, as jrs points out, was a Stein supporter.
‘was a Stein supporter’ for the last 4 months…a real supporter there
Baby Gerald
November 9, 2016 at 5:15 pm
“…particularly Cornell not-West and his quickness to blame the results on an unexpectedly high turnout of non-educated angry white men.”
Just because the cliches the media propagates drive me batty, let us just state the fact of the matter that Trump got 53 percent of the white women, and Clinton got 43 percent of the white women…..of course, considering how inaccurate poles …hmmm…and polls too…. are….
but it would be …uh, against conventional wisdom to point out that white women are apparently as racist as their husbands/boyfriends/lovers
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/11/09/white-women-supported-trump-over-clinton/1eULOYeUX6rJX3l2Ie7RNO/story.html
As it happened, because of our Ranked Choice Voting initiative, I spent a good part of the evening in a room full of Democrats. (To their credit, they’d helped a great deal with the initiative.) The morose mood was partly alleviated by some personal victories, but still. The restaurant sold a lot of liquor last night.
The Greens were considerably more cheerful, though Jill didn’t do so well, either.
WRT the gnashing of teeth. I believe denial is the first stage? Just four more stages until the liberal tribe can get anywhere close to where we need to be. Hopefully it doesn’t take 4 years.
I once read that the full process takes eleven years, but that may have been specifically with reference to death of a near relative. I hope so anyway! All this nonsense of blaming voters for having the temerity to use their right as they choose is really tiresome.
Was it just gnashing of teeth? I’m not sure it’s just denial. I think the REALITY settled in pretty fast last night in the corporate media.
I heard Wolf Blitzer, Van Jones, Jake Tapper and Rachel Maddow’s voices all crack and waver and warble in what appeared to me to be real fear. Fear for something I’m not sure before that moment they could’ve imagined and were processing and trying to comprehend.
Hopefully the fear that I thought I heard is that they know that more wikileaks and investigations will lead to more exposures of their sycophancy for $hill and lead to appropriate consequences for each and every one of them.
Seeing Rachel look like she’d been crying off-camera made my night. I’m not sorry. She abandoned any claim to being a journalist, an intellectual, a patriot or a decent human being with how she handled the campaign. Go home, Rachel. You’re deplorable.
– T.S. Eliot
Roasrio, it should be apparent the liberal tribe isn’t going anywhere near where we need to be. Liberalism is a dead man walking, and it’s time to find something better. Leave them to the wilderness — they’re not worth feeding.
Forget extending the franchise, my liberal friends view the results as proof that those who they deem unworthy (although they use much stronger words) should be disenfranchised. That’s their way to save “democracy.” Remarkably similar sentiment to that of the far right, which railed against all the “coloreds” and wanted to disenfranchise the in the wake of 0bama’s victory.
Shorter liberals: “Our intolerance is better than your intolerance.”
I’ve seen many liberal pundits advocating “the elites deserve to run the country because they’re elite” circular thinking this morning. What I haven’t seen is a single one admitting that they were wrong.
Often, but not always, elite-ness is inherited without being taxes.
“I got my genius IQ from my genius mother…tax free. After winning the Nobel prize, I now aim to lead the country.”
Left totalitarians are the worst. Worth remembering that Animal Farm was not about Hitler but about Stalin and Trotsky. This is why some of us thought that Hillary was the one who was really scary. How long before she turned that “responsibility to protect” ray gun on the US itself?
As for Trump wrecking the Republican party…a funny kind of wrecking. They now control everything. Let’s hope he really is a RINO. But at least after yesterday the politicians have a renewed and healthy fear of the voters.
America already exercises the responsibility to protect. All those threatened police needing to shoot first is the actual manifestation of it. Its been going on for a century or two. They do protect themselves really well and now have the courts and unions on side too. /s
There’s just one minor problem with that line of thinking – it’s ridiculous. Hillary Clinton and Dems in general have had no truck with ‘the left’ since McGovern, who the Dem establishment at the time totally deserted. I note Dems utterly blew it in ’68 as well by going with the Vietnam-embalmed Hubert Humphrey instead of McCarthy. Sanders was a middle-of-the-road Dem which was far too radical for the likes of the Clinton DNC – but as we know, far more popular with voters, who in well-done research surveys (as opposed to polls) are a million miles more policy-progressive than the entrenched political elite.
Nice summary. This is a class-based party, you know.
Party at Versailles!
You’re absolutely right in tagging this as a stupidly dogged effort to frame politics in the symbolic register. If they can only get that focus group methodology properly tweaked, they’ll be able to come up with a symbolic placebo to restore a sense of assured social status and historical continuity ravaged by market forces. Let the market rock, the Dems just need to find the right melody to drown it out.
economists live in models. it’s a control thing. to be confronted with actual humans in the present moment experience is not reliable
Mr. Friedman is most certainly NOT an economist …… a grifter w/ an increasingly shrinking megaphone maybe ……. but an economist he ain’t !
Classic Friedman: the “way too soon to say for sure” line in an attempt to seem wise by implying he’s thinking deeply about what happened, immediately afterwards bringing up his “gut” feelings which he clearly believes to be some kind of super power. It’s hard for me to feel much but despair over a Trump win even though I think an HRC win would have been a tragedy but I’m really hoping someone throws some of his own words back in his face the next time he bemoans the election results: “Suck on this.”
It is the likes of Friedman that completely destroyed the credibility of the New York Times and the brand ‘liberal’ in the first place. That someone can be as demonstrably stupid and repeatedly wrong as many times over so long a period as he has is emblematic of the enormity of the Fail for the entire class of professional mainstream opinion-making of the last 25 years.
Over half the population is either poor or on the brink and he doesn’t detect an income problem? What a bozo.
deke (dēk)
tr.v. deked, dek·ing, dekes
To deceive (an opponent) in ice hockey by a fake: deked the goalie with a move from left to right.
n.
A fake, intended to deceive a member of an opposing team in ice hockey.
[Short for decoy.]
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
deke (diːk) sport
n
(Hockey (Field & Ice)) (esp in ice hockey) the act or an instance of feinting
vb
(Hockey (Field & Ice)) (esp in ice hockey) to deceive (an opponent) by carrying out a feint
[C20: shortened from decoy]
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014
deke (dik)
Word I didn’t know — http://www.thefreedictionary.com/deked
v. deked, dek•ing,
n. Sports. v.t.
1. to deceive (an opponent) by a fake.
n.
2. a fake or feint intended to deceive a defensive player, often drawing that player out of position.
[1955–60; orig. Canadian E shortening of decoy]
Random House Kernerman Webster’s College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.
Cheers to Lambert for running the Live Blog, it provided a fantastic antidote to what television was providing. Twitter plus this Live Blog were exactly what I needed to get through the evening.
I also found Yves analysis to be spot on. I’ve been referring to Trumps Presidency as akin to Carter’s. Trump will be punished by the establishment, the election will not end that one bit. The media will not back down, so expect many more scandalous stories to emerge (many will be deserved given his treatment of women). Congress will stymie anything he tries to pass as Democrats and Republicans collaborate and show how they can reach across the aisle to pass what amounts to consensus legislation (bank bailouts, war, security theater, corporate welfare). As a frame of reference I highly recommend Walter Karp’s “Liberty Under Siege”.
But don’t you think that a crony capitalist like Trump will find common cause with Dems and Repubs who like corporate welfare and will pass such legislation with ease? War as well since Trump initially came out in his acceptance speech saying he favored a strong military—-war spending on steroids.
No, he didn’t. He said the opposite: less war. Less American meddling overseas. It was quite striking. He identified two big things in that speech: rebuilding infrastructure and less war.
Maybe he can’t deliver on that, but it’s what he said. The interesting thing is that the way to fund the infrastructure bill would be out of the military budget that everybody pretends isn’t there. Will they let him?
since the founding of the MIC, “they” have not “let” any president do that. why would they start now?
I agree that’s a looming problem. But that is not what Trump said in his speech, which is what I was replying about.
I’d really like to eavesdrop on conversations occurring among “traditional Republicans,” like Romney. What are they going to do now? What are they going to let Trump do? How interested are they in short-term solutions of getting things through vs. do they have any interest at all in preserving the Republican “brand”?
An apocalypse (Ancient Greek: meaning “uncovering”), meaning a disclosure of knowledge, i.e., a lifting of the veil or revelation.
In the Book of Revelation, the revelation which John receives is that of the ultimate victory of good over evil and the end of the present age, and that is the primary meaning of the term.
Politics as striptease.
Word I didn’t know — http://www.thefreedictionary.com/dekeddeke (dēk)
tr.v. deked, dek·ing, dekes
To deceive (an opponent) in ice hockey by a fake: deked the goalie with a move from left to right.
n.
A fake, intended to deceive a member of an opposing team in ice hockey.
[Short for decoy.]
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
deke (diːk) sport
n
(Hockey (Field & Ice)) (esp in ice hockey) the act or an instance of feinting
vb
(Hockey (Field & Ice)) (esp in ice hockey) to deceive (an opponent) by carrying out a feint
[C20: shortened from decoy]
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014
deke (dik)
v. deked, dek•ing,
n. Sports. v.t.
1. to deceive (an opponent) by a fake.
n.
2. a fake or feint intended to deceive a defensive player, often drawing that player out of position.
[1955–60; orig. Canadian E shortening of decoy]
Random House Kernerman Webster’s College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.
I love the new “Rending of Garments and Gnashing of Teeth” heading. Perfect.
Kissing cousin of “coming over all peculiar”, “getting an attack of the vapours” and “reaching for the smelling salts”.
hahahaha i had a nun in the fifth grade who said “there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth” as a consequence of bad behavior.
“It’s Happening: More Cops Leave Standing Rock And Refuse To Return”
that’s great. but I hope the whole thing does not end up like Malheur
to clarify–where the perpetrators of the damage get away scott free
You mean the pipeline builders who started without having all the permits in place and rights-of-way secured?
I sincerely hope cops leaving portends police finally starting to grasp their part in oppressing the public concern. But — one swallow does not a Spring make.
Most if not all revolutions begin when the police/army refuse to fire on the protesters and turn their guns on the elites. Maybe the next Occupy Wall Street won’t be maced to death by the Obamanator because the police refuse to back the elites anymore. One can only hope, but if true this is a big portent.
When it comes to assigning blame after a surprising loss or stunning event, I’m always reminded of these lines from the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil”:
I shouted out, “Who killed the Kennedys?”
When after all, it was you and me.
The Democrat/HRC loyalists can try to point fingers in every direction, but each person, particularly the PO’ed ones, need to ask themselves:
Where was I in the last 30 years of increasing inequality?
Why did I not say anything while “my President” relentlessly pushed the TPP?
Why did we cement the most arcane and harmful health insurance system when we passed ACA?
Why did I discard the knowledge that Bernie was a better matchup versus Trump than HRC?
When did I realize I was in a party that didn’t give a [bleep] about working people?
etc
“….waitress kid……”
No Mr Keillor, the waitress kid doesn’t become a physicist.
If he has athletic ability, he busts his ass, and hopefully gets a scholarship from a college somewhere. Unless he goes to college to actually learn something instead of getting a degree in “athletics” or “coaching”, in which case various means are used to “persuade” him to drop the scholarship.
Otherwise, it’s ROTC……… or $200K in school loans, all to get a $12-15/hour “McJob”.
We’ve exported our manufacturing base, with the differential in labor costs going in the pockets of the 1%ers. Which was invested in moving even more manufacturing overseas. Never mentioned is all of the high paying engineering jobs that disappeared with the assembly line jobs.
And it continues. Pity poor Boeing, a company who cannot help but screw with the rank and file, becoming the classic poster child for “Chickens coming home to roost”.
http://tinyurl.com/qbqn2md
Yeah, lay off all the newbies. Then run the old guys into the ground with mandatory overtime, to fix all of the effed up projects you outsourced. while at the same time, cutting their pay and benefits.
Pretty soon, your employees are mostly in their 50s, looking for a chance to retire (if they haven’t been culled by buyouts already). The 40 year old guy with 15-20 years of experience is pretty much non-existant.
The current plan seems to be whining to the government about not being able to find “qualified applicants”, so the government will take on the task of “Basic Training”. Then praying that the newbies pick up enough OJT/Tribal Knowledge from the old guys heading for the exits, so they don’t make expensive and/or life threatening mistakes.
Good thing the rest of the world follows the USA for best practices/state of the art ways of managing their businesses. Otherwise, we would really be hosed.
” Never mentioned is all of the high paying engineering jobs that disappeared with the assembly line jobs.” Of course, design/ engineering/manufacturing is iterative. That is just the logistics of how stuff works. All of the real stuff will follow the factory floor and the corporate headquarters will be hollowed out to bean counters and bureaucrats.
Paid Minion
November 9, 2016 at 2:43 pm
“America is still the land where the waitress’ kids can grow up to become physicists and novelists and pediatricians, but it helps a lot if the waitress and her husband encourage good habits and the ambition to use your God-given talents and the kids aren’t plugged into electronics day and night.”
======================================
Pure Davos Man/DeLong meritocracy bullsh*t. And the absolute worse electronics to be “plugged” into is PBS radio as it is the most asinine propaganda ever propagated…
They are quick to say “we need more scientists,” but they never say exactly how many scientists they need. Because the answer is they wamt more so that they can drive those wages into the ground with over supply.
And nevermind that they don’t listen to the scientists we have now, but scream about needing more. The only scientists they want are the ones that tow the corp line
Astute observation, LT! They need a better selection of scientists that fits their budget and lifestyle, just like any other household accessory. The bourgeoisie exists to shop. Full stop.
Holy Fukkn A he won!
Oh man. haahaha hahahahahah.
this is like the Eddie Murphy skit back in the day, when he pretended to be a white guy voting for Jesse Jackson. Making a funny face at the camera talking like a white guy saying “I just voted for Jesse Jackson! ho ho ho.” Thinking he couldn’t possibly win and it was a big goof — voting for Jesse Jackson for president.
Then he stopped and looked incredulous and shocked at the camera, “What? He won!!!!???”
hahahahaha. President Trump. Never in a million years would I have thought that. Never. Not even yesterday! I thought, “It would be hilarious, but no way it’ll happen.”
Now it happened. Oh shlt! I saw a couple of young Hillary bots yesterday in my office building (I mean the one I work in, it’s not “my” building” == getting into the elevator. One was a metrosexual looking white dude with Hillary buttons all over and the other was an — what’s the appropriate phrase “African American” woman (I doubt she ever set foot in Africa, to be honest) with Hillary buttons all over. They were bouncy and peppy.
I thought to myself “Oh man. I bet they are going to be shocked if Trump wins.” I bet they’re shocked. I’m shocked. But I’m not despondent! I think it’s Hilarious. No pun intended. OK, “hilarious”, to be fair. “comical, funny, humorous, crackyourselfupous, laugh-like-a-moron-y, Rotflmaoish, etc.”
We’re gonna have the yuugest Christmas tree out there in front of the White House where all the states have trees that we have ever seen. The White House itself may become larger somehow. There could be a glass high-rise built over the White House, with a brass and marble lobby.
But the best thing will be the fence. When they start building the fence between Texas and Mexico, the number of jobs created will be uuuge. Stores, restaurants, condos, coops, golf courses, swimming pools, bike paths, natural areas, hiking, biking — this is gonna be a Destination Wall — it’ll be the best most amazing wall ever in the history of the world. It can transform the whole economy down there. I’ll move there! I’m tired of New Yawk already. I’m ready for the Border.
I’m just hoping he comes to London early in his term of office (gosh, just saying that makes me think a bit, it is all so formal sounding isn’t it? “President Trump’s term of office”, very portentous, like hearing “a shadow on the lung”; anyhow, sorry, I digress, back to what I started on about) and gets to have tea with the Queen.
You know, the full photo-op works, Cadillac 1 drives down The Mall, pulls up at the Ambassadors’ Entrance, Trump and Melania get out, take the salute from the guards (the ones with the black bearskin hats, all bouffant and overstyled, blimey, I hope Donald doesn’t take offence and think we’re taking the mickey out of him) and on to the formal reception.
Then a nice cup of tea and cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off. I hope Donald doesn’t grab Elizabeth II by the waist and guide her round, like that Australian Prime Minister did (forget who it was, skippy will have to remind me). I’ll bet he and the Duke of Edinburgh exchange a sly — and slightly lascivious — furtive wink. It’ll all be going so well, until Donald asks something crass like “how much ya want for the crown, babe? Ivanka’s got her eye on it for some reason, you know what it’s like, the Hamptons season is so-ooo competitive, she’s still Daddies girl, she gotta have it, you’all know how it is… I want her to make a splash on the Upper East Side, show those matriarchs who’s really got the moolah”. And that’ll be the end of that.
Of course, with Brexit and everything, we’ll probably be so poor, we’ll have to sell him Windsor Castle. The place’ll go condo in a year, I’ve no doubt at all.
You are not proposing a formal co-dominion, are you? I do remember the recent send up about the Queen offering to re-establish personal direct rule of the North American Colonies by the Throne. Uncle Vlad could be Neo-Tsar in St. Petersburg.
All would be right with the world as neo-liberalism marches on.
See: http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/queen-offers-to-restore-british-rule-over-united-states
Stranger things have happened!
Most “African Americans’ I know resent the term African American in that they have been on this continent about 300 years longer than most Europeans and what with all the Tarzan Jungle movies depicting Africans with bones through their noses wearing rags yelling Ungah Bungah. Though Afro-American and Euro-American are a rational way to describe ethnic origins, most prefer the term “black”.
i take it that thomas friedman and garrison keillor fall into lenin’s category of “useful idiots.”
just idiots ….
More along the lines of Stalin’s category of “kulaks.”
Or just garden variety idiots. Either way, Keillor is about as funny as Friedman is profound.
Democrats at the office where I work do not see how the loss has anything to do with the Clintons.
Really, they do not get it.
Identity matters, and Democrats thrive on being smug. The problem with being smug is you need a reason to be smug, and quite simply, Hillary was a terrible candidate by any stretch of the imagination. An actual donkey might have won. People really like the old University Democrat shirts that say, “love a Democrat because who never heard of a good piece of elephant,” with a picture of a donkey. Democrats who voted for Hillary or didn’t care enough to try to vote for Sanders in the primary have no one but themselves to blame. They failed as citizens, and they can’t handle admitting what they did.
Been saying it to all my (D) and (I) friends since February: Bernie in July or Trump in November.
Sounds like MY office.
Here I am, sitting near people who are bemoaning their lack of choices in the AZ Obamacare marketplace. Tell me that it wasn’t an issue in how this state voted. It definitely was.
Me? I threw a couple of monkeywrenches into the discussion. Like the coming repeal of Obamacare and its replacement by single payer.
Think that won’t happen? Well, it’s a huge international competitiveness issue with American business. And with you-know-who coming into the White House, businesses will have quite an ally. If they can offload their health insurance costs onto the feds, so much the better.
More likely we’ll see health care thrown into the free market rather than single payer, with a health care tax cut or vouchers for people to take to private health care insurers (Trump cronies?) to find the best deal, because it’s all about giving Americans freedom, isn’t it.
You see a Republican congress voting for single payer? Because that is what we’ve got for at least another 2 years.
Yeah, no. The obstacle to single payer is racism and complexity. We elected a demagogue who doesn’t have the ability to attract competent professionals to his staff.
No, the obstacle to single payer (historically) is unions and Big Pharma. Did “racism” pay for those Harry and Louise ads that were widely cited at the time as killing Hillary’s health care plan? And single payer is a hell of a lot less complex to design and oversee than Obamacare. There happen to be existing models overseas, as well as the VA system and Medicare programs.
And people go where the power is. Trump will be able to get people. He clearly has been able to hire highly competent lawyers, tax advisors, and architects. But most policy people sell convincing-sounding snake oil that suits the interests of pet groups. Trump has said he wants to get rid of Obamacare and replace it….but it’s pretty clear he hasn’t given this topic an iota of though, so we don’t yet know who will wind up driving that bus.
He supported single payer until he was seeking the Republican nom. It jus tmakes good business sense. And nuclear war doesn’t.
What does he really think? An enigma.
Kellyanne Conway did a spectacular job. Trump fired campaign managers until he found one that knew how to help/control him. There is no evidence of Hillary Clinton EVER doing anything as smart as that.
Trump was smarter politically at every turn than the Clinton machine. That is why he won. He may be a demagogue, he launched his campaign on a foundation of racism, but the Democratic Party CHOSE not to implement single payer. They had the votes. They refused to do it. Please look behind the 60 vote/gotta placate Lieberman, etc. curtain. The Democratic Party lost the election because it refused to pass single payer. If the Republicans make the same mistake, Trump will be a one term president. Guaranteed. And then President Turner will pass it.
Has there ever been a politician as good at reading a room as Trump? And by room I mean the electorate.
Not only did he read the room correctly, he read it early and he had the guts to act on his instincts with 100% commitment — even though he had no guarantee, other than his gut feeling, that his statements wouldn’t completely destroy his chances in an instant.
Perfect example: the night of the Republican debate in Greenville, South Carolina when Trump let loose with the shot heard round the election — his “big, fat mistake” answer to a question about his position on the Iraq war.
In a room full of RNC donors there to support the annointed son Jeb Bush, Trump blew up the conventional wisdom like the human Molotov cocktail he would eventually be likened to by Michael Moore many months later.
Trump was already playing by different rules even then and I think he realized that night that he was already playing past the primaries.
That was when I took notice of Donald Trump and realized there was something there there. I believe that was the turning point in his trajectory. Even if he never accomplishes anything else, destroying both the Bush and the Clinton dynasties, brilliant!
That’s why they are still Democrats. I suspect that your co-workers also have real jobs with decent pay, health insurance and regular work hours. They aren’t trying to cobble together a living with two part-time jobs and no benefits.
Yes, but many have been there before.
I am talking about a good number of black people in my office.
One just said, “I’m thinking about moving to France.”
I mentioned Le Pen. Sent them a link. They poo-poo anything I try to tell them about what’s going on in the world. Educated with a total lack of curiosity or historical knowledge (outside symbolism they were taught in school about the first black this or that).
And I am black so I hear what they know.
Hi LT,
I’ve got black friends that won’t dare stray from the Dems, too. My humble advice on convincing others around me is to have patience and don’t judge. Don’t get mad at them, people change their minds slowly (me too, I’m miles away from where I was 10 years ago, thanks Yves and Lambert!). Keep at it and chip away. Sometimes, you get breakthroughs. I was just speaking to an old friend from high school that I’m close with, but haven’t kept in touch with in recent years. He was a Clinton voter and genuinely hadn’t heard anyone make the case AGAINST her from a left-leaning perspective. Trump’s win has prompted other friends/colleagues to make remarks about how I was more right than they thought.
As for your black friends, perhaps they need to listen to more Yvette Carnell?
https://www.youtube.com/user/YCarnell/videos
Here’s a couple of my favorites:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id_5EZpuzaE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUzlrRJUp3c
Have hibernated because I could. I’m sure large part of city is in mourning. I will say that Behar went off on the FBI twice, condemned the voters three times that I saw on the View this morning. AND has the arrogance to say that she and The View would be holding Trump’s feet to the fire, along with one snide remark about different standards for men then for women. Oh, wait when Matthew Dowd was trying to explain what might have led to this she launched into a defense of the Democrats AND a fluffing of Obama based on nothing. Denial is deep.
At least Sarah Haines had the thought she might really be living in a bubble with no clear idea of what was going on. I’m sure the others will talk her out of that.
jeesh ! ….. that’s what is considered ‘informed opinion’ on the tube ??
… millions of peons need to shoot their TV’s pronto !!
Just how would Behar hold Trump’s feet ? The left doesn’t get it.
This is vengeance time. His followers want him to be brutal, efficient and retributive. Why not?
The left chose the weapons in this dual. Now they complain of their wounds
You mean the center right with pretensions towards left leaning thought. I see little genuine representation of the left in this debacle choosing anything.
Someone on the election night thread posted that they were sorry they didn’t have TV access because they wanted to watch Behar “have kittens”. I thought that remark was quite funny, and still do.
Give them some time. It’s only the first stage of grief.
More sand in the eye of the establishment: on day 1 he pardons Snowden and Assange.
oh god, don’t I wish
And Manning! We can hope.
I wish I thought that was possible, but I do not see it happening. Certainly not for Snowden and Manning.
He called for Snowden’s execution in 2013.
http://theweek.com/articles/623826/trump-clinton-end-snowden-era
I hope there is a private position.
If Obama had a better sense of history he should pardon the three before the end of his term as every other “legacy” will be reversed or modified beyond recognition.
A bunch of Trumpets follow me on Twitter. I’m glad I followed back, because it has been really, really illuminating. The alt-right boys and girls want Assange freed. They’re a key part of Trump’s base. If he’s smarter than Obama, he’ll give this easy win to this crucial part of his base.
Pretty much. Once a nationalist decides someone is a traitor, that’s it. Even if the nationalist changed his mind, he wouldn’t dare backtrack on it for fear of showing weakness, wavering commitment, etc.
If only we had the option of an independent candidate who might view things more humanely as evidenced by his support for single-payer healthcare and an end to the prison-industrial complex. If only, if only…
I think Trump would like to prosecute Snowden. At least that’s what he said in July, 2015:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jul/9/trump-putin-would-return-snowden-if-im-elected/
Has Trump issued a revised opinion since then?
If he is concerned about too much government spending, Trump can prosecute Hillary and Snowden togehter, on the espionage charge.
Since he will not likely go after Hillary personally (maybe just the Foundation), there is hope that the Donald too harbors a private position on this issue.
He said lots of stuff but if that really is his view it would be no different from Hillary or Obama.
However he should definitely let Assange off the hook due to services rendered–services we of the ABH cohort are most grateful for.
Probably within an hour. Then he likely repeated it days later, and later reversed himself again. None of these were actually reversals, but in-depth analyses by a superior thinker. The next one should come soon, once someone plants an idea in his ear. Wait for it!
Let’s not forget Bradley/Chelsea Manning. He has tried a second suicide attempt. A man of great courage, now paying the ultimate price. It was Bradley/Chelsea that first lifted the veil.
Lambert, I just want to thank you for all your immense work live-blogging during the debates. But especially your Stakhanovite effort through last night/this morning!
I don’t have any money right now, but I hope to by the end of this year, and I’ll be sending a contribution to Water Cooler then.
bear hug ‘ )
“Trump’s election is a rejection of a political establishment, and an economic system that has left too many people and communities behind.” Jeremy Corbyn
My favorite headline from: “‘Dear God, America what have you done?’: How the world and its media reacted as Donald Trump became US President-elect” [Telegraph]. A nice round-up of front page images.”
Scrolling through my social media, it doesn’t seem like Clinton voters will learn any lessons very soon. If anything, Donald’s win seems to have reinforced their view of half the country being sexist, racist, “deplorables” — even my friends who supported Bernie in the primaries seem to share this sentiment.
I was watching Trump’s victory speech this morning, and I was surprised at what he chose to emphasize (rebuilding infrastructure, cooperative relations with other countries, avoiding foreign intervention). Parts of it could’ve even been mistaken for a Bernie speech, minus maybe the economic growth rhetoric and some ad-libs about fellow Republicans and remarks about the NYC police being underappreciated. I guess either Trump surprises us with some sort of jobs plan, or more likely, he doesn’t change the economic structure in any substantial way and when we meet with another crisis, those who voted for him will see Donald at the head of a Republican-majority government and realize that electing him changed zilch and maybe look again for something else. But honestly, I don’t know how much hope I have of that considering how thoroughly polarized we have grown.
Unlike many of my friends, I’m not despairing any more than usual today, but I do feel a bit numb. I’m still not quite sure what this means or where to go from here. I’ve always suspected that for the left to shake off the zombie-Dem shell and have a real meaningful movement, we’d have to align interests with some of the disaffected voters who voted for Trump. But now that they’ve had their victory with Trump… maybe it’ll be awhile until they consider an alternative. The question is, do we have time? If the threat of nuclear war has somewhat lessened, the tick-ticking of climate catastrophe seems to grow louder. To me, that’s what Trump (and effectively, Clinton) thwarted: a chance for a true realignment. It could’ve been Bernie or someone like him who awakened something new last night, but instead I fear we might’ve given birth to something that will stick around for a long time.
This is my first post on here. I’ve been lurking since around the primaries (Millennial and voted for Stein in a solidly blue state). If it hadn’t been for NC these past few months I would’ve lost my mind. Thank you Lambert, Yves, and the superb commentariat for being the Virgil of the commedia perversa that is our modern age. It’s been, and continues to be, very educational.
I wonder what kind of appointments Trump will make, and to what extent he will immediately be “cocooned” and contained within a bubble, of his own making or of others who support him behind the scenes.
(On another thread, someone posted that Trump’s experience in NYC construction must have involved interactions with mafia or mafia-type organizations to get approvals or smooth operations. Also, I noticed waiting for the election results to come in that some of the most famous locations for election manipulation–e.g., Cuyahoga County OH which was used to steal the 2004 election and maybe others–were delayed in reporting their results, which is a classic red flag. If there was any impropriety going on, then people/causes would be behind it and would now presumably be in a position to start calling in favors.)
Maybe he’ll drop his tax cut plan, the one which will reduce the taxes paid by the the Uberwealthy.
Heh, maybe we should all write him letters with our leftie wish lists?
wedge issues deflect realities.
One of the things I’ve been wondering about today is Trump’s pledge/comment to investigate Clinton on day one. There are a lot of establishment folks on the hill that are not Trump fans and would love to box him into a corner he can’t get out. Would Trump go after others (or threaten them if they tried to block his agenda)? Typically failed take-overs are because ones opposition still retains control of power levers elsewhere. It’s usually wise to go after those power sources ASAP, although it’s usually not done and ends up being the down fall of those trying to disrupt the status quot.
No idea what Trump might do — but I would think a new President could roll a lot of heads even at lower levels. With an appointment here and an appointment there those who didn’t get the memo can be sidelined — civil service protections or not.
“One of the things I’ve been wondering about today is Trump’s pledge/comment to investigate Clinton on day one. ” – This may prove to be the paramount issue of Trump’s presidency. Part of what got Trump into office is his anti-corruption ‘drain-the-swamp’ campaign pledges. His base does not want unity or reconciliation with part elites or with Dems, they want prosecutions. If Trump doesn’t deliver, I suspect his base will rapidly abandon him. If his support slips, the establishment knives will come out quickly. On a side note, a big corruption case against the Clintons would likely sweep up a number of other establishment figures that need to be vanquished. This would help pave the way to turn the Dems into the party of Sanders and Warren.
The other thing Trump MUST do is get the economy going. His remarks about infrastructure spending show he’s got his head in the right place.
Compare with Obama’s start to his presidency…
FT’s Martin Wolf called Obama’s failure within the first month or two. Really, that’s a big part of Obama’s legacy. His failure on the economy meant that he practically destroyed the Democratic Party over his two terms.
http://www.businessinsider.com/martin-wolff-obamas-presidency-failed-in-his-first-month-in-office-2010-9
Action against Hillary depends on who he can get as AG. Rudy Giuliani? I think Christie may be out of the game for a while.
It is funny that you mention Trump’s base, because I really don’t think he has much of one. Most of the votes he received were anti Clinton votes from people who probably don’t have a lot of expectations of Trump and will not follow his presidency. JMO
I see a lot of his base as being the unemployed. If he can create jobs I think this will help those expectations. I don’t think he has to be overly aggressive against the Clintons. I think if he just lets the process proceed such as the 5 investigations already underway they are in plenty of trouble.
The cliche about his base I think has been debunked many times. I think Yves mentioned it at one point. I don’t keep a bunch of stuff on my computer anymore, but memory (faulty as it is) seems to regurgitate a figure somewhere in the neighbourhood of $70,000. The location of the survey was a southern state. Maybe someone has the exact information. I apologize for not showing a specific link.
3d printing hype by those with no experience…
3d printing is slow, susceptible to both micro and macroscale errors, and unless you go to expensive metal sintering makes fairly weak parts. Additive manufacturing is still way less reliable than subtractive (milling). It also relies on a lot of highly processed feedstocks.
There are uses – but it is not the game changer it’s hypers would have you believe.
And really, you probably want any critical parts made by domain specialists…
Hey now, what other technology can be used to so handily make 20,000$ faucets? Recently a Saudi prince ordered a couple dozen for their latest mansion or penthouse or bunker or what-have-you, or so I’ve been told by a friend who works at one of these new-fangled 3d printeries… other clients? Why the DoD of course…
Maybe something to add to the Guillotine Watch:
“These 3D printed faucets from DXV by American Standard will be available in select showrooms in 2016. The Vibrato faucet is priced at $19,500, the Trope at $17,000, and the Shadowbrook at $18,000.”
At least at only $17,000 the Trope model is affordable, sort of like ACA.
A woman who specializes in work place dangers has been on WNYC and adamantly says there must be safeguards when using 3D printers as the vapors cause illnesses, even death. I can’t pull it up from the WNYC search box….
Point being, some expense goes into using the 3D materials safely.
I’d rather have a mini-mill on my workbench than an FDM printer, to be sure. But in the face of engineered obsolescence, can experts be trusted? Overbuilding is almost always cheaper than engineering.
Yes, Lambert, couldn’t agree more on the wasted opportunities for the Democratic Party to have won this thing. If they’d run Bernie, like we all wanted them to, we wouldn’t be here today. I didn’t vote for Clinton or for Trump but for the Giant Meteor. Bernie most certainly would have trounced Trump and the Democrats have no one to blame but themselves. It’s a relief that we won’t have Bill or Hillary back at 1600 PA Ave. Thanks to Yves, Jerri-Lynn and Lambert for their hard work and perseverance this election season. Good coverage here, folks.
I’ve seen one writer say that Bernie would have lost too because boomers and gen-x’ers were indoctrinated that “commies” were the enemy of all that was good and Bernie was too socialist for them to accept.
If it had been Bernie, at least he wouldn’t have lost due to lack of enthusiasm.
Sorry, that’s a flat-out lie. All the polling showed that Bernie would ALWAYS have won the general By the end of the primary, he was on track to win GEORGIA in the general election. He is currently (even AFTER Clinton forced him to betray his principles, his supporters, and his brand) the most popular politician in America.
Disconcerting first moves by Trump, puts some real winners at EPA, DoI, DoE. Less effective evil? We’ll see.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-picks-top-climate-skeptic-to-lead-epa-transition/
Will he be confirmed before or after one of Trump’s golf courses submerges?
I hope the Donald is a flexible guy.
Article is from Sept 26. Not new news.
It isn’t a current news story, but it provides a good taste of what Trump will do with those departments. Have you seen more recent information that contradicts it? If so, please provide a link.
Apologies, with all the articles flying over my transom today, I didn’t vet as carefully as I should have.
apology NOT accepted…it’s important
He [Ebell] told Vanity Fair in 2007, “There has been a little bit of warming … but it’s been very modest and well within the range for natural variability, and whether it’s caused by human beings or not, it’s nothing to worry about.”
Kind of a funny statement, considering that temperature changes within natural variability have caused mass extinctions in the past.
Apology accepted here.
James Carville, who basically looks like a skinless skull at this point, was on MSNBC after even they had to admit Trump had won. He was openly talking about how the Democratic Party now has no leadership and is in complete disarray. One thing is for sure: the Clinton Dynasty is done. No one likes them, their entire power base is built on the promise of what favors they can do for supporters from the halls of power. Hillary just blew her last shot at the top position. What does she have left? Try and go back to being a Senator? No, she’s done.
I wonder how long it will take for all the various Clinton funded apparatchik hangouts to start quietly shutting down?
She’ll find herself a few corporate board seats, nothing too extravagant, but well paying enough to cover her food and legal bills. Bill will now have plenty of time to perfect his golf swing, and Chelsea will end up running the foundation according to the tax laws, and it may actually do some good to the people her mother was going to throw under the bus.
I hope they have mutual funds. The foundation scam is done.
I read a while ago their private funds were in all cash positions. The funds we know about, anyway.
As a gesture of mercy, Trump (or Ivanka acting as trustee) could help Bill auction off his golf club membership. That could serve to unite a foursome or two and get some free publicity. The money could offset likely Clinton legal bills.
They might need bug-out bags filled with cash and emergency supplies too so they can pull a Marc Rich if the Donald does what he says he’s going to do “on day one.”
Wonder if Switzerland will take them? Maybe Saudi Arabia? Maybe Huma can sew a burqa onto all of her pantsuits and have them sent over after they get to Riyadh.
A few hours ago I read this, which was posted on Nov. 8th:
While an unconventional source, this person only posts information he’s confirmed from at least 2 independent sources. If we knew Obama and Biden’s whereabouts on Nov. 8th that could indicate whether the item about the money movements might also be true.
So–take this info with a big grain of salt, but it suggests your suspicions could be correct.
I hope they get stuck in the Ecuadorean Embassy with Assange.
like Sartre’s “No Exit” That would make a great staging for that play–set it in the Ecuadorean Embassy
I hope so. Auf Wiedersehen.
The Foundation business model, on the other hand, is an attractive one.
Many may be inspired to adopt it, depending on if the FBI examines and puts its seal of approval on it or not.
i’m sure bill will turn his attention back to the lolita express…
I’m curious about what kind of fees she can charge for her Wall Street speeches now. And what will be the trend line for foreign government donations to the foundation?
I wonder if Chelsea will start to think about money
Chelsea will need some money for her legal fees, if justice prevails.
Though no doubt they’ll try to get the Foundation to pay them.
Chelsea is married to a hedge fund guy. I don’t think she’s going to be lacking for money.
Romney is nobody. He lost twice.
The rep neocons went with hill. They lost, no cred.
Banks went with hill. They lost, though still powerful. But he owes them nothing.
He wants to spend on infra, not on mil. Both have powerful backers. Most pols have to listen when their constituents speak in unison. He boosted the house reps, saved senate from possible loss… He will get his honeymoon. Dems will not filibuster infra, even paid with defense cuts.
Plus lots of reps know infra boosts economy, even deficit funded. Everybody now focused on midterms, critical to show jobs and growth by 2018.
Yep, they will go the way of the Koch brothers. Without electoral office, there is no route to power.
For some reason, a large portion of this seems to be duplicated, and I suspect for the same reason, I am being prevented from copying it. (I usually wholesale copy the section for later processing through it off-line.)
I think you are referring to the comments section by “this”. Instead of doing a wholesale copy try copying by pieces — that sometimes works for me why I’m trying to collect information from webpages where pdf is not provided (too many government sites).
It appears that due to a glitch or Lambert’s fatigue a large portion of the post was duplicated.
I agree with your assessment of the Democratic party’s behavior. As I noted this morning, ultimately:
His gut is an even worse source of info than his taxi drivers.
We should all email Friedman large images of Tums.
i always thought it was what had passed through his gut that inspired him.
Which link is he in the human centipede circle that is the NYT?
Friedman can blow colonic chunks for all I care !
… in fact, he IS a colonic chunk !
I suppose it’s not a surprise to see David Plouffe, Tory campaign manager and Uber pimp, to have been behind Robbie Mook.
In the past two weeks I heard a very interesting segment on either NPR or WBAI with the author of Ratf**ked: The Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America’s Democracy. David Daley, editor in chief of Salon and digital media fellow at the Grady School of Journalism at the University of Georgia, writes about how thoroughly and successfully the Republicans had worked to gerrymander local and state elections so that they could manipulate ever more finely voting districts to make it almost impossible for Dems to win seats which reflected their number of voters.
The Koch Brothers, as I recall, financed many of the conservative Republicans elected to state legislatures which enabled them to then control redistricting of House districts. And, lo, there were many states where the overall popular votes were from Democratic voters, but the states somehow sent many more Repubs to DC than would seem possible. It was achieved by pushing as many Dem voters a possible into as few districts as possible. The R’s approached Dem minority legislature members, suggesting they could make their districts “safe” by creating highly interestingly shaped boundaries, was one tactic.
This is not new info, but Daley stressed that only by regaining control of governorships and state houses could the Dems have a hope of redistricting to better reflect how voters wanted to be represented. Only after the 2020* US census will Dems have a chance, but given the way districts are set up there is little chance to really affect the new redistricting.
Read the article to get a more in depth understanding of the mechanics (well, actually, computer programs) involved.
The major point the author made in his interview was that the next president will control how the Supreme Court will handle issues coming before it about redistricting and gerrymandering and about the Citizens United decision.
That avenue may be lost given Trump’s list of possible Supreme Court nominees.
BTW, anyone think the Dems could pull off the standoff on voting on judicial nominees that the Repubs have managed throughout Obama’s tenure?
Another approach is for actual people to get more involved in local and state politics, so they can try to bring balance and fairness to how House reps are elected.
And that takes more than typing out comments, eh?
2020 census day is April 1, 2020, a change from August 1 of the census year.
As a former Sanders supporter, I voted for Trump for 2 reasons: a) to destroy the Bush Dynasty b) to destroy the Clinton dynasty. He has done both. Now all I ask is c) do not incinerate New York (war w/Russia) d) do not convert my SSDI to a 401K and give it to Wall Street. I’m fairly confident c) is a done deal; I await with interest d).
The best thing about Trump is he put the last nail in the coffin of the Bush and Clinton “dynasties”. For that we all owe him a big “Thank You”.
Good riddance to Hillary, she’s been “fighting for us” for years and she never won anything for us, just for her well-connected “friends”.
Bill and Hillary, Republicans in drag.
I am relieved at Clinton’s loss but take no comfort from Trump’s win. I think Bill Black is right in spades in the conclusion to his post — “A period of enormous corruption and elite fraud is coming soon as the Trump administration brings its signature characteristic – crony capitalism – to bear to control all three branches of government. …”
Isn’t Chris Christie running Trump’s transition team? What kind of good fellas helped Trump establish his casino in New Jersey? Trump is just a different flavor of corruption — but a flavor I hope is less inclined toward international adventures. Instead of a Reichstag Moment perhaps Trump will incite a Potemkin Moment if he forgets the forces he unleashed with his rhetoric.
I entirely agree. There seems to be a fair amount of gloating going on among those who wanted to see Hillary lose. Believe me, I am quite happy to see the backside of the Clinton’s for the last time. I supported Bernie and eventually voted for Stein. Unfortunately, Trump (with the support of the Repubs) has the ability to seriously damage our country for a long time. His stated platform (which can be found on his website) is pretty antithetical to many progressive goals. And I actually believe he plans to carry these things out. Both the major parties have screwed the American people. The Repubs now have the upper hand and will for a long time. Unlike many here, I don’t see a significant progressive movement which will be able to challenge this any time soon. We had two horrendous choices and no matter who won, they each presented serious risk to our country. Of course, Obama is now bowing down to Trump. We can always cut some deals for the corporatocracy.
Your first sentence says it all. I am not happy Trump won, but not sorry Clinton lost. And Chris Christie? His involvement tells you everything you need to know about how things will go down. My fears seem to be on alert. Going into this election I was afraid for this country no matter who won. It just seems as if the democrats have lost their way and those who care about all citizens are in neither party.
One of the most head-scratching things about this whole cycle has been re: the Supreme Court appointment. I’ve thought that Obama capitulated so easily in order to have a carrot (or maybe it’s a stick) to dangle, so lefties could hold their noses and vote for the “lying neo-liberal warmonger” in order to preserve some minimal level of sanity at our highest court.
But now? What now? I mean, the vacancy still happened on Obama’s turn, he’s still president until January, is there any way he can ram it through somehow? Loopholes? Anything? If it’s the legislative branch duty to consult and advise, and they refuse, can Obama refuse to be consulted and advised?
This is based on the perhaps overly optimistic assumption that the republican Obama had in mind is probably be better than whoever Trump has in mind, but I guess you can never be certain. If we’re lucky, maybe he’ll just hold a Miss-Supreme-Court Pageant to determine the next nominee, probably with most weight given to the swim-suit portion of the competition. If we’re lucky.
I strongly suspect that he was not pushing for it because he assumed she would win. He was wrong.
Who won?
Most of us lost, but some think that we could have lost worse if there had been a different outcome of the election.
My Green Party proved to be empty calorie vegan nothing burger.
Paid for by Ajamu2020
I am similarly disappointed with the Green Party showing. The Greens were the only party that sorta kinda acknowledged a little problem with Global Warming and Climate Change beyond the level of a media meme. I could blame the lack of funds and the media blackout for the Green’s problems — but I’m more inclined to blame them as a very lame excuse for an opposition party.
Did you send any money?
The US Green Party really needs to hook up with the Green Parties of Europe since THEY know how to do politics. They actually win.
Another thing the Democratic Party elite is slow to pick up on: urban displacement of blacks affects turnout in the large cities. Polling places change where they don’t disappear entirely….etc.
This may already have been noted by other readers, but Scott Adams (“Dilbert”) had called the election for Trump months ago, based on his reading of Trump being the “Master Persuader”, not interested in logical exposition but in the art of persuasion. And that aspect of American politics and running for office is frequently acknowledged but promptly forgotten when “game plans” are laid out for a campaign, when a candidate and his/her supporters totally ignore the elementary fact of the opposition practicing perfectly The Big Sell, masterfully persuading a skeptical electorate that in fact “I’m your guy”. The Clinton crowd were so convinced that Trump was so much a self-destructive wanker that NO sane person would respond to his message, that they promptly wrote off whole constituencies and important states assuming that the voters would “see through” the Donald and rally around Hillary’s campaign…they just didn’t get it and Trump did, QED.
Scott Adams.
Professor Lichtman.
And a few here who might not have predicted a Trump win, but thought Hillary would not necessarily win.
At least one I know of was insane enough to tremble over the possibility of a Trump landslide victory. He was wrong on the score.
Even Michael Moore, back in July.
Maybe just for the ratings though.
And Assange was wrong, on this matter.
That’s only human.
Trump needed comey to barely squeak over the finish line. Little to spare. Adams was wrong until that…
And that only happened because of a laptop… Was this forgotten? No way. Huma did it for just in case? Richest possibility is hill ordered it because memoirs a la Nixon…
Would love for this to be true, just one more crappy judgement in a very long line of them.
I truly never understood the experience thing… Enormous experience making bad decisions? Is the logic that she’s bound to start making good ones? Confront Russia with no fly?
The mind boggles.
The Jacobin has a rather interesting piece on the importance of electoral politics and, by extension, who to blame and more importantly, what to do.
It might be the right angry antidote for your day:
Politics is the Solution.
Beautiful.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/politics/election-exit-polls.html
Under $30,000 — 53% / 41% -> +16% R (compared to 2012)
$30,000 – $49,999 — 51% / 42% -> +6% R (compared to 2012)
$100,000 – $199,999 — 47% / 48% -> +9% D (compared to 2012)
I’m still trying to interpret this part of the chart
Generally right direction — 90% / 8% -> +5%R (compared to 2012)
Seriously off track — 25% / 69% -> +27%D (compared to 2012)
The +27%D means more democrats feel the country is seriously off-track compared to 2012. Understandable. But that said, they voted for Hillary?
of course. Other guy is a fascist, no alternative, etc. There’s a huge information problem due to the media (including most of the supposedly “indie” media) all being centrist/neoliberal/’professional’/milquetoast, and that has yet to be addressed. (Preferably along with building new organizational forms.)
On that note, I see JS only got like 1% nationally, so they’re useless too, if that’s how they poll after this election season. (Which is not to say they couldn’t be turned into a more useful platform, but that anyone who commits to that better be aware of the problems going in.)
VERY useful link Foppe, thank you. But I do not believe my lying eyes! Clinton’s neolib-neocon policies will get all the moderate independent centrist voters in the middle who Reagan got! Nothing else can work! It couldn’t just be that the policies are decided in favour of whoever is rich and powerful and will back her, and the stuff about floating voters hating liberal policies is just a cover story? Could it?
Re: 24/7 on Facebook.
Zuckerberg is saying Facebook is a tech company, not a media company.
They bought a few things to give them the semlance of being a tech company.
But Facebook is more of a marketing company with its users as the product.
Their service is selling users to advertisers.
Not a “tech” company.
IBM, Apple computers, even Google are more “tech” than Facebook.
Big Pharma is more “tech” than Facebook.
Agreed. Yet Facebook is classified in the GICS Technology sector, rather than in the Consumer Discretionary sector where most media companies (e.g., Disney, Time Warner) are found. Facebook ranks third in tech sector market cap, after Apple and Microsoft.
You can see some other bizarrities in the tech list, such as Visa (the credit card company) being classified as a technology rather than a financial stock.
GICS is jointly administered by S&P and Morgan Stanley Capital International. When they assign a stock to a GICS sector, then sector ETFs have to buy it.
Visa really is a tech company. They don’t print the cards or handle the money.
Thanks for that, Jim. Hunh — Bizarre-o, yes. I find that categorization-as-profit to be an eye opener.
oh, isn’t that exactly media companies do?
Yep, but he’s insisting they are a tech company.
It’s really hard not to be glib today. I think one thing that is obvious today (there were definitely red lights along the way) is that a neoliberal economic policy approach that seeks to splice “markets” through all social experience is bound to produce a politics that exhausts itself on identity.
The whiplash is real. Yesterday (and for much of the campaign) Clinton told me I was supposed to believe that Trump was a monster of Hitlerian proportions. Today, she tells me (along with the rest of the media) I’m supposed to give him the benefit of the doubt and do my part to support him in good faith. I get having respect for the peaceful transition of power and that defeats are difficult, but nothing about continuing to fight for her (the Democrats?) platform? Yesterday’s monster is today’s ______________. Like much of the Clinton campaign this election, her response continues to be incoherent.
What I think will be revealed in the coming days was that this really was about her and nothing much more, as much as people of color and other minorities are devastated by her loss and the fearful of Trump’s campaign rhetoric. How could it be anything else when she bows out like that? As Trump says…not a good look.
I totally can see how this defeat stings on a personal level for Clinton and is a rebuke of the entire Democratic party establishment (yowzers, Obama) but at least Bernie had the guts to wake up the next day and say he would not give up fighting for the specifics of a coherent platform and go on to form his own autonomous organization in short order.
There is no escaping America’s winner-take-all political economy system. So someone better slap the left wing of the Democratic party and remind them in clear, cold-blooded terms that no one likes a loser (hat tip: Donald Trump) and that this just is a horrible look for the Democrats. Donald Trump won because he positioned himself a populist outsider. That gives you degrees of freedom the Clinton campaign could only dream of (and I’m sure regularly did). This is Bernie’s, Ellison’s, Warren’s, Merkley’s, Gabbard’s and the rest of the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s moment. Never let a crisis go to waste, so they say. And this is a crisis for the Democratic party on world historical levels.
The Clinton machine from top to bottom deserves the opprobrium coming their way. As much as I love and respect him I thought Bernie’s reluctance to hit Clinton hard was the political malpractice story of the year. But the Clinton team’s performance in the 2016 presidential election will be the singular case study in political malpractice for the at least the first half of the 21st century.
But in the end, this isn’t about Clinton. This is about the larger progressive movement in the United States. The solution is blindingly obvious: the expansion of universal entitlements through a rights-based approach to policy and planning.
Neoliberal policy approaches that seek to splice markets through all social experience creates a politics that exhausts itself on identity. Is it any wonder in our system that the honor of demonstrating that would fall on a woman.
the expansion of universal entitlements through a rights-based approach to policy and planning.
IMO, this is a technocratic response that has been rejected by the voters. It sounds good as a general statement, then loses it appeal as the particulars around entitlements and rights produce winners and losers. Case in point Obamacare; the burden for increased care without taking account of the rents taken by insurers is borne by people with higher incomes. It is fairer, yet given a political choice many people will vote their own interest over the public interest.
Accepting democracy includes accepting that voters will not always choose the optimum.
I was not at all suggesting that the will of the voters should be denied or that they did not choose the optimum.
Obamacare is not an entitlement. And it is not a rights-based approach to healthcare. And the cost of Obamacare is not borne by people with higher incomes. It is textbook markets-solve-everything neoliberalism 101.
Economic policies that are based in political rights that transcend identity politics — Social Security, Medicare for All, universal free college tuition at state universities — have wide support from a majority of Americans. They are also solutions that, by design, are malleable visions and require diverse political constituencies to come together.
Or to put it another way, it is far easier for any form of social tribalism to be tamped down when economic rights, for instance a living wage, are secure on a more universal scale. But then again that is not the New Democrat’s playbook.
The rights-based approach is the antithesis of technocratic paradigms…though operationalizing a rights-based approach is rooted in public finance which is associated with some forms of specialization. The rights-based approach is its own form of wealth redistribution through the formation of broadly-distributed public goods and guarantees.
So what’s the over/under on whether the Republicans go nuclear and do away with the filibuster when Trump gets sworn in?
What happens to the filibuster rule — Senate rule 22 — will be one of the most “interesting” post election events.
The’ll make it harder one way or a other.
And the Democratic Party followers will still not put 2 and 2 together about they were bamboozled in 2008 when Beltway Democrats intentionally tied one hand behind their backs so that their feet could not be held to the fire by their more progressive base.
The half-assed New Deal reforms, always intended to be temporary by the elite, will be toast.
If Trump means what he says about killing Obama’s TPP and related deals, that alone makes Trump – IMO – light years to the left of Obama and Clinton and well worth his election and deserving of my vote. Defeating TPP is HUGE. After all Lambert has been leading with it for how long? Throw in peace and co-operation with Russia and things look way better than they have lately.
TPP is Obama’s gateway to corporate payola and speaking fees that could dwarf what the Clinton got after Bill left office, and his vehicle to his version of The Clinton Foundation griftdom.
Now it could be gone – PUFF – and he knows it. Bet he’s royally pissed.
+1
Could the prototype presidency for Trump be Nixon, rather than Carter? Or a bit of both?
Richard Nixon, Good Liberal: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-08-07/richard-nixon-good-liberal
I’m not sure what is more sad, that you people think anybody gives a shit about your alt-left concerns, or that you expect TPTB to “hear” them, while not bothering to listen to anyone else’s concerns who tried to be on your side.
Blacks and hispanics have lived as a working underclass forever in this country. They knew the score, they knew what would happen, and they acted. They tried. We tried. We tried to save all of us, all of you, from the fucking shit-storm that is absolutely, and make no fucking mistake about it, absolutely is going to roll over all of us. At this point, we could give a shit about you and your concerns, because we don’t trust you as far as we can throw you and are going to take care of our own.
Sure, we understood that HRC had flaws, that Obama had flaws. We knew. Thanks for pointing them out, but we knew already.
We didn’t care.
That’s because the only other outcome was President Donald Fucking Racist, Misogynist, Lying, Arrogant, 1%er, Thieving, Unstable, Dangerous Trump. And a Republican congress and senate. So we came out in record numbers to try to stop it. And you laugh at us.
So, congratulations.
Well Done.
But, actions have consequences, and here is what you get, and you are powerless to stop it (just like we have been powerless without your support, which you refused):
End of Obamacare, replaced with Republican “free market” health insurance
Pharma protection act
End of carbon reductions
End of alternative energy investment
End of Planned Parenthood
Privatized Social Security
Supreme Court nominations that will set liberal causes back decades
Stripped OSHA
Stripped collective bargaining
Stripped or dismantled EPA
Resumption of torture as an official policy
End of the Iran Peace Treaty
Continued, beefed up drone wars (you think Trump will resist murdering people?)
And what do you get in return? Well, I will tell you what you will not the fuck get, and that is any kind of goddamn seat at any table. There is no room for you. You are dangerously stupid and unreliable. You think anybody thinks the answer to the country lurching 500% right is to court the left? Are you fucking high?
So, here is how it is going to work: black and hispanic people no longer trust you, we will organize without you for our own interests. When they coincide, great, when they don’t, lots of luck. And at some point, we will have the numbers to do it without you.
In the mean time, enjoy President Trump. You earned him.
Adios
Be careful what you wish for. If any group takes up the “armed struggle” alone, it gets smashed. Common cause is the only way to have success in a nation as large as America. Either that, or regionalism? How well is La Raza doing ‘running’ the Southwest? Successful politicos think about everyone’s needs and desires. The other kind of politico is a caudillo. They don’t tend to last very long. Remember Diaz? He was overthrown by a coalition of Magonistas, Small Owners and the Wobblies, plus some old time proto narcos, as in Zapata. When La Mierda hits, we’re all going to get dirty.
Vaya con Dios.
Nice rant. Feel better now?
Good luck getting anything done with a brain trust that can’t win elections. That’s kind of important.
+…‘he who relies on a crystal ball, will eat glass shards’
A politician is only as competent (and/or corruptible) as their staff.
Potentially accurate. I would also add emboldened violence against POC, Muslims, LGBT’s, and opponents of the status quo, e.g., #BLM and any Occupy offshoots.
Apparently you missed the fact that Clinton seriously under-performed with Blacks and Latinos. They stayed home or went third party, particularly the younger demographic. Apparently they didn’t like being put in the Democrat plantation any more than the old South plantations. But sure, blame us, or as you called us, “you people.” “You people?!” Really?! Well, adios amigo.
First time ever, my son was called a “wetback” at school today. As in “at least there won’t be any more wetbacks”. He didn’t know what it meant.
So, yeah. Day fucking one.
But hey,
EMAILS!
I am an immigrant. I have been called many things, and some of the epithets came from liberals. I have been told to go back to my country while wearing the uniform of the US Army. You know what? It never stopped me from achieving things I set out to achieve. You think that the Goldwater Girl, who called young black men “superpredators” and took money from the very bankers who red lined minorities, whose neoliberal ideology has kept minorities down the economic ladder and impoverished the whites too, is your friend? Get real. It didn’t take any of the emails to make up my mind about the Goldwater Girl, it took the entire body of work accumulated by the Clintons: the Third Way move to neoliberalism, the disbmantling of the social safety net, the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the trade deals, the vote to attack Iraq (very direct impact on me), the war in Libya, the insane antagonization of Russia, the rigging of the primaries by the Clinton loyalists in the DNC. That’s by no means an exhaustive list of the Clinton accomplishments that made up my mind to vote for Bernie and then for Stein. So no, I did not need no stinking emails to know that Clinton is a vile, noxious servant of the 1% under whose stewardship we will get into more wars while the 90% of America lost ever more economic ground.
Enough with this facking identitarianism already, improving the economic reality of the 90%, reducing inequality, and strengthening the social safety net, is the only effective way to combat the -isms. And Clinton and the Democrat Party establishment were not, would have never been, and will never be the ones to work to achieve this.
Thank You
Bravo.
Holy shit that was awesome.
Very well said!!!
The first day of school busing after the passage of LBJ’s Civil Rights Act of 1964, for the first time ever, I was called “a white M-F’er”. I didn’t know what that meant until I got punched in the nose, real hard.
I didn’t blame LBJ, I blamed the guy that hit me, and the idiots that promoted school busing.
I think you mean, “Hey, Democratics picked a corrupt criminal who broke the espionage act to privately enrich her family by selling government access to the same misogynist religious radicals who funded the only terror attack on our soil.”
She’s complicit in destroying Haiti, and overthrowing the government of Honduras and the assassination of an important female indigenous leader. She is complicit in domestic policy that took food out of black children’s mouths, and jailed their fathers and mothers. She wanted to build the wall before Trump did.
The Clintons rode racism and racist policies to personal wealth and power. Go scold them.
My 13 year old was called a “wetback” at school today. First time ever.
Anecdotal, I know, but, you know, “Day One”.
Very sorry to hear that. It must have been horrible for your son. And you.
But why did Clinton (according to exit polls) only get 35% of the Hispanic vote?
And why did 7 million people who voted for Obama in 2012 simply not vote at all?
Some of that might have been voter suppression, but probably not all of it.
And very few of these missing voters are NC commenters.
Unless the Dem leadership owns up to how badly they messed up, and fixes things fast,
the Party is doomed.
sorry to hear this okanogen…it can be a cruel world at times.
rants can be a great learning source…in the future please feel free to rant ‘your own words’.
Why do you think that the people you sell out for your bourgeois ambitions shouldn’t basically crush you now?
I didn’t know Van Jones read NC.
LOL. Good one.
You left out:
Killing 500K kids by sanctions
Killing hundreds of thousands in an illegal war & poisoning the ground with depleted uranium
Selling $60B of arms to Saudis and standing by whilst they commit genocide in Yemen
Flying around the world promoting fracking
Sponsoring right-wing coups in Honduras
Oh, sorry, that’s not Trump, that was Obama and Hillary. Remind me how many actual deaths Trump is responsible for?
End of Planned Parenthood? You don’t now much about PP, now do you?
That’s all the parliamentary Democratic Party has: canned narratives that lead people in the directions their betters want them to go.
As far as I’m concerned, okanogen sold out the public interest so that they could partake of bourgeois communion. I have less than no sympathy for them, and I eagerly look forward to watching them process and understand the pain of their well-earned rejection.
Oh look, another identity politics loser looking to blame “the left” for the mistakes of the right-wing corporatist democrats. You just lost. LOST! Blame yourself for your losing. You just lost to trump, the most unpopular candidate in modern history. How about a little of that “personal responsibility” you over-washed conservatives are always lecturing others with? Loser.
If trump was such a horror and a danger, then why didn’t you and your suburban friends take the election much more seriously and promote a non-right wing popular candidate, instead of the loser DNC elite of choice? If this was such an important thing, then surely you yourself could have done better. Why didn’t you do this? Blaming others for your own loser-dom is just pathetic. To say nothing of self-serving and mendacious. You and your right-wing thugs lost to another set of elitist right-wingers. It was foreseen and easily predictable. Open your eyes and stop the lies.
Get you a fire extinguisher for your hair, pal?
Blame your choice of candidates, and your voters not showing up. What record numbers? Was a low turnout election, from what I hear.
Perfectly put. Thank you.
Perfectly put. Thank you.
I think Clinton supporters need to own their failure. This comment is a classic example of failure to do so. Presumably, at some point, a sense of balance will return.
Donald Trump may have already done his greatest service, by taking down both the Bush and Clinton dynasties. It’s probably all downhill from here.
That being said, the left should be thrilled right now, because this gives them hope. If Donald Trump can beat the Clinton machine (backed by virtually the entire corrupt establishment), then why can’t they? Just make sure to sharpen your knives, because the tattered remnants of the Democratic Party is coming after you. I’m not sure how effective they’ll be, though. After all, they’re the same people that lost to Donald Trump.
Contrary to MSM
liesclaims that Trump’s election would crash stocks, the S&P 500 in fact is up over 3.5% so far this week, closing less than 1.5% below its Aug 15th record high.Bonds were not happy campers, though. Today the 10-year T-note got smacked senseless, sending its yield over 2 percent to 2.07% … up 0.21% in a single day.
Historically, one-party control of the presidency and both houses of Congress is inflationary, owing to a lack of effective opposition to funding the ruling party’s wildest dreams.
Evidently, the bond market expects Trump to launch a spending spree that makes 0bama look like Calvin Coolidge by comparison. Issue blank checks to the depleted [sic] military and every Congressperson’s
pork barrelinfrastructure projects, and pretty soon you’re talkin’ trillions with a ‘t.’Popular lore notwithstanding, the R party has not imposed fiscal restraint since the days of Herbert Hoover. Soon David Stockman will be decrying “trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see.”
Long time reader, first time commenter – and I hate for this to be the first of hopefully many, but is there a doubling up of a ton of links for anyone but myself?
There is. I thought at first my finger had slipped and gone back up the list. Just one of those things that happen, maybe, when someone doesn’t sleep much.
I had the same reaction. Certainly understandable for Lambert. Hell, I didn’t even wake up until noon today, much less put together a bunch of links and commentary.
Ha, I had precisely the same reaction. Though I blamed the lack of sleep and the few (or more) drams of whiskey :)
I have no idea how that happened. Normally, I’m quite systematic, do everything the same way each time.
I think it must have been the world’s largest copy-and-paste-o.
And I was warned, and did fix it (though not, sadly, right way; I had decided to take a nap).
One more today. The typically interesting folks at El Reg posted Silicon Valley’s oligarchs got a punch in the head – and that’s actually good thing
Which ends with this choice point that will ring familiar to anyone here:
What I find interesting is looking at the Dem bench going forward. Who have they got in the wings? Van Hollen? Schurmur? (I’m sure he thinks so, but nobody else does.) Warren? Too old.
I’m betting that the next four years are going to see the emergence of Tulsi Gabbard on a huge national scale. Wouldn’t be surprised if she was huddling with her key people as we speak, plotting the general path.
Aren’t Hindus way down on the list with atheists and Muslims in terms of electability?
Speaker of the House might be a good role.
Barack Hussein Obama. Being black is the defining characteristic of not belonging in America. Everything else is below third. It’s that stark. Obama won. Anyone can win if they understand it’s not a good idea to hold voters in contempt.
Don’t underestimate the importance of honesty and treating people with respect which is what Hillary never did. Trump at least agreed the country was on the wrong track.
Hillary not dealing with her record and the record of her husband was a fundamental demonstration of no respect.
But then how could she defend it? As you said somewhere else today she never should have run.
BTW I thought Obama gave a very gracious little speech today about inviting Trump to come for a meeting at the White House. He does have political skills–wasted as it turned out.
He likes being liked. He wanted to cooperate with Republicans.
He needed to abandon his craving for approval from rich white men, and fight for the people who elected him. He refused to do that.
In an era when you can be accused of raping a 12 year-old and heard on tape advising men to grab women by the pussy, and still be elected President, I suspect that there are very, very few, if any, true impediments to election anymore if you can capture the attention of the populace.
I’m sorry, but that lawsuit about the 12-year was dropped by the claimant’s attorney like a hot potato last week. Please don’t spread canards, when simple facts will do.
The fact that it was dropped (and probably never true to begin with) doesn’t mitigate the fact that it was bandied about in the press and harped on by Hillbots for much of the election cycle. I believe that many are still unaware that it was recently dropped.
That might have stuck, if his opponent wasn’t — among other things — the accomplice of a serial sexual predator.
So status quo, the Ds need to stay right to win? That’s not the message I got from the election. Do the Ds not need the younger voters? Tulsi Gabbard is a D because the R party has collapsed in HI. She has referred to herself as a social conservative and is a neocon on foreign policy. She’s Clinton without the foundation though maybe she can get dark money from the lobby group ourrevolution. I am still waiting to see if the vote was a rejection of Clinton corruption or liberal corruption.
Maybe the lesson of Trump is that you don’t really have to pull from that “bench”.
Why do candidates have to be ‘celebrity politicians’? We have had businesspeople, Generals, etc. thru our history. No reason to pull from the worst, except it’s gotten to be a habit.
For the past year and half, I felt like Roddy Piper from They Live. I would look at Hillary and see a monstrous candidate. I’d say to all my liberal friends and associates “do you see that walking electoral disaster?” They would act like I was a crazy person. Now a great many of them can put on my special sunglasses.
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) can now fly their “Mission accomplished” flag. They wanted a more conservative country, and they got it.
#1. Federal executive branch and legislature in Republican hands… Check!
#2. 31 Republican governors, and 68 state legislative houses in Republican control…Check!
#3. No plan at all to reverse it… Check!
It’s almost as if this was the plan of the DNC from the very beginning. They have completely succeeded at making the country more conservative. Any Democrat who takes the DNC as allies must stop drinking the Kool aid and wake up.
+++++++++ Why tack right when you can just give them the country?
No, the DNC wanted to have more of a seat at the table. A Clinton victory would blind the soft-liberals to the existential realities; all the things the MSM pundits are chin wagging about, white-supremacists on the march, women’s rights threatened/ignored, environment threatened/ignored, political money on the march, all of those things would be happening anyway, but the cotton-candy buzz of The First Woman In The White House would dull the senses.
With Clinton out of the picture, the DNC’s fictions are dispersed. That was a crucial piece of the trap.
Transformative change doesn’t require virtuous heroes in shining armor, it requires catalysts.
So many +++, dk. But how can you have a totalitarian society without a mythical ideal? And what Harvard-educated statewright wouldn’t want a totalitarian society?
The extra +’s were a bit of ebullient approval, mostly for the statement ‘They wanted a more conservative country, and they got it.’
Absolutely they would have preferred the fiction that electing a particular gender = left policy positions. Look how well it’s worked with electing a particular race.
DNC. Not place at the table, but spot at the trough.
About the states and governors:
This election brought good news in Kansas.
Brownback and allies tried to purge 5 of the KS Supreme Court Justices with “no retention” campaign advertising. Kansans voted to retain all 5 justices. This is a victory for an independent KS judiciary.
Brownback’s ALEC supported governing coalition of ultra-right GOP conservatives was eliminated by the election of moderate Rs and Ds. The Statehouse center will be far more moderate, interested in schools and roads and sane tax policies.
‘Republicans will retain majorities in the Kansas House and Senate, but Gov. Sam Brownback may face a less cooperative Legislature next session.
‘Democrats, who ran on a platform of tax fairness and a promise to increase school funding, picked up seats in both chambers after seeing their numbers dwindle in the past six years. That comes on top of victories by moderate Republicans in the August primaries, which saw the ouster of 14 conservative incumbents.
“There’s very likely to be an anti-Brownback majority in the Legislature,” said Bob Beatty, a political scientist as Washburn University.’
…
‘“I would ask the question ‘Do you support the policies of Sam Brownback?’ and sometimes I would have to say, ‘I have to move on to the next house,’ because they would just go so crazy,” [candidate Lynn] Rogers said. “And it didn’t matter whether it was a Republican household or a Democratic household, people were very adamant in both cases that they wanted to see someone stand up to Sam Brownback.” ‘
http://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/election/article113472308.html#storylink=mainstage
The voters boosting Trump have been a permanent part of our American fabric, argues Isenberg.
The wretched and landless poor have existed from the time of the earliest British colonial settlement to today’s hillbillies. They were alternately known as “waste people,” “offals,” “rubbish,” “lazy lubbers,” and “crackers.” By the 1850s, the downtrodden included so-called “clay eaters” and “sandhillers,” known for prematurely aged children distinguished by their yellowish skin, ragged clothing, and listless minds.
Surveying political rhetoric and policy, popular literature and scientific theories over four hundred years, Isenberg upends assumptions about America’s supposedly class-free society––where liberty and hard work were meant to ensure real social mobility. Poor whites were central to the rise of the Republican Party in the early nineteenth century, and the Civil War itself was fought over class issues nearly as much as it was fought over slavery. Reconstruction pitted poor white trash against newly freed slaves, which factored in the rise of eugenics–-a widely popular movement embraced by Theodore Roosevelt that targeted poor whites for sterilization. These poor were at the heart of New Deal reforms and LBJ’s Great Society; they haunt us in reality TV shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty. Marginalized as a class, white trash have always been at or near the center of major political debates over the character of the American identity.
We acknowledge racial injustice as an ugly stain on our nation’s history. With Isenberg’s landmark book, we will have to face the truth about the enduring, malevolent nature of class as well.
https://www.amazon.com/White-Trash-400-Year-History-America/dp/0670785970
I highly recommend it!!
Says the same twit who was copy/pasting a canned screed about “Here’s the deal: Donald Trump is going to get his ass kicked” all over NC day before yesterday.
Nicely racist title on your “highly recommended” scribbling there, too. Oh wait, I forgot that if it’s penned by a “highly credentialed so-called liberal” it can’t be racist; at worst ‘edgy’ or downright ‘thought-provoking’.
Next time you hear/see someone playing the 3rd party voters…
https://twitter.com/tomgara/status/796401475274608642
Trump claimed 29 percent of the Hispanic vote on Tuesday compared to Romney’s 27 percent in 2012. With blacks, exit polls show Trump claimed 8 percent of the vote to the previous Republican nominee’s 6 percent.
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/2016-election-day/trump-did-better-blacks-hispanics-romney-12-exit-polls-n681386
[David Remnik, The New Yorker:
“Americans are not and have never been united by blood or creed, but by allegiance to a democratic system of government that shares power, cherishes the rule of law and respects the dignity of individuals. ”
Allow me to rewrite that Mr. Remnik,
“A majority of Americans were once united by blood and creed, and by an allegiance to a democratic system of government that shared power, cherished the rule of law and respected the dignity of individuals, at least until the financial parasites gained enough power and, among other social distractions, brought us mass migration, rammed ‘diversity’ and multiculturalism down our throats and artfully created continually evolving social divisions based on an ever larger set of grievances based on ever more ridiculous gradations.”
Signed,
A racist, xenophobic, chauvinistic, misogynistic, privileged, XYZ-phobic, hetero normative, Eurocentric, abelist, colonialist, irredemiable, paterfamilias.
“A racist, xenophobic, chauvinistic, misogynistic, privileged, XYZ-phobic, hetero normative, Eurocentric, abelist, colonialist, irredemiable, paterfamilias.”
Sure you covered all the bases, didn’t leave anything out?
I don’t know, I don’t listen to enough NPR to have captured all the new Scarlet letters. Maybe I should make a cheat sheet. Have any NewSpeak terms that I missed?
I don’t know, I don’t listen to enough NPR to have captured all the new Scarlet letters. Maybe I should make a cheat sheet. Can you think of any NewSpeak terms that I missed?
You’re obviously not woke. You need some remedial training in intersectionality.
Why uno like safe spaces??… ‘;]
So when was the golden age? There have been better times for many economically for sure but …
Legitimate racial grievances such as the vastly unequal treatment of minorities by the law enforcement and the prison system seem to be getting confused with useless corrupt grifters (hello Hillary) grabbing on to identity politics for their useless grifting.
“A majority of Americans were once united by blood and creed, and by an allegiance to a democratic system of government that shared power, cherished the rule of law and respected the dignity of individuals, at least until the financial parasites gained enough power and, among other social distractions, brought us mass migration …”
This is exactly what my Native friends have been saying. Wow! They are so wishing they had just put a stop to the ‘mass migration’ when it was only Cristoforo and a hundred or so of his buddies. But, like they say, hindsight is 20/20.
And, after the election, taking a break and wiping their eyes from the latest round of pepper spray up there at Standing Rock, they shrug and remark that whoever is elected, they are exploited, marginalized and, regularly, killed.
Oh look!
Also, Day One:
Top climate critic chosen for EPA.
ACA to be repealed first order of business and replaced with…..
Well, nothing, actually. No replacement planned.
Winning!
Yeah, it’s frightening. Couldn’t even wait a week.
Many here are glad that the Clinton cabal has been broken but also understand that things are going to be super shitty, and for some more than others.
I am disabled and dependent on those small monies and medicare to get by. I am worried, too.
I hope you and your child will be ok, okanogen.
(BTW, love that valley. My family vacationed there when I was a kid, when living in the Pacific Northwest, and also when living in Alberta.)
Patricia, I am disabled too. It is a known fact that Clinton was going to hand Social Security over to the finance industry, where it would be turned to dust. Yves posted about that recently – HRC’s scheme depended on the ‘magic of compound interest’ – in an era of 15-year ZIRP!
We know Clinton was going to gut SS, and Obamacare already has degraded Medicare. We don’t know for sure what Trump will do.
Yeah, it’s not a good time to be vulnerable or old, either way. I am not sanguine about Trump but we’ll see.
like clinton was going to address climate change effectively. and aca is awful.
A top climate critic chosen for the EPA is horrifying. Period. It’s absolutely terrifying.
Yea I know Clinton is bad and stuff .. yesterdays news and of little solace indeed in waking up to the horror of the coming age.
we must get trump out as expected. the post i was replying too implied clinton was better. the attempt of clinton to supporters to blame people who voted for 3d party or trump or wrote in a name is today’s news.
and the aca is still awful.
Yes. It’s really unfortunate that the Democrat establishment didn’t take the election seriously enough to nominate a candidate who could win, and who ended up running a terrible campaign while blowing through
bribescampaign contributions like there was no tomorrow (including sucking money away from state organizations, which might have cost them the Senate, in addition to the clownish candidates — Murphy and Bayh — that they nominated).It’s not clear to me that the Democrats will be able to own their defeat and display adaptability, or whether they will continue to blame everyone but themselves and refuse to change. The Iron Law of Institutions says they’ll ride the Titanic all the way down.
FB post today from a longtime friend. He is one of the most decent people I have ever known. Today he is beside himself with grief and rage. He posted much during the campaign and almost always about how utterly horrible and irredeemable Trump is and it’s time we had a woman president. Pretty much sums up the Democrat campaign.
Glenn Greenwald at the Intercept today on the election: Democrats Trump and the Ongoing Dangerous Refusal to Learn the Lesson of Brexit
GroundZeroAndLovinIt
November 9, 2016 at 6:03 pm
The indisputable fact is that prevailing institutions of authority in the West, for decades, have relentlessly and with complete indifference stomped on the economic welfare and social security of hundreds of millions of people. While elite circles gorged themselves on globalism, free trade, Wall Street casino gambling, and endless wars (wars that enriched the perpetrators and sent the poorest and most marginalized to bear all their burdens), they completely ignored the victims of their gluttony, except when those victims piped up a bit too much — when they caused a ruckus — and were then scornfully condemned as troglodytes who were the deserved losers in the glorious, global game of meritocracy.
==============================
Perfectly said
When the only tool you have is a hammer, your reluctant to use it….until you gotta
Wow, Trump’s first move is to quash the lame duck TPP vote? Wouldn’t have gotten that from Clinton & Co, not on day one, even if ever.
I’m putting one in the Trump plus column. Credit where it’s due. I’m sure I won’t like everything he does, and maybe little else, but this is a big one.
And that stock market surge after the dip? That’s all the grifters thinking wait a minute, he might not be as predictable as Clinton, but he’s one of us, right? He’s a player; let’s play! How that actually pans out remains to be seen, but it’s a tell worth noting.
Do you have a link on the TPP?
It’s Lambert’s first item in the TPP/TTIP/TISA section on this page.
Article: http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-trade
Gov. Cuomo, after trashing Trump, says the President-elect could be a ‘bonus’ for New York [NYDN]
Remember between now and January 20, every time you hear people like Cuomo say `infrastructure’,
they mean a 5% tax rate on repatriated* corporate profits.
* Not really, since they’re actually held in the US, because accounting.
“We have to work together because with gridlock, everybody loses,” said Cuomo
Riiiiight, said the Dem governor who facilitated a Repub control the NY state senate. And fought efforts for Dems to take the senate back under actual Dem control. He loves having the R’s so he won’t have to enact progressive measures.
Cuomo is just as much a con man as Trump, he just happens to cheat and grift in the politics realm.
Cuomo thinks he is the next Hillary Clinton. He’s making nice now so he can run for President in 2020. He’s probably immensely relieved she went down – it moves up his timetable. He’s a corrupt, sleazy neo-liberal, just like her. The apple fell very far from the tree, in his case.
Kelly Ayotte lost, so there is some good news.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/who-is-in-president-trump-cabinet-231071
Not sure how credence to give this listing of likely appointees to cabinet level positions in Trump’s administration. Treasury? Some guy with long years at Goldman…. You’ll love possible Secty of State noms. Ghooliani (since it’s still close to Halloween) and Chris “You dasn’t tax the rich” Christie for Atty Gen’l. Altho’ there’s mention that Christie’s role in Bridgegate might take him out of contention.
I don’t think Christie can even make Ambassador to Luxembourg at this point. As for Giuliani, I think he is too old and ill to be a department head. Rudy turned down the head of Homeland Security in the first Bush II term, when he was much younger and in better shape. He doesn’t want the exposure of a cabinet post. Maybe National Security advisor, or some such (god help us).
I saw on Fox News that Michael Flynn’s was being bandied (as usual) about as NSA.
If he can succeed in bringing some measure of sanity to foreign policy, that’d probably be a plus. ‘Flynn incurred the wrath of the White House by insisting on telling the truth about Syria’ – a big no-no on any matter under this president. More deplorables were onto this than the establishment will admit:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n01/seymour-m-hersh/military-to-military
What about Andrew Bacevich for NSA and Judge Napolitano for AG? This is kind of a fun game. Napolitano strikes me as crazy but principled crazy, and obviously Bacevich would get assassinated, but whatever.
“Americans have done a very dangerous thing this week. Because of what they have done we all face dark, uncertain and fearful times” [Guardian].
Well, lemme tell ya sumthin’, if Hillary was elected, the people of Syria, Iraq, Libya would see their “dark, uncertain and fearful times” extended, and licensed by the US public.
The neo-liberal-con wars and the looting have gone on way too long. Only a candidate who promises to end them has a chance of winning in true democracies. The Bush and Clinton Dynasties are done. Hopefully WWIII is avoided. But, let’s be honest. European immigrants were promised prosperity and washing away of their ancient ethnic conflicts if their families assimilated and became Americans. The elites have reneged on this basic promise. Military Contractors and Financiers are pushing ethnic conflicts as a means of wealth extraction and to gather flight capital. Unless the rule of law is restored and equal rights assured for all Americans, the ethnic rifts here will explode just has they already have in Africa, the Middle East and the Balkans.
o Re. TPP — Given the 2PMWC’s long history of covering these toxic deals, it seems “off the table” should be cause for a loud victory celebration here, yes? Or Lambert, do you think the PTB still gonna try to get this passed by hook and crook during the lame-duck session?
o “Regarding his proposed tax cuts…” — If the big multinationals were to actually *pay* a 15% average tax rate on non-offshore-scam-hidden profits I expect the result would be a very large tax windfall. Not that I expect DT to accomplish such a thing, but it would be interesting to crunch the numbers.
o Re. Blame Cannons: Don’t forget Comey and The Putin! Those were both popular targets for the delusional Dem-bots late last night, when the extent of the electoral horror was sinking in.
o “It really does now look like President Donald J. Trump, and markets are plunging. When might we expect them to recover? If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never” [Paul Krugman, New York Times] — Oh, look, it took “them” (because after all the Markets are sentient beings with all-too-easily-hurt feelings) all of what – a few minutes? – to ‘recover’. But thanks, PK, for reminding us of just what a partisan-hack douchenozzle you are.
And now it begins… “Anti-Trump protests in multiple American cities,” http://myfox8.com/2016/11/09/anti-trump-protests-in-multiple-american-cities/ The crisis of legitimacy, indeed. Maybe more like the beginning of Ragnarök? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragnar%C3%B6k
Actually, it’s been festering and pustulating and rotting for decades, and the evil gods and demons who haunt the species are chortling and rubbing their clawed hands gleefully together in the anticipation of more souls to feed on…
Fokkiing credentialed tote-bag true believer mopes take to the streets, like they never did to protect their so very valuable “rights”
and class interestswhen the Elite they suffer under, and for some reason worship , and maybe hope to emulate (the educated cohort’s Lottery?), were eating their entrails and futures… Because what, “Women’s rights”? Or some other set of drivers? Or all of the above?Maybe, if Trump takes a lesson from the apparent willingness of “the Crowd” to finally engage in street action, he might not move forward on some of the bad stuff he might have in mind. So there’s that.
I wonder: will the Fusion Centers be fired up by the State Security Apparatus under the Democrat-in-
TChief, to address this kind of “civil unrest?” or are maybe some of the sneaky State Security Fokkers who know how to generate chaos on behalf of the Ownership Class actively promoting the “masses” they own and scorn? And which MSM investigative reporters will ferret the real situation, whatever it might be, out and let the rest of us have some honest context to work from?The kosians and other Democrats are or were all about ‘elections have consequences.’ Appears that somebody does not believe in that “democracy” stuff after all…
I am glad I made that trip to the Local Gun Store now, before they sold out of ammo — more concerned, maybe, about my “liberal” compatriots than maybe of the Gummint, though both the Panopticon and the rabble present threats to ordinary people who just want to live decent lives in comity and quiet… Too bad “we” are not any kind of “we” at all — just a bunch of “me’s” wanting what they want when they want it, simmering in their privileged stew-with-Bernays-sauce…
Never protested Obama’s spying, drones, wars and now they are protesting … what? an election? on behalf of a political party that colluded to rig a primary to nominate a bribe laundering war monger…. I’ll take them seriously when they all show up for dapl or a labor strike.
“Organic” protests?
If Trump is smart he realizes that the jingoism and bigotry of much of his base are really mostly symptoms of social and economic depression. So if he launches a big enough jobs program he’ll be able to get away with not building the wall or expelling muslims because the passions behind those proposals will have been mollified. The best thing to do in the current environment is run on a program of nativist bigotry with clear scapegoats, then use your mandate to implement a New Deal economic policy that addresses the real source of the anger. Then you can ease off nativism and racism without losing too much political capital.
But does Trump see this? And, even if he does, how in the hell can he get the GOP Koch ideologues to sign off on it?
If you’d like to give a shit but you have no shits to give after this sideshow, try something more subversive than a vote: pick off cities one by one and tie them to the outside world.
https://www.northeastern.edu/law/academics/institutes/phrge/events/institutes/institute2016.html
Human Rights Cities. They’re going to rot this regime like a marmot pelt until it falls apart into manageable pieces.
Relieved Britain no longer the biggest f**k up of 2016
Some links that got lost in the election-day shuffle – rather than give full links and risk incurring the wrath of SkyNet, I provide key snips t enable easy online-link-finding for readers:
o Greenspan Foresees 5% Interest Rates: “Only One Long-Term Direction and That is Up” | MishTalk (yesterday)
Mish and Mr. Magoo are in agreement that rampant growth in entitlement spending is the chief cause of stagnant US and global groaf. Greenie: ‘This represents money that cannot be spent on other government priorities such as education, national defense, research or infrastructure.’ Curious omission of the cost of FIRE-sector bailouts or decades of elite looting. Well, it would be curious were it made by a non-elite-douchebag. The curious omission on Mish’s part is that he normally never misses a chance to bash the Fed for its elite-crook-serving monetary policy, but any criticism of the man who did the most to cement that culture at the Fed is absent here. Also, one thing I generally agree on with Mish is the immense corruption and folly of the US Imperial Project, but he doesn’t even comment on Greenie’s nattering about needing to free up more money for national defense (and we use the term ‘defense’ very loosely).
o Jury awards $3 million in damages over Rolling Stone rape story | Reuters [article ID: us-virginia-rollingstone-idUSKBN13220F]
Time to cancel my non-existent subscription!
o U.S. voters look to game election system by ‘trading’ ballots | Reuters [us-usa-election-vote-trading-idUSKBN1322GT]
Perhaps the lawyers in the NC commentariat can comment on whether this is legal?
Greenspan not even trying to lie convincingly, anymore.
Ranked Choice Voting passed in Benton County, Oregon, too, so the idea is on a roll. Next step, statewide. Too bad we let Maine beat us to it. Congratulations, Maine.
I already see how the Democrats are going to “Grand Bargain” away what’s left of a very frayed social net.
And they are pretty much toast.
I love the smell of centrist concern tr*lling in the evening … it smells like, like … the WaPo:
The center doesn’t hold (a whole lot of meaning at the WaPo).
No argument for that. Aside from all the head-to-head polls, popularity numbers, hard data.
Turnout was down.
Donny Ferguson
@DonnyFerguson
Donny Ferguson Retweeted Patrick Ruffini
Trump got 1.1M fewer votes than McCain, 2M fewer votes than Romney.
Clinton got 7M fewer votes than Obama 2012.
The courtiers seem to know that admitting Sandernistas any credit for this is a fatal blow, if my probing at WaPoo is any guide.
Someone should ask Trump what the Fed does when it sets interest rates and what he thinks happens when the Treasury participates in QE?
People in glass houses might not want to chuck bricks at the Chinese.
The idea propagated by The New York Times that the general body politic of the U.S. couldn’t ever properly understand democracy and therefore, by implication, could never govern themselves properly, as a justification for elite authoritarianism, is a quite old one shared by fascists and racists throughout U.S. history and I’m sure elsewhere.
Indeed, the U.S. has been always and widely conceived by its founders and governing elites as an Aryan Brotherhood with a mission to preserve purity in the Teutonic blood that is the fundament of its superiority. James Bradley in The Imperial Cruise provides numerous quotations by the likes of Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Teddy Roosevelt to this effect. It was widely believed the purity of the Teutonic race must be preserved by the slaughter of its subject populations to guard against the chance of contamination by interfbreeding if a friendlier policy were pursued. Bradley writes:
President William Howard Taft explained “[t]he masses are ignorant, credulous, and childlike [so] the electoral franchise must be much limited, because the large majority will not, for a long time, be capable of intelligently exercising it.”
These ideas have persisted not only among the American elite for the duration of our history, but also in poor white classes, where idea of the eventual global political victory by the white races may appeal as a beacon of redemption for current reduced circumstances. Charles Manson apparently believed so:
— David McGowan, The Strange But Mostly True Story of Laurel Canyon and the Birth of the Hippie Generation
This was a lot like Teddy Roosevelt’s secret strategy in Asia. Let the Jap monkeys and the second-tier Aryan Slavs duke it out, and the pure white lines from America would come in to clean up.
So while it’s extremely sad to hear the echoes of this ignorance from The NY Times, it’s not so surprising, and these toxic, exclusivist elite belief systems really need to be consistently targeted in strategies for all-inclusive social enlightenment.
TPP is not dead.
WikiLeaks @wikileaks 7h7 hours ago
According to Canadian press the US ambassador to Canada has stated that Obama will push for #TPP to passed before Trump takes power.
If I remember correctly, from the Woodstock version:
The Clintons are done and soon gone, a good thing.
Trump will in all likelihood, ‘though in slightly different areas, be as bad.
We all lose… again.
No, we won because Clinton lost.
I used to say that “The Beltway is a sack of pus waiting to burst.”
In this election, it did. The mess is very ugly, but it’s better than letting it continue to swell and fester.
I posted this over at http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/09/opinions/democratic-party-burn-tasini/, but has relevance here too
You know, the Trump party doesn’t have far to go to do what you want:
– it’s already populist. Dem party is so far away from that it ain’t funny
– in fact, it’s to the left of Hillary Clinton
We’re really just talking about nit picking changes at this point:
– get the Trump party to embrace women’s rights. I actually don’t think that will be that hard to do.
– extend the populist enfranchisement to include minorities. I don’t think that will be that hard to do either. Basically give everyone jobs, not just the white folks.
– wait for Trump to retire out after 8 years to wait for somebody less boorish
– keep the Trump party clean of cronyism – this can be a challenge. But we’re up tot it.
– whoever is next can ladle up whatever identity politics is desired as a cherry on top. Heck I wouldn’t be surprised if the next Trump party candidate runs as queer.
However, you guys will have to give up on immigration for the time being. We can be more generous after we get our house in order.
And separately, terrorism abroad will have to be dealt with. And we can’t be squeamish about that. Those who teach others scripture-based terrorism will have to be put to an end.
>>However, you guys will have to give up on immigration for the time being. We can be more generous after we get our house in order.
Just like Obama!
>>And separately, terrorism abroad will have to be dealt with. And we can’t be squeamish about that. Those who teach others scripture-based terrorism will have to be put to an end.
Sure, which Christian missionaries are ya gonna kill first?
[ Those who teach others scripture-based terrorism will have to be put to an end.]
uhhhh, does anyone besides me see a particular problem with that particular one?
> – get the Trump party to embrace women’s rights. I actually don’t think that will be that hard to do.
What? Which buttons do we push to get the Republican party to support reproductive rights?
Trump’s war was with the elites and elitism in general. So where does that leave liberalism? Can we have liberalism without elitism?
Ask yourself, was Trump’s war with the values of liberalism (ex elitism)? I don’t think it really was. Do you think Trump is in this to persecute minorities, LGBT, etc? I didn’t get that sense from his campaign.
In the mean time, he’s created a populist party. As far as I can tell, we’re all invited. Just leave the elitism at the door. There should be a way to do that; liberals can learn a new trick here.
And liberals will need to get their heads wrapped around what to do about immigration and terrorism. At the very least, I think everyone can agree that using immigration as an economic weapon against our own people will have to become a non-starter. If that consensus can be stated (and I think it’s all been but stated by the Trump party, but still needs to be stated none-the-less, I think embracement of immigration happens incrementally. Can liberals live with that? If terrorism wasn’t such an issue, and Mexico’s crime wasn’t such an issue, it could/would be more than incremental. But that’s the reality. Ideally we help Mexico solve its out-of-control mafia crime problem. And ideally we help the ME countries solve their out-of-control terrorism problem. And I do actually see the Trump party upping its game down-the-road in how they approach Mexico and the ME in helping them to up their game. But in the mean time, the Trump party is about the USA getting its own house in order. It is what it is. Can liberals live with that?
Some final thoughts. Can liberals live with out-of-control mafia crime? Seems the catholic church could, so why can’t we. [being facetious here for the sake of argument.] But what about terrorism? Can liberalism live with terrorism? Time for some soul searching there.
Or maybe the issue that liberals can’t get their head wrapped around is power. Trump has the power. Not only that, Trump would be entirely comfortable not having a democracy and ruling as a king. A benign king maybe, but king none-the-less.
The liberal and democratic tradition is not to trust that. There should be a balance of power, right? Ideally, power to the people, right? So let’s not embrace this would-be-king and co-opt the populist party he leaves behind. Instead let’s stand up our own apparatus that does the same thing without the need for the personality of a king at the top. Stopping here for now before I say things I’m not sure I’m ready to say.
Well, the U.S. post WWII trajectory – with a brief setback right after the Watergate era – has been one of continuous increase of power to the executive. The current president, the one I was ecstatic to see elected back in 2004 because I thought he would bring in real positive change certainly did nothing to change that trend. In fact, under his watch you undertook a full blown war without the authority of congress and he made it a routine accepted thing that the president had the power to order the summary execution of anyone, anywhere on the planet with no oversight or accountability. Oh, and that it’s also just fine to perform that execution via a missile fired into a built up area guaranteeing that dozens of innocent bystanders get killed too. Then there’s the wholesale spying on the entire world and abduction of anyone, anywhere, in secret and putting them in a friendly dictatorship to be tortured: I bet that police state apparatus could be of great use to an authoritarian leaning president!
If an out of control president creating havoc with all those tools is such a great concern to people, perhaps they should have spent the last eight years breaking them up, putting them on the scrap heap of history, holding responsible those who enabled and used them and bringing your country back to the rule of law. Lots of good people DID work on that but the Democratic party elite, the White House and the majority of the mainstream media – the people currently fear-mongering about the terrible things Trump could do with that apparatus at his disposal – certainly weren’t among them.
Maine voters also passed the following ballot measures:
Legalize Marijuana
Increase Minimum Wage
[Ranked] Choice Voting
Legalize Marijuana
New Income Tax For Public Ed
Issue Transportation Bonds
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I LOVE that Maine legalized Marijuana TWICE! :) GO MAINE!!!!!!
I want to see ALL of the people who’ve never ever bothered to become involved in anything over the last 40 years, or at the very least since 9/11 and are now acting as if Trump had taken their first-born finally get off their asses and get out there in the millions each and every time Trump attempts to do something that is terribly wrong. Good grief, all this writhing and emoting and wounded space(s) coming from the always comfortable high side of middling income earners who were perfectly content to let Obama entrench all of the worst of Bush’s legacy and them some is more than I can bear. How could any of these people think you could carry on indefinitely with effectively 2 entirely different economies – one for the educated, skilled, wise in choice of parentage and birthplace, the other for all those who just, too bad, missed the boat on globalization? As one very smart observer noted: “How on earth was it possible that the liberal/left or even a middle-of-the-road Democratic Party was not the organizing force behind this first popular repudiation of entrenched power?”
Look in the mirror and shake it off. If you cannot take your responsibility as citizens now to get involved, to become properly informed, to be willing to take a mere monetary hit to stave off something much, much worse, in other words, to do what real progressives/leftists had to do to win any of our rights in the first place, well then, good luck. We certainly shall need it.
Thomas Friedman really doesn’t read, does he? The Roman Empire didn’t fall in a day, and the main reasons it fell stemmed from the Vandal conquest of North Africa. They lost a major tax source and the price of their imported grain shot up. Then there were the invasions of “barbarian” tribes in the North over a hundred years. He should ask his taxi driver about it.