Why these enormous snowballs in Siberia could mean America is in for a very brrr-acing winter Daily Mail (Li)
Neil deGrasse Tyson reveals the biggest threat to mankind Business Insider (furzy). The idea of scientists and technologists as the priestly caste is questionable, particularly given the corruption of science these days and hubris about the potential of technology.
Scientists say THIS is how to make your smartphone battery last longer ThaiTech (furzy)
China
Inside China’s wild bulk commodity bubble MacroBusiness
India’s Contradictory Energy Policy Permanent Settlement
PM Modi declares Rs 500 and 1000 currency notes to be void from midnight Economic Times (furzy). Jerri-Lynn has a story on this coming later this AM.
Refugee Crisis
Erdogan Lashes Out at EU, Threatens to “Open the Gate” for Refugees Michael Shedlock (furzy). This has always been a source of leverage. But for Erdogan to make a threat is a sign of weakness.
Brexit
Brexit means Brits will work longer and have less rights Business Insider
Ukraine/Russia
Russia ships ‘chase away’ Dutch submarine in Mediterranean BBC (furzy)
Syraqistan
The Iran Deal Is in Critical Danger LobeLog (resilc)
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Here’s how to take a look at EVERY SINGLE Google search you have ever made ThaiTech
2016
Transcripts of Trump’s victory speech and . Clinton is clearly fighting back tears.
World leaders react to Donald Trump’s US election victory ABC (Australia; James)
Donald Trump’s Victory Is Met With Shock Across a Wide Political Divide New York Times. The Grey Lady is incapable of being gracious and is still depicting him as Scary Trump Monster. As a prominent MSM journalist said via e-mail:
The leaders of the New York Times should undergo some serious soul-searching, not only because they so obviously put their thumb on the scale but also because their breathless efforts to stop Trump failed so completely. By jettisoning even a semblance of neutrality in the coverage the paper probably helped Trump. So the institution lost two ways – in its journalistic integrity and its ability to have an impact.
Thousands protest in US cities over Trump election victory Financial Times. I hate to sound jaded, but “thousands” across the US is bupkis, particularly in light of the Team Dem extended Two Minute Hates against The Donald. You got more people at single Sanders and Trump rallies. As long as Trump stays low key (and he’s preoccupied by being way way behind the eight ball with his transition efforts), and the cops and Trump fans don’t get stupid and escalate, this will die down to festering resentment. Not good, but not fatal.
At under $5 each, Trump’s votes came cheap Reuters (EM)
Trump rewrote political playbook in successful White House bid Reuters (EM)
Meet Trump’s Cabinet-in-waiting Politico
Trump begins to play catch up on transition to White House Associated Press. Appears to have the better grip on the dynamics than the Politico piece.
Elizabeth Warren Wants a Truce With Trump Daily Beast (resilc)
Trump victory could spell defeat for EU-U.S. trade deal Reuters
What Will a Trump Foreign Policy Look Like? American Conservative (resilc)
Russia cheers Trump victory Politico
US election 2016: China eyes chance to weaken US power BBC (furzy)
Saudi Prince Who Called Trump a “Disgrace” – Kisses Trump’s Butt Today Gateway Pundit (EM)
US Election 2016: Trump’s victory should bring Australia’s independence Sydney Morning Herald. EM: “Pearl-clutching from down under.”
Trump victory could mean big business for K Street Washington Post (furzy). Ya think?
Americans Wanted a Revolution, and Clinton’s Campaign Only Offered Them Obama 2.0 Alternet. NC readers will not buy a lot of this, since it recycles the “Meanie Republicans were too powerful!” myth. In 2009, the country was prostrated, desperate for change, Obama had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, squandered his 100 days, and his failure to do anything on the housing front paved the way for Scott Brown to win in Massachusetts, the bluest of blue states (Tom Ferguson’s granular analysis showed voting levels for Brown tightly correlated with foreclosure levels in voting districts).
It was the rise of the Davos class that sealed America’s fate Guardian (Joe H)
Why the Democrats Couldn’t Defeat Someone as Loathsome as Trump Counterpunch (resilc)
Secretary Of Education Ben Carson? Here’s A List Of Potential Trump Cabinet Picks – BuzzFeed (resilc). As disturbing as many of the people being noised about as possible Trump nominees are, and Carson is most assuredly one of them, the Secretary of Education is such a lightweight job that it could probably be filled by a potted plant and no one would notice.
The Source of our Rage: The Ruling Elite Is Protected from the Consequences of its Dominance Charles Hugh Smith
Democrats, Trump, and the Ongoing, Dangerous Refusal to Learn the Lesson of Brexit Glenn Greenwald, Intercept
Dear Democrats, Read This If You Do Not Understand Why Trump Won Medium (EM)
It Has Happened Here American Prospect. Resilc: “If the Martha’s Vineyard wing of the Demos controls that party they will not see power again anytime soon.”
Clinton didn’t lose because she’s a woman The Times
‘Go to hell!’ A divided America struggles to heal after ugly election Reuters. EM: “Oddly – or not – I did not see any article along the lines of ‘A thoroughly disgraced American media struggles to regain credibility after ugly election’ in my Reuters newsfeed.”
Michael Moore’s “Morning After To-Do List” Facebook Post For Democrats Is Going Viral Good (furzy)
Somber White House Staff Listen to Obama’s Election Response NBC. Lulu flagged the photo.
Repeal Would Be Even Worse Than Obamacare Bloomberg. From the McMuffin. I not entirely convinced, the reason being that the answers to general questions are not the same as of those directed to people who are buying policies and looking at prices and choices and see that they suck. Put it another way: one more year of death spiral, of 25%+ or more price increases and even narrower networks (which McArdle ignores as de facto denial of coverage by design of many pre-exsiting conditions via exclusion of the required specialists) and more people will recognize that the supposed advantages of Obamacare are empty for many people. The other way would be for the Republicans to engage in a period of concerted messaging about the failure of Obamacare to deliver on the two features that McArdle flags as popular. But they haven’t been terribly good at anything other than very simple messaging, like “Obamacare! Democratic and socialized! Bad Obamacare!” (witness Benghazi). But to her point, it would be better to have a replacement, like what Obamacare really is: catastrophic coverage, presented as such. And Trump did say he’s get rid of Obamacare and put something better in place, not simply scupper it.
Fed faces Trump glare ahead of policy shake-up Financial Times
White House open to a Clinton pardon New York Post (resilc). As Jerri-Lynn predicted.
New Zealand immigration site traffic surges after US election BBC (furzy). These people have no idea how hard it is to emigrate unless you are spousal or have a corporate sponsor.
DAPL
Deputies From Wisconsin And Elsewhere Leave North Dakota, Refuse To Return As Millions Join Movement Fifth Column (dcblogger)
The Standing Rock Protests Are About the Constitution Reader Supported News (furzy)
What Everyone Is Missing About the Dakota Access Pipeline Protests AntiMedia (Wat)
Trump victory breathes life into Keystone XL pipeline Financial Times
What Was Conservatism? Chronicle of Higher Education (Micael)
Latest Example of the Rigged Health Care System: BTG Pleaded Guilty to “Misbranding” for Marketing a Device Never Proven to Do Any Good Health Care Renewal
Grantham on a world without bubbles MacroBusiness. I’d normally cross post this, but it’s the entire GMO report and I’m loath to do that sort of thing. But a very useful read.
Class Warfare
Can Capitalism Work for Women of Color? Institute for New Economic Thinking. I’m not keen at all about solutions that rely on people going into business for themselves, since far and away, the highest-odds path to creating a new business that survives is by working for someone else and finding a market niche that is underserved and targeting that. So even though women of color may indeed have been forced into entrepreneurship via other paths being blocked or artificially hard due to prejudice, it does not necessarily mean that more can follow in their footsteps without having some experience and commercial insights.
Antidote du jour (Tracie H). A king vulture from the Los Angeles Zoo:
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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Comments are closed.
Mild-mannered Dr Copper — good God, y’all, he’s gone mad: from $2.10 to $2.56/lb in a couple of weeks. Chart:
As an industrial metal, copper is a coincident or slightly lagging economic indicator. Copper’s huge pop over the past two weeks suggests higher expected growth and inflation.
One-party control of the US presidency and Congress tends to be inflationary since it removes spending restraint. Are you happy now, J-Yel?
all that copper will be used for trump hair/skin maintenance.
…in addition to copper plating the White House, the Capitol, the Jefferson Memorial and the Washington Monument, various assorted other Federal buildings (to be renamed after Trump later) The newly renamed Trump International Airport…. Just think of the job opportunities that the creation of a “Trump shining city on the Hill”, and keeping it shiny, will engender!
Time to buy Brasso futures.
Only to watch the Brasso factory burned to cinders as the historical reenactors what call themselves True Americans lose all control at the thought of Lady Liberty recovering her natural BROWN hue.
time to survey the neighbors w/piled up newspapers to do some “third shift” copper wire stripping?
As an MMT deficit owl convert I think that is one of the good things about this presidency. It seems people are pushing commodities in light of his proposed infrastructure projects.
They also seem poised to repeal Obamacare. I wonder what is the best way to try and influence what we get in its place? People are definitely upset about the high cost of insurance.
Yes, there’s a rich irony that Trump may deliver the fiscal stimulus often advocated here. Under 0bama, with the sequester and all, fiscal stimulus has been frozen at about 3% of GDP.
Like many presidents-elect before him, Trump entered office mocking his predecessor for a reckless accumulation of debt, but likely will proceed to set fresh records of public debt issuance.
Something has to give. Under the Big Gov Republican party, it’s usually deficits. John Mauldin forecasts a $1.5 trillion deficit in the next recession, or about 8% of GDP.
The cumulative debt under O went from around $8T to $19T over 8 years. It sure doesn’t look to me like we should be hysterical_debt_Owls over lack of deficit_debt_stimulus. I’d be eyes wide open about how come it didn’t work? Looks more like the world’s biggest bank robbery.
Who, who?
The owl part is watching over who gets the money. We’ve tried giving it to the banks and insurance companies.
I’ll await Bill Black’s new book, “The best way to rob a country is to own one”.
I’m still waiting for Bill to write “The best way to rob is with a bank” but I won’t hold my breath since Mr. Black calls the banks “our banks.”
Well Obummer has bought them three times over since 2009.
First of all, this is exactly what the Republicans’ “Two Santa Clauses” strategy promotes: Run up deficits as big as possible when in power, and complain as bitterly as possible about deficits when out of power.
As for Obama’s increased debt… That money went to the financial sector, not Main St. Where the money is spent matters.
Much of that debt increase went to fund all of Mr. Peace Prizes’ overseas wars. If Trump can turn a few of those $trillions around to be spent on U.S. infrastructure, we will be much better off.
I’m assuming it wasn’t increased spending so much as it was decreased revenues (tax base)
but likely will proceed to set fresh records of public debt issuance. Jim Haygood
The problem isn’t the debt of a monetary sovereign but that it pays positive interest and is thus welfare proportional to wealth, not need.
Indeed, a growing economy needs a growing money supply* otherwise risk-free money hoarding is rewarded. But progress requires investment, not money hoarding, so a non-growing money supply is anti-progress.
*Deficit spending by the monetary sovereign increases bank deposits 1-for-1 with bank reserves.
If anything, I hope (there’s that word again) that an OCUS (Orange Coif of the United States) Administration will rescind the f#cking extortionate MANDATE …… ASAP !!
Well,
This may be a small silver lining. The Democrats were never going to take the ACA off the table and replace it w/single payer. Not even if Bernie had won. So…let the Republicans tear it out, make our healthcare system even worse, and maybe next time we can start over better.
And, as an aside, James Comey’s wedding HRC to Weiner is one of the sneakiest tricks I’ve seen in American politics. Willy Horton as former Democratic Congressman. Oh to have been a fly on the wall at the FBI!
I’m thinking now that actually the best chance to finally move toward single payer is to dismantle the ACA completely.
copper. Well. I suppose this is the reason that thieves removed ATTs dsl lines in south Dallas and we were without service for two and one-half days. Where is the fiber lines? North Dallas. This is a “Red Lined” district, that is african american with severe poverty. but that is another story.
The more important tell in my mind is the 13 week treasury. It’s up to 0.45% or so today. Compare to the 0.30% average it’s been at. Shouldn’t be long before it’s at 0.55% – probably where the Fed Reserve needs it to be at to give them safe harbor to raise the Fed Funds rate to 0.75%.
That said, I don’t think it will be that significant an event. It’s not like it will invert the yield curve with the 10Y going up the way it is.
You know, you have repeatedly lambasted papers like the NY Times for their biased coverage, but I have to tell you that although I really used to love your site, I have grown mighty weary of the cynical pontificating that has taken over it as a result of the election cycle. My goodness! Who knew that you were so far superior to any of the liberals in the US! I can only imagine what kind of world you think we should live in. I only know that I no longer want to be a part of your vision or make use of your great wisdom.
So you don’t like a spade being called a spade. The Times’ coverage has been appalling but I gather it suits your preconceived notions. You should read another site.
In addition, I’m not a liberal and would be ashamed to be mistaken for one.
+++
If James had read this site for any length of time, he’d know “liberal” is a grave insult to *actual* progressives…
Oh come on, the NYT has been called out many, many times for its behavior during this election, but refused to budge. Now they and other media outlets are SOULE SEARCHING, trying to TAKE STOCK OF WHAT ARE OUR STRENGTHS and TRYING TO CREATE HARD HITTING JOURNALISM IN THE DIGITAL AGE.
It’s all nonsense. The NYT is a joke, which is why people aren’t buying subscriptions anymore.
Nailed the cliches, especially the last one. Encourage anyone to take a look (or maybe better not) at some of the recent entries by the Public Editor. They have a new function now, and it’s not the old journalism.
Don’t forget to use their postage paid subscription envelopes to send them lead tire weights, spare washers and other heavy things for which they will have to pay First Class postage.
What utter nonsense. We don’t much care for your ideological preconceptions. NYT has been sewer diving since their support of the Iraq War, and their coverage of the elections was pathetic, i.e. their not so big revelation that Trump uses tax loopholes like everyone else.
When your worldview is:
Trump = Hitler
You can see why the MSM went over the top bashing Trump. Nothing is too extreme, if it keeps Trump from being elected. Even if it means ignoring Bill/Hillary Clinton Inc’s thirty year plus record of sleaze.
The question they should be asking is “Why is 50% of the country willing to take a chance with Hitler, instead of signing up for four more years of Goldman Sacks rule?
That’s a very good point.
I was amazed when the Clinton campaign started calling Trump a fascist immediately (and never mind that if Trump is Baby Hitler, it makes sense to take the “no man, no problem” approach). After you’ve deployed that talking point, what do you do for an encore? Well, you do a groping tape. But compared to being a fascist, that’s like running a campaign ad against Hitler saying that he wasn’t really a vegetarian.
Some of us recall the days when Seymour Hersh in the New York Times exposed the Vietnam War by simply reporting (remember that word?) to the public what was going on.
(I guess if you’re going to get all revisionist maybe you can argue that the Vietnam War was a great idea and today’s NYT would rightly not permit so much transparency about it. 2 million dead Vietnamese and a few of us who signed up for a society composed of informed citizens might argue otherwise).
I think you meant to say, Goldman Sachs, but yeah, i like the idea.
“Goldman Sacks US Treasury” – if NYT printed that on the front page they’d be saved!
Golden Sacks. Fixed it for ya.
GOLDMAN SACKS-USA
I guess Correct The Record is still sending out checks.
what’s cynical?
there was no indication in “papers like the NY times” that Trump might win. i don’t know if you noticed, but he won. there is no ambiguity about this.
you’re trolling
#WeToldYouSo
Shoulda taken the money, Toombs…
-RIDDICK
Oh Snap!!! :)
#SkittishToombsSkittish
I too am weary. Challenging your beliefs (and challenges to your beliefs) is exhausting. Elections are a flat out beat down when it comes to this. Declaring that you refuse to listen to any viewpoint that doesn’t confirm your world view isn’t an insult to anyone other than yourself. A much better route would be to take a vacation and then re-evaluate where you want your energy to go. I think it was an embarrassment for you to attempt a smug insult of those that have the drive to continue the debate.
seconded
James Hans, with due respect, you’re lying. If you didn’t like the notion that people have interests and act upon them, a) you wouldn’t have EVER loved this site in the first place b) you need to return to your bedtime stories and thumb-sucking and leave the adults alone to talk.
“You live in a country where a majority of its citizens have said they believe there’s climate change, they believe women should be paid the same as men, they want a debt-free college education, they don’t want us invading countries, they want a raise in the minimum wage and they want a single-payer true universal health care system. None of that has changed. We live in a country where the majority agree with the “liberal” position.”
What Michael Moore does not realize is that if this were true they never would have nominated HRC.
If you think the people nominated Hillary Clinton, the kindest thing I can say to you is: think again.
Agree. The victory of Trump is the “people” taking the only “rational” alternative available to them.
Trump is a political manifestation of “Creative Destruction.”
Actually, the hope and changy for/to “Creative Destruction.”
Hopey changey is a drug. Not sure what to use instead, but not that one.
If Hopey Changey can relief pain, should it be legalized?
Apparently legal and pay only on the back end.
Everyone seems to indulge it, even we here, hoping that Trump will change some of what Obama didn’t. And maybe he will.
But I can’t, anymore. Back-end cost is too high. Gotta find something else.
The people did NOT nominate HRC!
I would love to live in a country where we actually got to vote on major issues of public policy (say, anything with spending over 1 billion), but we don’t. In instances were we do have referenda on individual issues, people clearly skew left.
Instead, what we have is a system where we are forced to choose imperfect avatars in the hope that once they get in government, they might occasionally act in our interests. I try not to hold my breath.
Also, since liberals so often turn to “believing in climate change” as a sign of their superior virtue (N.B. climate change happens whether you believe in it or not), I now insist they make some commitment to understanding the scale of what needs to be done (like grounding all planes tomorrow and indefinitely) rather than preen over how they separate their plastic from their cardboard or are in favor of a carbon tax.
Oh good grief yes.
Thank you, great point. If people really believe that climate change is an extinction level threat, then they should be making massive lifestyle changes, immediately.
He said (jokingly?) that he was secretly in love with her. His praises for HRC may be a sex thing.
Moore often pushes useful ideas but he’s also a rich guy who likes to go on Bill Maher. As with so much of our affluent left it’s mostly theoretical….not enough skin in the game despite his working class background.
Actually, what Michael Moore did during this last election cycle will cause me to ignore him forever more.
In his periodic emails, he sounded much like he does in this article, then suddenly he sent out a hysterical email for Clinton and began sounding like the echo machine irrationally against Trump. Trump is scary. Trump is scary. Trump is scary.
May I assume he got an infusion of cash? Sure seemed like it. I used to get his emails. This website inoculates one against these types.
And while we’re at it let’s add Warren and Chomsky to the heap of ineffectual leaders. Squishy liberals are not the only ones to blame.
Indeed! Too many are already building up false hopes re Warren, looking at her as the next “answer.”
Surely that’s more their problem than hers. I see no reason to blame her if they want an easy out. She hasn’t, that I am aware, told them she could get them out of doing their own homework.
It would have been nice if Warren had endorsed Sanders prior to the Massachusetts primary. The Democratic primary there was quite close (50.1% for Clinton, 48.7% for Sanders). Had Warren endorsed Sanders, the percentages might have been reversed. That slight difference could have had a beneficial butterfly effect on the votes for Sanders in subsequent state primaries.
Instead, Warren didn’t explicitly endorse anyone until June, 2016, at which point Clinton had clinched the nomination. So the Democrats got a weak candidate hated and mistrusted by tens of millions of voters, and Donald Trump will be the next President.
Sorry, I’m missing how that connects to my comment or Bill’s. I was primarily impatient with the whole notion of looking to an individual as an answer, which is naive and lazy. I don’t think Warren has pretended to be one, and that much is to her credit. I was certainly annoyed by her failure to endorse, but it’s another issue.
I was responding to this:
I think she can be blamed for her failure to support Sanders, which helped elect Trump. I agree with Bill that hopes regarding Warren are probably false hopes.
In any sane democracy, voters just laugh at the patronizing presumption behind political endorsements. This week was reassuring in that way.
Flag Moore’s emals as spam. If enough people do this, all his emails will be rejected by most email servers.
That Greenwald piece is one of the best things I’ve read since the vote. Should be a must read by everyone in DC.
I also found a great, inspiring piece by David Swanson on Counterpunch. Sadly his advice and call to action will no doubt be ignored. But if the US stopped its endless war policy (with all the ensuing death, environmental damage, and financial cost) and shut down its overseas bases, that would be the real revolution. Highly recommended, here are a few excerpts:
–David Swanson: Now We Can Finally Get to Work
Just shutting down all those goddamn bases would be a great start.
Pavel
November 10, 2016 at 7:19 am
Good advice probably not recognized as such by the ones who could most use it.
I was channel flipping and I watched Lawrence Odonnell on MSNBC – I haven’t had TV in a few years (last year I just had Satellite that just had FOX) so I am just catching up on current TV hackery.
Odonnell was gong on forever about how Obama was the most VIRTUOUS president EVER. OK, arguable, debatable but OK. But than he started going on about the flaws of the other presidents, e.g., slaveholding, Lincoln participated in Indian genocide. True enough (though it struck me as contrived just so Odonnell could praise Obama)
But than when he got into how Trump will drone and the terror Trump will cause by deporting people….my jaw just dropped.
So is Odonnell too ignorant to know that Obama already deports people and drones people?
Or is he just lying?
My point being that he is just a good example of people who cannot accept good advice because they can’t accept the reality under-girding the advice
Here’s another good example: every leftist who refuses to look at, and learn about, the reality under-girding everything Swanson cited in the piece Pavel links above — the monetary, fiscal and financial systems that drive our dysfunctional world.
It is depressing beyond words that Swanson apparently is one of those hapless leftists.
And for those who are actually interested in why things are the way they are, this Monetary History Calendar provides some helpful background:
https://monetarycalendar.wordpress.com/
Sorkin gets trashed for the sins of “The West Wing,” but the mindless episodes about “smart moderate Republicans who were reasonable” were almost exclusively penned by O’Donnell. The monologue by Tobey on the wonders of “free trade” that made no sense was O’Donnell. The man is simply an idiot.
“The man is simply an idiot.”
I have the unfortunate circumstance of having met O’Donnell through membership in the Writers Guild, and he’s far worse than an idiot. He is a thoroughly corrupt, venal, sycophant neoliberal POS. If guillotines become necessary, he’s in the first wave.
Having a years’ long interest in alcoholism and written a book on that subject
I watched a discussion on MSNBC where Dr Drew Pinsky was a guest. When Pinsky mentioned that genetics played a significant role as a cause of alcoholism O’Donnell went nuts. That could not be, he said angrily, he knew many families where only one sibling was alcoholic and all the others were moderate drinkers.
I guess he slept through high school biology on the day they explained dominant and recessive genes, and I guess he elected not to take biology at Harvard.
the later for a tubman … Alex
I think they really either don’t know or manage to segregate that knowledge from their partisan support.
Wikileaks still has a series of weekly publish-ings scheduled thru the end of the year, far as we know. There’s still time for this administration to go down in history as the most corrupt Democratic administration in history.
Glenn was great. But the Clintonites will refuse to hear it and not just the.people in power. It’s too painful to admit error on such a scale.
A few days before the election I read yet another post elsewhere about why Clinton hatred was all based on misogyny. This person even said that while protesting the war in 2003 she and her friends daydreamed of a Clinton presidency in 2008. Clinton, she said, was hated because she was the smart girl like Hermione Granger who was always right and always did her homework. This about the person who refused to read the National intelligence estimate before voting for the war. The cognitive dissonance was stunning. People like this are highly unlikely to admit their mistake. Clinton has an almost mythic importance for them.
Yes this is everywhere, not just before, but after the election! NPR continually asked author Vance of Hillybilly Elegy about racism yesterday. Over and over again they interviewed people who view the entire election through the glasses of these demographic issues. It seems incomprehensible that people voted on issues, but instead voted on feeling.
The fact of the matter is that people made their decision based on class. It’s class all the way down. Every one of these demographic issues is related to class.
It will take years, if not longer, for people who consider themselves liberal to actually respond to class issues.
I think this is one of the toxic byproducts of “identity politics.” If one reduces everything to identity, then of course identity is the only comprehensible explanation for voting.
I subscribed to new republic for years until their class not race cover, which got so much liberal flak they recanted the following month.
There are more poor whites than poor blacks, by far.
Let’s not just look for gems in the rough that happen to be black, but of all races.
racist policies promote and extend racism.
Right now we have the bestest_brightest_mostest_virtuous taking to the street and protesting against The Orange Satan.
Just saw a news report where a Russian diplomat said there were some conversations between Moscow diplomatic channels and Trump organization people.
putin_whisperers!!! OMG treason!
This could go on a while.
Some of the protesters may be hired
http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/npo/5869093530.html
Full time, good pay, with benefits.
Brings back Ralph, the card punching dog going after Wyle Coyote once he’s on the clock. I’m pretty sure someone had fun writing this one.
Yep. “Washington CAN!”. As in DC, not to be confused with the state. They don’t say who their donor list is. But astroturf is alive and well, and starting to look like an attractive career!
I have friends who were arrested in DC back in the early 2000’s for legal protests at the orders of Chief Charles Ramsey. The city lost the ensuing lawsuits. A decade later, Ramsey is speaking at the Democratic Convention nominating one of the people they were protesting and these same friends are now cheering them on. The mental gymnastics involved is truly impressive.
“First they came for me… so I joined their campaign”
wait, no, that’s not how that goes.
I don’t think this is fully supported by the record:
It seems to me the initial effort was merely to persist as an independent country. The idea of dominating other countries developed later, though of course the efforts to dominate nations not recognized as countries had started earlier.
Right into the early 1900’s, the USA was busy colonizing its own continent; no time or need to go colonize someone else’s. The exceptions were the Monroe Doctrine — which warned other nations that South America was ours to colonize whenever when we got around to it — and the Philippines.
It is more accurate to say that every single one of our wars was waged solely to preserve or create freedom. That is our peculiar delusion.
“How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?” –Samuel Johnson
If we look at the treatment of the people that lived here before the Europeans arrived, a case might be made that domination preceded the creation of a government and was baked into the rules that were written down later on.
I thought my last clause covered this:
But I still think it true, if you read the Constitution and Federalist papers, that the initial purpose of joining in a federal government was defensive and (mostly internally) economic, not imperialist.
I kind of do and do not agree. The Monroe Doctrine of opposing colonialism in practice quite often meant trying to set up puppet states in Latin America, not to mention our outright war with Mexico in the 19th century. Manifest Destiny, even before it had a name, was an undercurrent in American society, even in colonial times. It’s worth noting that many of the skirmishes and wars fought with tribes were also proxy wars with the UK, France, and Spain. The Sauk and Fox had the backing of the British in the Blackhawk War (their coalition was even referred to as the British Band), there was the French and Indian war of the colonial era, and the Seminoles were backed by Spain during Jackson’s invasion of 1818.
Certainly, it took some time before the US made entrees beyond North and South America, but the ambitions were always there. Rarely has the US ever been isolationist in fact.
Well, there’s something in that, too. I am reminded that Franklin deplored the choice of eagle as national symbol and suggested the skunk would have been preferable; I forget his phrasing, but the gist was that it is a quiet animal that minds its own business and only acts defensively
I believe Franklin wanted the turkey as the national bird. Bald eagles have a tendency to steal food from other creatures, so, with hindsight, it does seem like an appropriate symbol.
America is a corporation, and we are its property. The us flag is a modification of the East India company flag. The Morgan banks owned us at the revolution. Politics is war is somebodys privilage adjudicated not by law but force.
The Greenwood piece is very good, but the Clintonites won’t get it. It wasn’t racism (like the voting maps from 2008 show), it is economics. The posts that I have seen from avid liberals on FB and liberal leaning forums have been really awfully misinformed and nasty. I am keeping a few screen shots to point out to these people in the future how awful their statements are. Too many liberals with the mantra
“I went to college, I left rural America, the people that stayed can do the same or die.”
So much for acceptance and diversity.
All of the pundit analysis revolving around the point that white people without college degrees voted heavily for Trump, implying that they are stupid, is really starting to really piss me off. For one thing, not going to college due to poverty or because you rural school district didn’t adequately prepare you is definitely a marker of class, no matter the race of the person. Secondly, you don’t need a college degree to figure out that free trade deals have been screwing you, in fact it might be easier to understand that without having been brainwashed in Econ 101.
Of my 5 children, only 4 have college degrees; 2 of the 4 have PhDs. The college educated ones are moderately successful and solid middle class. They all were indoctrinated left by their various Ivy League professors. The child who eschewed college started a business after 5 years of floundering. He makes more per year than all the others combined. He convinced the others to vote Trump.
The business ones are just indoctrinated differently, these are people who generally have little empathy and worship any kind of exploitation that makes their own material circumstances better.
Stupid people are people too.
We don’t deprive them their votes.
And we don’t send them to any camps.
So what if they are stupid, I ask this of our open-minded liberal friends?
“What are you going to do with these stupid, low-IQ people?”
Let’s not say they are not people. They are.
Check out the lyrics to Dance of the Screamers by Ian Dury:
So I’m screaming this to you
“waaaaaaagh”
From the last place in the queue
“waaah, waaah”
I really think you’d like me
Given half a chance
But since we ain’t got that
I’ll do the Screamers Dance
Some of us are ugly, angel,
Some of us are only small
Some of us are useless, sailor,
They haven’t got the where-with-all
We went and missed the ending, babe
We never quite caught the bus
We never speak our minds, my love
We ain’t got nothing to discuss
Some of us are useless, love
It comes from facing up to facts
It’s hard to be a hero, handsome
When you’ve had your helmet cracked
Cheerfulness is catching, sweetie
When the fevers you have got
We’ve got a temperature, my dear
But we simply haven’t got the hots
So I’m screaming this to you
“waaaaaaagh”
Silly season, skies are blue
“waah, waah, waah”
I hardly ever think,
I’ve made a small advance
I keep my elbows in and do
The Screamers Dance
DANCE!!!
Waw!
Some of us are stupid, sister
Some of us are very shy
Some of us get nervous, chicken
When you look us in the eye
We’re ever so pathetic, chicky
We know quite well that we try too hard
Some of us were born like this
While others got it by the yard
So I’m screaming this to you
“waaaaaaauugh”
Coz’ I haven’t got a clue
“waaarrh”
I really think I’d like you
Given half the chance
As we ain’t got that
I’ll do the Screamers Dance
“Waaaaaaagh, waaaaaaagh
Waaaaaaagh, waaaaaaagh
Waaaaaaagh”
Add to that not having a bachelors would have never ever have been considered uneducated and therefore some how unworthy of the vote 60 years ago. For heavens sake FDRs majorities likely never had college diplomas!
Now I realize college has become more and more a minimum qualification (even if only based on credential-ism) for many jobs. And people adapt to that by more of them pursuing such credentials. Ok. This is understandable. But it doesn’t mean we need to make the measures the capitalist job market uses in assessing people our measures of man. What kind of left is this anyway, that thinks so? Uncritical for sure.
Nope, or black working class would have voted Trump too. Unfortunately, he did disparately better among whites of all economic classes. Not a $$ thing, an entitlement thing.
How do you explain that:
1. Blacks and Hispanics voted more for Trump than they did for Romney?
2. Turnout for blacks was lower in 2016 than 2012?
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/2016-election-day/trump-did-better-blacks-hispanics-romney-12-exit-polls-n681386
systemic voter suppression
Mormon Doctrine up to the late 70s was that black people were cursed. From my experience AAs are not big fans of Mormons, and vice versa. And he ran against Barack Obama.
Hillary Clinton called them superpredators in the 90s and is(was) transparently interested in their votes and uninterested in their issues and outcomes. Can’t imagine why that would depress turnout when compared to the first AA president running for re-election in ’12.
To use Hillary’s phrase, “they had no where else to go”. Unfortunately for her, they chose largely to stay home.
2016: 5M fewer voters than 2012
2012: 5M fewer voters than 2008
This election was F vs F+
How do you explain Feingold’s loss and getting fewer votes than Hillary?
All I have seen about black turnout is percentages, if anyone has a link to actual numbers could you post please?
Or: I was less attached to people and place, my virtues are the dehumanizing one’s of neo-liberal capitalism where economics are everything and social ties are nothing. I succeed in an anti-human system perhaps by becoming less human myself.
Greenwald’s piece fit my sense of things for the past year to a tee. Highly recommended. The particularly important part of it is the underlying dynamics of globalism that he references. Driving fear, anger, and loathing among a great portion of the masses. Demagogues use this to promote their class interests (in this case in terms of their positions within the divisions of capitalism itself). Both Clinton and Trump were demagogues in this election, ginning up fear and loathing of an Other that must be stopped at all costs (Clinton bigoted heterosexual white men; Trump: immigrants, primarily). But, Trump also railed against globalism, and the deep impoverishment it has left in huge swathes of the United States. Clinton just promised more globalism. In either case, the underlying dynamics (which are global) won’t change unless (a) some of the elite wake the F’ up (e.g., FDR); or (b) we spiral to another round of cataclysmic wars and totalitarian government. For those who like to read things published before yesterday, see Carl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation.
An unpleasant thought has occurred to me. Soon after the Brexit vote a segment of the population felt that the vote legitimised their feelings and there was a spike in racial abuse and violence. I fear that may also be the case with the Trump victory.
Yes, I hope leftists stop counterposing “racism” to “economics”. It is obviously both. You have to be blind or delusional to not see the Redeemer demand to reinforce white race privilege in the Trump campaign. It doesn’t matter if Trump supporters were conscious of this or not. This is ideological social structure in play here. it wouldn’t be effective if they were conscious of it!
Related to this, Moar RoboCop repression is the other possibility. This is one area that Trump has free range from both RINO/Clinton-Obama sides. We are late in the business cycle and the next recession will require more repression. And its a “jobs program” too! The only limit is the extent to which Trump might be blind to the potential for political destabilization on the left as a result of the repression, with the Clintonites now fatally damaged. That was the advantage of slipping Obama in there in 2008. So the PTB understand the limits, but does Trump and his gang? We’ll see.
But Trump strikes me as completely alien to and ignorant of the actual state of leftwing politics in the US. I mean he resorted to old-fashioned red-baiting of Sanders during the primaries (something to be welcomed under the present circumstances). I smell troglodyte.
Saw a tweet that some of the most rural counties in PA, places where ‘white nationalism’ (as a friend JSM believes mistakenly referred to it) might be thought to be running high in the elite white imagination, went just as heavily for Trump in 2016 as they did…for Obama in 2008.
Read The_Donald subreddit occasionally for the past couple of weeks. Many proud young Latinos/Latinas, young & old black men & women, second-generation Asians submitted posts & pictures. Never saw a racist word (anywhere in fact, & certainly not) upvoted to the top of any thread.
The sudden move to pretend that the Neo-Red Scare was all the Republicans, when all we really had was one-handed fantasizing on the part of DNC Democrats and Lindsey Graham who is as good as, is interesting. Are you projecting?
“Michael Moore’s “Morning After To-Do List” Facebook Post For Democrats Is Going Viral ”
He was good til the last point. Bitching that Hillary won the popular vote, isn’t just moot, it’s disingenuous, as Trump played to win and those rules very well directed both campaigns. What next, a roaring endorsement for Bung Sukarno’s calling the west a Dictatorship of the 51%. Further, what Team Obama, Team Clinton, Big D Party wonks (and Moore’s ilk too) lost was not just the presidency, but control over both houses of Congress. That was definitely Hillary’s game plan, she didn’t want to face the likes of Zephyr Teachout. Well, maybe Debbie Wasserman Schultz will give Hillary a job.
Love the title in the video below it: “How to rig and election”. Sad when even titles are wrong. or maybe it is offering a course on how to rig (a boat?) and how to election, what ever the later means.
It’s also incorrect to say the majority of the people preferred her. Turnout being what it is, we’re lucky the majority even voted. You can say what you like about people who could vote and don’t, but the fact remains the majority did not vote for Clinton, or for Trump.
More people voted for Clinton than Trump. A majority didn’t vote for either one. Trump did not win the popular vote, despite all the huffing and puffing about victory, and the claim that “America” voted for a Trump victory is… misleading. His victory is at the Electoral College not with the electorate.
That’s all on the assumption, of course, that contra Mr. Trump’s constant accusations, the election was not rigged to favor of her… or him.
Gee, if you were in a competition and set your strategy by the rules, then won – it would seem damn silly to say that if the rules were different you’d have lost. You’d hopefully change your strategy, and you might win yet again. That’s the problem with the future, it’s hard to predict what changes in the past might really do to it.
If total votes were what mattered both campaign would have been run differently, no telling who would have won.
It is true that electoral college favors small states, and there are a lot of rural. small pop sTate’s that usually vote Gop. That’s just part of what is, dems have to run better candidates/better more popular policies to win. 2000 might have been a learning op, but libs don’t think they need to learn anything.
“Well, maybe Debbie Wasserman Schultz will give Hillary a job.”
Hah har har! +1000
Trump rewrote political playbook in successful White House bid Reuters (EM)
Trump said he would make America great again through the force of his personality, negotiating skill and business acumen. He offered vague plans to win economic concessions from China, to build a wall on the southern U.S. border to keep out undocumented immigrants and to make Mexico pay for it. He vowed to repeal Obamacare while being the “greatest jobs president that God ever created” and has proposed refusing entry to the United States of people from war-torn Middle Eastern nations, a modified version of an earlier proposed ban on Muslims.
==================================================
SIGH……..if news articles aren’t actually written by bots, they may as well be.
As somebody who actually watched most of the repub debates, Trump was the first of EITHER party to say in plain language that he did not want to cut social security. (will he honor what he said – who knows? But compare it to the weaselly “Grand Bargain” talk and what they actually means)
So people in the news media are just too dim to offer any USEFUL, meaningful insights, or they simply also believe in the Grand Bargain and will do nothing to mess it up….
In between the eulogies on Facebook, I’m also seeing a bunch of posts about how this is the end of Planned Parenthood. I definitely recall Trump in a GOP debate (maybe the famous SC one) defending PP as a great provider of healthcare to women and getting a chorus of boos.
Not to say that PP isn’t in constant danger of defunding, but I can’t see how this is the critical moment of danger for the organization. Same for talking about how this is the moment of truth the LGBT community when Trump specifically talked about standing in solidarity with them.
There was an article from yesterday talking about how the media didn’t take him seriously but took his words literally while his supporters took him seriously but not literally. I honestly think it was a selective literal interpretation of only a few things he said and most perceptions are based on an echo chamber of reaction.
(Oct 4, 2016) Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, stumped in Ames, Iowa on Tuesday in support of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, encouraging supporters to rally behind Clinton and make sure everyone gets out and votes.
Having chosen to go the gov’t contractor route, Planned Parenthood should’ve had better sense than to hitch its wagon to one party.
Firing Cecile Richards and engaging a pro-choice Republican as president is one way for Planned Parenthood to survive and extricate itself from the partisan corner it foolishly painted itself into.
It’s interesting how history changes things. In the early days of Planned Parenthood, it was funded by men of wealth since they were visiting women other than their wives. Birth control for women changed all that.
TsWkr
November 10, 2016 at 8:53 am
“how the media didn’t take him seriously but took his words literally while his supporters took him seriously but not literally.”
that is a great, great way of phrasing it. I really get the impression that most of the media is really – I mean really – just not too knowledgeable about most things. The idea that social security is quite an important issue and the refusal to just discuss it at any length is just astounding….
My son was at the Oakland protest last night. I didn’t want him to go, but he’s an adult. He voted for Sanders and then Stein and, like many people joined the protest because he fears the worst in a Trump presidency. He’s also been to a few BLM protests. He walks the talk. He participates. And he is, I hope, representative of the future of this country.
Given the immediate response from Clinton supporters to their catastrophe, I think the Democratic party is hopelessly mired in its delusions. Look for their neoliberal leadership to work on finding another Obama-like candidate to run in 2020. More of the same. No lessons learned. And look to media to do the same. The system is rotten to core and we now have the government we deserve.
Is it completely bad? On climate change, here in California we have strong environmental laws that will be difficult if not impossible to circumvent by a Trump interior secretary. And Pramila Jayapal won her election in Washington. And the enduring words of Walt Whitman. Rays of hope here and there.
They’re protesting the wrong person. They should really be protesting the Democratic Party.
Protesters should be converging on DNC headquarters, I think, to register their anger that the nomination of a terrible candidate was decreed 8 years ago, and not only was there no revisiting of this decision as events unfolded during that period, but there was a clear and concerted strategy to make that nomination happen in spite of those events.
Now, my die-hard Hillary-supporting friends would tell you she won that nomination fair and square – more people voted for her than voted for Bernie. But they refuse to consider how that came to be. They refuse to consider the debate schedule, refuse to consider the influence of DWS, the efforts of the media to make it happen. E-mails? Nothing to see there. Clinton Foundation? Best charity ever. Her resume? Top-notch. Her judgment, her decisions, her tendencies to lean right and pander to the GOP? What? – she’s a liberal! Lack of transparency? She has to protect herself. The speeches., the rivers of cash flowing into her pockets? Yeah, so what – Is there any proof the money she was paid influenced her? Her relentless flip-flopping on big issues? Pshhht.
It’s like none of this happened. And why they will dismiss these protests by claiming that it’s all the fault of voters who abandoned her.
It seems to me that the Democratic Party got the Jeb Bush they wanted…and the Republicans did not.
Except Obomber’s was the Jeb. I think Jeb learned from Iraq, hill clearly did not.
No doubt. And those shouldn’t be mutually exclusive activities. As for Trump, I talked to a few young people yesterday who were extremely upset and surprised by the election result. This included a young muslim woman who has family in the south and fears for them. It’s a.o.k. with me if she, like my son, wants and needs to protest against Trump.
I’m not protesting now, because I never wanted Hillary either. But the protest now, while some might be in it because they really believed Hillary was a decent choice, are our great hope if a Trump administration really goes off the rails, an early start on that resistance movement. Maybe *too* early, but we may really need it.
true, stopping clinton/dnc was step 1, step 2 is stopping trump if he goes full neocon/neoliberal, which is possible. jaime dimon?? seriously?? 4 years of trump, and more dissolution of the legacy parties, and an opportunity in 2020. hopefully.
no there is protest enough for both
Phyllis remarked about the generally younger crowd protesting in New York, we were watching a live stream on a “tinfoil hat” site, something along the lines of; “Where the H— were they when Occupy was being crushed? What clueless idiots!”
I’ve been thinking Occupy should just change their name to Occupy Politics and we’d have an intellegent third party for the rest of us.
some of them probably too young (young enough that Occupy has all the relevance to them of Vietnam), or maybe too young to be politically aware at the time but now they are.
Occupy was five years ago. That’s long enough that a lot of the folks out now wouldn’t have been reasonably able to participate.
I understand why people are protesting, and I too would refuse to call Señor Trump “my president”. What I don’t understand is why people were not conducting the same protests upon the elections of, inter alias, Obama and Bush.
I really hate the pretense that there is something uniquely bad about Trump compared to the other presidents who destroyed whole countries, set deportation records and repealed habeas corpus.
and if we’re going to protest how about the fact that the entire Congress is in Republican hands. Now THAT can do some real damage, far more perhaps, although who can be certain, than having a rude demagogue in the White House.
The cops are really really nasty to protestors in Oakland. The worst head-bashings of all the Occupy crackdowns. Glad he came out OK.
re-posting this link about hiring protesters:
http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/npo/5869093530.html
Separately, I teach at a public college in southern California that has a predominantly minority student population. Yesterday (Wed) the campus was seething. Students were walking between classrooms chanting anti-T slogans. It was borderline unnerving. Why weren’t people upset at Obama’s deportations? At Clinton’s bombings, regime change, corruption? At the DNC’s rigging of the primary? At the prospect of an HRC administration?
Anecdotal, but it seemed the entire campus/system had been behind Clinton. Mine was always the only Bernie sticker in the parking lot. Blatant pro-Clinton and anti-Trump emails had been repeatedly sent over the faculty list-serve from various departments in the past few months. My class yesterday was sullen and disengaged.
The answer might simply be that people are not very well informed about those things (although Hillary’s corruption is one of them that is all over the place in the news, but not so much U.S. foreign policy). If true it’s a sad truth, but it can change, and that’s a hopeful truth.
“Anecdotal, but it seemed the entire campus/system had been behind Clinton. ”
I remember seeing the UofC system listed as the #1 institutional contributor to Obama’s second campaign. I’ll bet a buck that happened for Hillary too.
But I always assumed all UC perfessers went to meetings where they received their instructions from Admin, and then did their Jedi Mind Tricks on the young and impressionable student body.
Did you not get invited to the meetings?
UChicago is getting quite the return on its investment, too. The 0bama presidential lie-barry is the obvious one, but Rahmses’ reign in Chicago has been like the goose laying the proverbial golden egg for UChicago. A lot of our property tax dollars were diverted to UChicago to develop its real estate holdings in Hyde Park, particularly 53rd Street and Lake Park area. Gentrification par excellence! Not that this hasn’t been great for me, my property value has shot through the roof, but the tax bills are pushing out a lot of people who have lived here for 30-40 years (african-americans, 0bama’s folks!) and changing the character of the neighborhood. And not for the better IMO, as they are being replaced by obnoxious credentialed 10%-ers.
“but the tax bills are pushing out a lot of people who have lived here for 30-40 years”
Remember that next time you hear someone howling about the dangers and “devastation” caused by Prop 13.
I would hazard a guess the professor might work at a Cal State but then I don’t really know. UC has more direct problems to concern themselves with than Trump though. UCSF medical of course outsourced their I.T. department having people train their replacements (and they wonder where Trump voters come from), while low paid service type workers in the UC system fight for a living wage. Class warfare – right here in river city …
Yep. Likely all “fusion-centered” out of an office of the Obama White House on down through the Heimat Securitat hierarchy.
The campus is terrified to the point of panic, I was shocked by the pain and paralysis all around. People really feel like the the end of the world is upon them. I wrote the following, which was not really helpful, as no one is quite ready for reason or even mild criticism of Clinton:
The Clinton campaign was based not on issues but on ‘identity politics’, the use of race/gender/cultural labels to both create loyalty, and exclude those who do not fit in these tribes. Hillary named these ‘others’ deplorable, and her surrogates basically claimed that any opposition to her was based on misogyny, and that all Trump supporters were racists and misogynists. They even tried this on Bernie, who was protesting segregation back when Hillary was working for arch-segregationist Barry Goldwater. These attacks and loyalty tests were a way to distract from the economic issues which would otherwise bring the ‘working class whites’ and minorities together. This was necessary because of the Clinton’s long association with Wall St. and neoliberal trade policies that devastated American workers both black and white.
As a result, their divisive rhetoric, many now believe the party line that half the country is racist and thus deplorable. This is not true, as demonstrated by the many white voters who voted for Obama then Trump. So one should take consolation in the fact that the claim of massive racism is an intentionally exaggerated bit of self-serving political propaganda used to divide the working class on itself. The same ploy has been used on Brexit voters by the same oligarch mouthpieces.
A further consequence of the issue-free campaign run by the Clinton team is that they couldn’t motivate many voters to come to the polls for Hillary, and resorted to stoking fear about Trump. Her campaign spent $500 million more than Trump, all to create fear of Trump. now that Trump has been elected, those exposed to this terror campaign are suffering very real anxiety. I’m not saying that we’re not fucked, but the level of fear and panic is mostly due to a state-of-the-art ad campaign that spent over half a billion dollars to cynically scare people. Ironically, this fear was enough to traumatize voters, but not enough to motivate voters to the polls. Trump won with the same number of votes that Romney lost with. It all came down to turnout, and running only on fear cannot drive turnout sufficiently to elect democrats, against all the systematic hurdles to voting put in place by the GOP over the years.
The take-away:
1) Your neighbors are not all racists, but many are hurting economically and need change, the opposite of what the Hillary, an unabashed servant of Wall St., represented.
2) Much of your fear has been manufactured by a cynical and divisive campaign funded with stunning amounts of corporate cash
“And now, live and in person, Citibank proudly presents the 2017 Donald J. Trump Visa Cabinet!”
plus ça change..
Where’s the euphoria, asks Jeremy Grantham (Macro Business article). Since the seasonally favorable Nov-Apr period is underway, maybe we can whip some up. As soon as today the Dow could set a new record high.
Trump having some Reaganesque qualities, consider 1980 as an analogous year. Ronald Reagan won in Nov 1980 on a wave of blue collar populism. The Dow Jones Industrial Average reached a peak of 1,024 in April 1981 — a mere quarter after his inauguration — then embarked on a dismal descent to 777 in August 1982.
Likewise, the US economy crested in July 1981 — six months into Reagan’s first term — when a harsh recession began that extended to Nov 1982. By then, a combination of automatic stabilizers and the Reagan tax cuts signed in Aug 1981 had the fiscal pedal to the metal.
Taking office when stock valuations are in the top decile, Trump can expect weak returns at best during his administration. But a recession would bring a simmering public pension crisis to a percussive boil.
Bubble III, comrades (which Grantham says will officially kick off at S&P 2,300): enjoy its last mellow, fleeting days of Indian summer, before the frosts set in.
Ten minutes into today’s session, the Dow Industrials were 100 points above their Aug 15th record high, while the S&P 500 was less than 15 points below its Aug 15th record.
Giving credit where it’s due: you said a few days ago that stocks would have no problem rising soon after the election, because uncertainty would be resolved by then regardless of the actual decision made.
Among sectors, the largest pop is in financials. XLF, the financial sector ETF, is up nearly 10 percent since last Friday Nov 4th. Chart:
XLF’s gains are largely driven by TBTF banks — the usual suspects such as JPM, B of A, and even the notorious Wells Fargo.
Evidently investors think Trump will be even more bankster friendly than 0bama. And that’s a high hurdle.
I read banks want higher rates.
Wonder if they will get that and if that is driving their shares higher.
I think Trump said somewhere that he wanted to be the new Reagan. Here’s hoping he didn’t mean that literally.
And btw you called it dude, the election and so far the market.
Ya gotta take risk to make money. Plunk it all down and gofer the last 10%. Just don’t miss selling before the peak!
Since Comrade Haygood mentioned Reagan’s 1980 campaign, I think it should be recalled that it was during his 1980 convention acceptance speech that Reagan laid the foundations for Modern Monetary Theory (MMT):
Following this radical Keynesian declaration, the Reagan Administration went on the largest deficit spending binge in history.
Is it too late to give Ronnie a post at UMKC?
Yes. But it is not too late to erect a bronze statue of the Gipper in front of UMKC’s Haag Hall, as our Randy Wray delivers the dedication speech, while the glamourous Stephanie Kelton taps a keg to deliver on the long-awaited promise of free beer for all.
Trump’s a closet MMTer, many (or at least yours truly) suspect.
History does not repeat but may rhyme? A couple of major differences then and now. Then we were coming off major stagflation duty to the baby boomers reaching prime working age while there were major oil spikes and energy crises. The recession in 81 was due to massive fed tightening to break the inflationary spiral. Now, we are still fighting a deflationary burst debt bubble. That being said all the stimulus must be unwound and hence there will likely continue to be deflationary pressures. The next recession could trigger a crash due to nosebleed valuations from money chasing any return. We’ll see if the fed can turn that around.
I’m really not that interested in the fact that Hillary won the popular vote. It doesn’t change who the president is, and really the difference between 47% and 48% is not much. Either way, the problem is that nearly half of the electorate is so dissatisfied that they were willing to vote for Donald Trump, arguably the least qualified person to ever hold the office.
I have another take on the “least qualified person to ever hold the office” line. If politics is about negotiation, compromise and deal-making, perhaps Trump has some skills that will serve him well.
I hope you are proven correct.
However, his behavior up until now does not exactly instill confidence.
I am interested in what happens once he hits his first obstacle/obstruction – will be behave like a grown up or revert to a twittering teenager at 3AM.
I agree that Trump represents a risk.
In terms of what happens when he encounters obstacles/obstructions, I would say look back on what just happened.
Trump almost single-handedly closed the biggest political deal on the planet after successfully facing down opposition of almost incomprehensible magnitude from every quarter — political, media, corporate, Wall Street etc.
If that doesn’t represent one of the most determined accomplishments by anyone in recent history, I don’t know what does.
At the risk of being overly dramatic, Trump took on the world all by himself — and he won.
Given that Trump will be negotiating with Team R, most of his successes will probably not be ours to enjoy.
I’m hoping for maximal gridlock as soon as possible.
I was mainly talking about Trump’s accomplishment as a remarkable example of sheer willpower and determination.
As to what happens next, yes, it could get ugly.
However, if he follows through on:
1) Normalizing relations with Russia
2) Reducing military misadventures around the world
3) Killing TPP
and
4) Implementing an infrastructure program
then I think we will already be light years ahead of where we are right now.
“Team R,” or what’s left of it, ignores the significance of what Trump has accomplished, as Tom outlined, at its own peril. He has beaten the system at its own game.
And should he decide, as I think he will, that he neither needs nor wants a second term and governs accordingly, all bets are off.
It’s hard to imagine what might get done during an actual four year presidency, supported by a solid, enthusiastic constituency, and unencumbered by the need to maintain a political ideology or get yourself reelected.
My guess, based on what little I have read about his handling of this campaign, is that he responds to the little people more than he does to his experts. He’s likely to act as if he doesn’t want a second term. That’s my guess.
Excellent analysis. To which I might add, I don’t for a minute doubt that if Trump runs into Rep obstructionism, he will do what Obama never did — use the bully pulpit to get this supporters to harass and harangue and scare the livin’ shit out of recalcitrant GOP congresscritters. The old “fear of God” strategy.
Some skills are transferable to various jobs, as you mentioned.
In addition, it will take a village or at least a whole team to run the office. Details should be handled on par with other recent presidents if done right.
Judging from the size of many of his development projects, I would think that Trump is fairly proficient at assembling teams, delegating authority and overseeing the budget and timeline milestones of extremely complex, multi-year endeavors. Those skills would also probably be valuable in the Oval ofice.
But, but, Hillary won the popular vote running against the most deplorable candidate evah!
I disagree with this. I am thrilled HRC has been refused re-admission to the WH, but I still think the EC is generally a way to prevent 1 person 1 vote. If things had been the other way around, or worse, say Sanders losing to a Repub candidate but winning the popular vote, would you still be defending the EC?
As a resident of KS, I can’t stand the Electoral College. Does American want to talk about Deplorable? How about an electoral system that extracts million$ from 50 states, pumps it into 7-10 states, and virtually ignores the votes from 70% of the population. That’s deplorable. Why don’t the “all we need is better education” types like Andy Borowitz start to wake up and lobby for a modern and smarter election based on the popular vote?
I am in favor of reforming both the electoral college and the senate, so both reflect the popular will.
That means, Sanders will likely be a congressman, and not a senator, but he can still run for president as a Democrat.
Yes, my friends are speechless, as are the TV talking heads here in Australia.
Donald Trump!! Trump!
What were the odds? Hillary was five to one on…
And Americans did this, turned out to show their dissatisfaction and the need for major change.
I only hoped this would happen. My oh my. Still shaking head
The Dems had a filibuster-proof majority for a brief period after Al Franken was declared the winner and Ted Kennedy’s stand-in was named. Nevertheless, budget reconciliation was laying on the the ground for them to pick and use like Bush and the Republicans did three times. The Democrats assiduously ignored this, however, because they never had an agenda to enact beyond Obama being fabulous and conciliatory and bipartisan and all.
And serving Morgan and Goldman.
And the rhoades. Obamas foreign policy breifer and the paid Bill C’s college in the UK. BO also a sponsored student from Rockefella Chicago. Power is a trap.
Steve C
November 10, 2016 at 8:03 am
And not to mention that most of politics is Strum and Drang and nothing more than professional wrestling, with about the same chance of an outcome NOT being predetermined so as to make the most money.
Politicians pretend for their brand that they are “liberal” or “conservative” (designaters that have less meaning and principles behind them than Pepsi or Coke logos). Gridlock for the poor but somehow the bailouts to wallstreet and “free trade” deals reach bipartisan consensus remarkably quickly….
Wall street tells Washington what to do, and immediately Bush’s repub Goldman Sachs treasury secretary does it, or Obama’s dem Goldman Sachs treasury secretary does it.
More importantly, the Democrats authorized the filibuster when they voted on the rules for the 2009 and 2011 Senate. The rules are voted on for each session. This 60 vote non sense is simply a hold over from Southern Democrat days as a mechanism for not voting on legislation that might undermine Jim Crow.
And as Nancy Pelosis signaled, they’re all ready to work for the Republicans. ‘So what can Democrats give to you……’
Once again, the Democratic candidate surpasses the Republican candidate in the popular vote and is denied the Presidency due to the Electoral College. This is probably not the last time it will happen, either, though I’m not very sanguine about the future of presidential elections after the serious distortions and lawless interference of the last few.
What’s surprising to me, although it probably shouldn’t be, is that everyone (Who’s Anyone) is accepting the outcome of this election without question, despite the fact that Mr. Trump made an immense fuss about how “rigged” the election was, and how he would not accept the outcome unless he won. Hillary conceded. That’s that. It’s done.
He won. He accepts the outcome. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t rigged or at least jiggered — to favor him, not Hillary.
People have started taking to the streets to protest the outcome. Not many of them so far to be sure. Yet if the outcome had been the opposite, there would probably be armed marchers all over the country demanding that Hillary be jailed forthwith, surrounding or taking over city halls and state capitols, and threatening mayhem if they didn’t get their way pronto. I’m old enough to remember — and personally witnessed — scenes like that during the recount of Florida ballots in 2000. Armed insurrectionists surrounded the California State Capitol (and many other sites across the country) demanding that Bush be declared president NOW — or else.
The Supreme Court lawlessly intervened and Gore and the Democrats caved one and all.
Even mention of the tens of thousands of people who protested the intervention, outcome, and inauguration was suppressed by Our Fearless Media, and even now, few Americans have any idea of what was going on. Much like the huge marches against the Iraq War before it began — which were also discounted or ignored by Our Fearless Media. Now who even remembers them?
Trump should not have been elected, nor should Hillary. I voted for Stein/Baraka, knowing they didn’t have a chance. I was one of 66 in my county to do so, whoo hoo! Solidarity comrades! And I probably know most of them.
I spent most of the day yesterday with a lot of Indians (ie: Indigenous Americans). To say they were devastated by the outcome of the election is to put it lightly. They were in mourning, deep mourning, and many, maybe most, were wearing black. Many were frightened to death of what could happen to their brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers at Standing Rock. This sense of fear and despair is roiling many communities in this country, and for whatever reason, liberals, progressives, Democrats, and others supposedly in opposition to the Trump and R capture of government are offering no hope at all.
None.
Knowing how unstable and unpredictable our system has become (reminds me of a PC about to crash) that can change in a heartbeat.
Tomorrow is another day come what may.
Ché Pasa
November 10, 2016 at 8:03 am
I certainly agree that the electoral college is just screwy – maybe back in 1830 it made some kind of sense but not anymore.
And with regard to giving “attention” or geographical representation – what baloney. In CA as a solid blue, not a lot of campaigning here (well, dems fundraising in Hollywood and Silcon valley).
And so what if some candidate comes to your state or town? You can see them on Youtube unfiltered as well as read ALL of their written baloney if your so inclined. What percentage of Americans actually see a candidate in person anyway – it must be vanishingly small? – – Google wont tell me :( does anyone know???
And finally one other point – it will not necessary be an unadulterated good for the blue/dem. Plenty of red/repubs don’t bother to vote in CA due to the blue majority. But if they thought there vote counted, it could be different. How much is that offset by blues not voting in TX? Who knows – but shouldn’t every vote just count, and not be contingent upon some screwy formula?
So lopsided was the vote in Cali — 61% Hillary vs 33% Trump — that Hillary’s 200,000 lead in the nationwide popular vote is entirely accounted for by California’s vast herds of Democrats.
Superstates with a population an order of magnitude greater than the original 13 colonies combined were never contemplated by the framers.
Cali and Texas are consistent in their D and R party leanings, respectively. It’s Florida that worries me — so delicately balanced that a few thousand votes can tilt the state D or R, and possibly the national election as well (as in 2000).
Busting up superstates is one way to modernize the electoral college framework, not to mention enabling self determination for marginalized minorities such as Republicans in Cali and Democrats in Texas. Small is beautiful. So is mitosis for states that exceed 10 million population.
Wasn’t there some group that wanted northern California to secede?
And of course Norman Mailer wanted NYC to secede from NY state.
It’s really eastern versus western California, all the length of the state. Though this time, much of the entire north went red.
Then too there’s the Republic of Jeffersonia, to be composed of what is now Washington and Oregon. Yet here too, you could carve out the Puget Sound and Willamette Valley and make it a blue state, and the rest of Washington and Oregon would be deep deep red.
There’s nobody there except marijuana farmers.
There’ve been several proposals. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_and_secession_in_California
Cal-Exit is what I heard it called on NPR yesterday.
The Electoral College — another vestige of our original sin, as historian Jill Lepore explains in her New Yorker piece, “How to Steal an Election” (7/4/2016):
“How to elect a President was vexed from the start…Some delegates believed that Congress should elect the President. This allowed for popular participation in government while avoiding what Hamilton called the ‘excess of democracy.’ But having Congress elect the President violated the principle of the separation of powers. [Pennsylvania delegate James] Wilson proposed that the people elect the President directly, but Madison pointed out that the Southern states ‘could have no influence on the election on the score of the Negroes.’ That is, the South had a lot of people, but a third of them were slaves; in a direct election, the North, which had a lot of people but very few slaves, would have had more votes. Wilson therefore suggested the Electoral College, a proposal that built upon a mathematical compromise that had taken the delegates most of the summer to devise. Under the terms of the three-fifths compromise, each state was granted one representative to Congress for every thirty thousand people, except that slaves, who could not vote, counted as three-fifths of a person. Wilson’s proposal applied this formula to the election of the President: the number of each state’s electors in the Electoral College is the sum of its congressional delegation, its two senators plus its number of representatives. Substituting electors for voters conferred on the slave states a huge electoral advantage, once the first census was taken, in 1790. Virginia and Pennsylvania had roughly equivalent free populations, for instance, but Virginia, because of its slave population, had six more seats in the House than did Pennsylvania, and therefore six more electors in the Electoral College. This bargain helps to explain why the office of the President of the United States was, for thirty-two of the first thirty-six years of its existence occupied by a slave-owning Virginian.”
I say we scrap it all and go parliamentary ..
With a strong initiative system and constituency Parties that can constitute or deconstitute the parliamentary Party at will.
Without recall, the Masters still get to execute their Plans to the point where you won’t be able to undo them.
Neither candidate got 50+% of the vote, and first pass the gate is only a solution to promote dictatorship of a plurality if it really is two party politics and two parties only for now and forever (or at least until climate change does us in).
You might see my earlier comment (above) about Congress going all Republican too.
Anti-Trump protesters and their mayhem.
When W was given the keys to the oval office the first time, because Gore rolled over, there were thousands of protesters there on that day. Not sure exactly how many were there because we were almost completely ignored by the press. My wife and I found a bus that was going, bought some tickets and attended the anti-Bush walk. One might argue that being sane is part of why we were ignored but when you know you’re beat best thing is to complain with dignity. Trashing the property of someone else rarely brings them over to your side.
My initial feeling was, “Oh look, the Dem-bots are back to protest a Republican.” Forgive me my cynicism, but unless they’re willing to protest their party and the system, they’re going to melt away like the anti-Bush Dems did, leaving the rest of us in the lurch.
Why aren’t they at the foot of the Goldman Sucks headquarters .. or waving pitchforks in front of the Eccles Building .. for heyzeus sake !
but no … they’re gonna burn a few tires, and smash-up some store fronts ……. and spew shite on twitter and borgbook.
That is still my feeling. As for the Party, itself, I am just awaiting the inevitable, biennial, official Nancy Pelosi post mortem cocktail party and dinner dance, wherein we will all get to review the newest model year variations on the theme of “Democratic protest and promises for a brighter future.”
If anything sickened me more than their reversion to type after they got their majorities back it was how quickly the rank and file failed to notice the difference. It would amuse me no end were they to be relegated to basement offices again.
The lesson from the colour revolutions and charades like Brazil’s “pra la rua” protests or the Clarín cacerolazos: if the mass media is in favour of a protest, then you are most likely being sold a bill of goods.
Mmm, hmm, the mass media was kind of pro-Occupy for awhile (in the same way they were pro-Trump for awhile, lots of coverage, no strong disgust and while that falls short of endorsement, the effect is the same).
Until they realized, woah it’s not all fun and games and playing hippy in the park, these folks could actually be SERIOUS about wanting social change. Uh oh, reverse course.
If the protestors think there was something contrary to the law about Trump’s win they should share that with us. This is not like 2000.
Of course this is America. They have a right to peacefully protest all they want. But how much of it is petulance a la Garrison Keillor.
All of it
Assuming 5000 is a good total number for “thousands” of anti-Trump posters,the headline could have read:
In percentage terms, 5000/319E6 (US pop) x 100 = 0.0016% of Americans took to the streets to protest the Trump election.
I doubt if Trump is very concerned.
Protesting so soon after an election whose result has not been challenged by any candidates, so far, it seems as if they are protesting voting itself.
It seems to me, the size is irrelevant.
Be it 5,000 or 47% of the total vote.
Fixed Link
Fixed link for “Clinton is clearly fighting back tears.” It is a video of her full concession speech.
2016
Transcripts of Trump’s victory speech and Clinton is clearly fighting back tears.
Losing was probably the best thing for her.
Thanks for posting this. I was looking through the comments figuring someone would. I wanted to watch it again because the first time I was struck by Bill in the left corner also clearly unhappy and perhaps holding back tears or some other emotion.
I wonder what it was like for the Clintons on what I expect was a very late election night . This was a crushing burst of their decades long dream of, according to Doug Henwood, “Bill for eight years, Hill for eight years.”
The lesson here is ‘Women should always go first.”
Fortunately, we’ve avoided the other lesson – she won because she let her man go first.
Identity politics fail because they breed resentment in those both inside and outside the identity group.
With respect to anti-black racism, as one example, working class white people resent being hectored, and black people have come to detest the empty promises and vacuous appeals offered for the umpteenth time. Obama has been content to drive by an ailing black America with occasional appearances to get preachy and talk down to our people. Hillary was to continue in the ways of fake concern when needing to get a coalition together, and ignoring the community’s concerns otherwise. I hold no hope of Trump doing much to address the community’s needs. I am glad the charade of Obama and Democrat party being aligned and truly concerned with our plight is extinguished.
Thank you. Very well said. BTW are you a Louisiana Creole? Your name occurs in the Creole stronghold on the other side of Africa, where my family comes from.
Well said.
It was the rise of the Davos class that sealed America’s fate Guardian (Joe H)
But this leaves out the force most responsible for creating the nightmare in which we now find ourselves wide awake: neoliberalism. That worldview – fully embodied by Hillary Clinton and her machine – is no match for Trump-style extremism. The decision to run one against the other is what sealed our fate. If we learn nothing else, can we please learn from that mistake?
Here is what we need to understand: a hell of a lot of people are in pain. Under neoliberal policies of deregulation, privatisation, austerity and corporate trade, their living standards have declined precipitously. They have lost jobs. They have lost pensions. They have lost much of the safety net that used to make these losses less frightening. They see a future for their kids even worse than their precarious present.
At the same time, they have witnessed the rise of the Davos class, a hyper-connected network of banking and tech billionaires, elected leaders who are awfully cosy with those interests, and Hollywood celebrities who make the whole thing seem unbearably glamorous. Success is a party to which they were not invited, and they know in their hearts that this rising wealth and power is somehow directly connected to their growing debts and powerlessness.
==========================================
I know I repeat this point ad infinitum…..but maybe if it gets out there enough, people will grasp it.
For NC readers, what neoliberalism is is a clear and present danger. But I had no idea of what it was or what it meant until I started reading NC.
I suspect the very slippery nebulous concept is not a bug but a feature to those advancing it.
Indeed, the fact that both parties are totally in sync on the subject and it took Trump to break up the garden party says something about what really is a shadow ideology.
“…and Hollywood celebrities who make the whole thing seem unbearably glamorous”
And as I’ve said before – maybe all those wealthy, wealthy Hollywood celebrities were a hindrance and not a help to Hillary.
well, as I hear it …. they’re ALL moving up into the greaterless white north …… aren’t they?? so there’s that, at least !
The up and coming Hollywood-to-the-North blockbuster : ‘The Bourne Despondancy’
Reactions from my area.
At least one history professor canceled classes in favor of office hours during which students could talk about their feelings, while across the Green, trees were decorated with handmade signs with colorful marker lettering expressing sympathy for minority groups, including Muslims and women.
“Undocumented students, we are here for you. You belong here. You belong. You belong,” read one.
Casey Hunter, of Westchester, N.Y., and Eliana Kaplan, of Hawaii, both 19, were in tears. They said that they’d been up since 3:30 a.m. watching election results, and woke up at 8 a.m. to continue to watch coverage.
“We’ve been crying all night,” Hunter said.
They said they were baffled by the election outcome, disappointed in what they saw as the American public’s mass affirmation of bigotry, and frightened about what Trump will do as the leader of the free world.
“I’m worried about every single person who’s not a wealthy white man,” Kaplan said.
Hours later, hundreds of students marched with signs and banners across the campus and down Hanover’s Main Street.
Lyndon Johnson must be rolling in his grave right now. These people really need to grow up.
Let’s keep in mind that they are both 19, perhaps in the process of growing up.
Some are more precocious; not all mature at the same rate.
The pre-grow-up way of reacting is demonstrated withe this example: “My boyfriend and I just broke up. I will never fall in love again.”
The math concept involved here is infinity.
The logic employed is related to reductio ad infinitum….I will never, as in more than a million years, or even infinite years.
Thus, only wealthy white men will be exempt from her worries. She fears for, as an example, wealthy white women.
I suggest a look at Robert Caro’s Means of Ascent, an account of LBJ’s race for the Senate against Coke Stephenson. Stephenson was the Abe Lincoln of Texas. He would literally stop at lumberjack contests … and win! (in his campaign suit). By all accounts a very honest guy and Texas’ most popular politician…
So LBJ stole the election, pioneering the Rovian tactics of slicing and dicing the electorate, minute-by-minute polling, spending unlimited money. Stephenson’s campaign tactic was to drive to the courthouse in each county seat and talk to the locals. LBJ flew in a helicopter. He bought counties, “discovered” the winning ballots late, etc. His tongue-in-cheek nickname: “Landslide Lyndon.”
This is the paradox of American politics. The people who do admirable things (Medicare, civil rights legislation, the “war on poverty”) often get there by exercising unbridled opportunism.
Far from “rolling in his grave,” I’d bet LBJ would get along with Trump. He reportedly gave Humphrey less sympathetic pre-presidential briefings than Nixon–even though he had the wiretaps proving Nixon was sabotaging the Vietnamese peace negotiations (Thom Hartmann frequently plays the oval office tape of LBJ admonishing Everett Dirksen to restrain Nixon’s foreign policy meddling with the Vietnamese peace negotiations). LBJ was more sympathetic to neurotic ambition than progressive values.
LBJ could show his appendicitis scar to Trump, and Trump could show his Cthulhu-like scalp to LBJ.
Daughter’s fb has been streaming with weepy, angry recent college grads: her friends. The contempt she received for voting Stein only stopped after she flatly laid out the numbers—then they went silent towards her.
Fortunately, her father, who was also staunchly Clintonite, read a few things she’d offered and told her that she made sense. “He was the only one who even allowed my opinion!” she said. “I do not understand what’s going on, at all. My friends have never been like this.”
But I’ve been educating her, while her friends remain ignorant of the neo-lib/con ideology. It takes a while to understand it, too—for her, a couple of years’ conversations and sometimes readings. She began to take it seriously after I finagled her into reading Klein’s Shock Doctrine.
If all this sturm und drang makes people get active, I’m fine with it.
Worst case scenario in my mind is everything bad being explained by Because Trump. This will be the case even if it is just a continuation of an Obama policy. This attention and activity needs to go to the right place and move beyond virtue signaling.
Maybe Trump will break with conventional wisdom on a few topics and that will actually engage people to think about policy critically. With the current state of politics, every debate around an issue has seemed to have it’s own pre-determined action and reaction from each “side”.
The contempt towards the white working class is dangerous. Do what I can to disabuse them of it. Bernie was clear about it so perhaps that route will work.
Their contempt is no less wretched than the white working class towards POC. Plus, it’s across the board within this particular group (nearly a social rule), whereas a portion within the ww class. It feels worse in the ww class because they are a larger group, their portion is very noisy, and it gets conflated with jobs/immigration/trade issues.
Re immigration, these young adults need to understand that they are being undercut by H1B + visas. They are victims of the same stuff and understanding that might help, too.
We need to work hard right now, to help them face themselves, so their energy/actions have value.
Democracy based on peer pressure.
It’s very powerful.
In fact, often, I can’t tell fashion (another peer pressure based human activity) from politics…especially when dress or underwear choices are added in to the discussion.
Trump IS the scary Trump monster, and the passions he has enabled are very very scary. The demonstrations have been yuge (have you seen the aerial photos?) Those demonstrations took up blocks and blocks. I don’t think that they will die down. I think they are just getting started. They will coalesce into something like Moral Mondays, Occupy, or even a general strike.
Yet the “scary Trump monster” being trotted out today is almost a wholly made up smear tactic from the election. No slack is being given to let the man show what he is going to try to do. The composition of the crowds is of interest as well. Does anyone here have direct knowledge of just who is “filling the streets?” I’m suspecting that there are very few “real downtrodden masses” in those milling multitudes.
A telling point for me is if the “authorities” begin using the tactics previously used on prior demonstrators, such as kettling, mass zip tie ‘handcuffs,’ pepper spray, rubber bullets, water hoses, etc. etc. Until then, I’m forced to think that these “demonstrations” are being tacitly approved by the status quo.
The propaganda slogan is: Trump! Man of the (Other) People!
These “demonstrations” look suspiciously like a mass case of “Virtue Signalling.”
It’s a mixed bag of acts in the first 100 Trump days. But some pose quite a threat to some powerful people – like
1. term limits on all members of Congress
2. 5 year ban on lobbying by certain officials.
3. Life time ban on some people to be lobbyists for, gulp, foreign governments
4. Complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections.
etc.
It’s a mixed bag (his First 100 Day plan), but it seems Trump threatens, if not to make America great, at least, to be independent.
it is not a smear tactic. he really IS that horrible.
Well, the Democratic Party is a disgusting bourgeois failure that needs to be slaughtered for meat and the rest of the carcass burned to fly ash. So I’m not really sure how what you say matters, other than that your religion requires you to judge others.
“pepper spray, rubber bullets, water hoses”
I assume they pre-negotiated Eau De Parfum, nerf balls and pool noodles.
In Seatlle things got mixed up and someone used real bullets. Haven’t seen yet who those perps were.
He’s a Republican for that reason alone how much slack should he be given, we know what they do.
Real downtrodden masses, the homeless perhaps, aren’t the ones that are ever going to protest.
The demonstration is status quo (duoppoly) until anti-Trump becomes anti-war, or anti-criminal justice system, or anti-environmental destruction, or anti-poverty, or anti-capitalism. Then you have a real movement on your hands. And it can happen. .
Until they all stop protesting the minute a DLC Dem gets elected in his place.
ABC does not agree at all with your estimates. 2000 in Seattle. Mere hundreds in DC. The only other cities where “thousands” came out were NYC and Boston.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/11/09/anti-trump-protests-erupt-new-york-chicago/93570584/
Please show me the ariel shot you saw as impressive. The only one I found on NBC wasn’t:
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Donald-Trump-New-York-City-Reaction-Protests-Union-Square-Columbus-Circle-NYC-400546271.html
I hate to sound dismissive, but Occupy Wall Street marches were regularly bigger than the Trump NYC protest.
By contrast, when I lived in Sydney, 250,000 people out of a city of 4 million protested the Iraq war.
One of the Seattle protest marches when past my home. I would guesstimate 500-1000 people (loosely packed groupings, the marchers just kept coming and coming). “Hey hey, ho ho, Misogyny has got to go.” Very positive energy, people smiling at me. Impressive police escort (30+ cops on bikes, plus cruisers with flashing lights to lead the way in the road). And this was a different march than the one downtown, which garnered most of the attention.
With regard to the “scary Trump monster,” I’ll quote Seth Meyers on his post-election late night show:
“The good news is, based on this pattern of me being wrong on every one of my Donald Trump predictions, he’s probably going to be a great fucking president.”
And that’s probably the “scariest” thing of all. For the status quo, anyway.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he surprised everyone again.
Katniss Everdeen
November 10, 2016 at 9:58 am
humility and the ability to admit that oneself is wrong is probably the toughest things a person can do.
I suspect most of MSNBC would NOT BE ABLE to give kudos to Trump if he raised the dead.
I suspect Trump will be rather mediocre. I suspect, at least for a while, the TV news will just LOVE the ratings
Who knows – next year Trump learns that shutting up is the best possible course of action, and borrows from Calvin Coolidge the moniker, “The Silent Don”
So very one hundred percent right on. What they really fear is that he will succeed and their constructed version of the situation will collapse. All this protesting before Trump has even done anything lacks rational basis.
BTW last night on the Newshour they said that there were dump trucks full of sand parked outside the entrance to Trump Tower. The report didn’t get into whether this precaution against vehicle bombs was Trump’s doing or the city’s.
But that is so very sad. People need to calm the f*ck down and not turn predictions of social chaos into a self fulfilling prophecy.
I’ve seen them. I’d say a maximum of five to ten thousand people nationwide. During Occupy, we had much bigger daily protests in Philadelphia.
Meh, looks pretty small from over here, where anything less than 50,000 is just a soiree by special interests. It’s got to be at least 100,000 to be a real grass roots protest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLl-uvVO4Qk
Those protests, those protests, talk about projection … the excuses, they couldn’t even make up their mind what they were protesting. It can’t be the actual outcome, it was rather boring and uneventful. Was it the stoking of fascism? Was it the outcome? Was it the popular vote? Yes, actually, people are out protesting the electoral college. Now a few large cities in a few large states should be able to determine the outcome of every election? The electoral college exists for a reason…. it prevents CA, NY and TX from abusing it’s electoral power to dump it’s nuclear waste, plastics manufacturing waste, pharmaceutical waste, coking waste etc in Nebraska.
Want to bet none of these people show up for a general strike?
They will coalesce into something like Moral Mondays, Occupy,
You mean they’ll collapse without accomplishing anything of note?
Probably.
> They will coalesce into something like Moral Mondays, Occupy, or even a general strike.
I don’t think so. On what ideological basis? That the dominant Democrat faction lost an election? That Clinton is our legitimate leader? That liberal goodthinkers hate the working class?
It all seems reactionary to me in every sense of the word; a doubling down on language and identity politics. And since when is doubling down on fail a good idea, even if Democrats always seem to do it? Heck, I don’t even know if the demonstrations are organic.*
Of course, the effect would be to suck the oxygen away from any, er, legitimate resistance to the current administration. But that’s not a bug. It’s a feature. Reminds me of that stupid sit-in on the House floor in favor of using the no-fly list — which is bad data — as a screening device for gun purchases. (“But ZOMG!!! John Lewis!!!!” And so forth.) The forms of protest, with no substance, presented as brave and pure [gag. spew].
NOTE * In Oakland, things tend to be. Otherwise…
Was very surprised to see this opinion piece on CNN.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/09/opinions/democratic-party-burn-tasini/index.html
edwarlock
November 10, 2016 at 8:35 am
“On the surface, it’s astounding that a man (Trump) who ripped off thousands of people who worked for him became the champion of the regular Joe. But, as Bernie Sanders reiterated in a recent podcast with me, the problem is that people have ceased to see a difference between the parties, particularly on economic issues. I’ll briefly cite a few examples.
Starting out with NAFTA, Bill Clinton forced “free trade” upon the party. I warned multiple times during the election that Trump would make inroads with voters in the Rust Belt unless Democrats made a clean break from corporate trade deals. Around the globe, these deals are a key tool to drive down wages, exploit workers and prosecute global class warfare. But, the current president still serves up the malarkey about the benefits of these deals.
Bill Clinton’s broader economic agenda was even more corrosive. During Clinton’s so-called “good economy,” the decline of organized labor continued. The president, and his secretary of labor, Robert Reich, did very little to arrest the decline.
No Democratic president was more focused on letting business interests off the leash. He gave more power to media companies, triggering consolidation and a powerful wave of concentration of the media into a few hands. The average person, not steeped in policy, understood this every time he or she opened their skyrocketing cable bills.
Hand-in-glove with Wall Street, Clinton got rid of the Glass Steagall Act, which removed the separation between commercial banks, insurers and investment banks, allowing the self-dealing manipulation of mortgages and interest rates and accelerating the shifting of huge wealth into the hands of a few.
Again, the average person, just trying to make ends meet, eventually got the sharpest end of that spear when millions of people lost their homes, jobs and retirement in the thundering collapse known as the Great Recession, which, for many, has been a depression.”
=========================================================
Well, I’m glad CNN gave some diversity of opinion. ABOUT F*CKING TIME. Maybe they can even THINK (not unpossible) that all the democratic hacks they employ on their network provides DISINFORMATION.
AND I am glad that the author, instead of incessant b*tching/whining about repubs instead addressed those things in his own dem party that caused the problem and what can be done to help.
Of course, it is only halfway because the dems STILL can’t say that Obama was the first truly black Clinton (i.e., getting to be the first black presidential wall street toadie is nothing to be proud of) – – so they still have a long ways to go
Let’s not forget Joe Biden’s execrable bankruptcy bill, either.
+ 1
Great photo of Hillary in a pantsuit about 2/3 down. Only a little overall brightness/hue correction to get the correct safety orange.
Tasini, although ran against two conservadems (Her and Gillibrand), is still on the skirts of the Establishment and still appears to believe in meritocracy. He’s not exactly controlled opposition, but he’s not BDS, either. He’s still selling the precepts of sarcastically named “representative government” as legitimate, as if the interests of dead people were anything more than a mountain of nightmares over our heads.
2 1/2 minutes of Jimmy Dore, on how funny the media thought the idea of a Trump win:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1HguZOOVnk
(automatic play)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyBMhmK79tg
I like the stats Jimmy’s pulling out in this video, showing how votes have kept collapsing for the last 2 elections.
Trump had 2 million less votes than Romney, and still won.
Exactly Cry Shop…for instance:
38% of all US workers made less than $20k last year
51% of all US workers made less than $30k last year
62% of all US workers made less than $40k last year
71% of all US workers made less than $50k last year
Also quotes from Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer earlier in the year:
“For every blue-collar Democrat we will lose in western Pennsylvania we will pick up 2-3 moderate Republicans in the suburbs of Philadelphia. The voters out who are most out there figuring out what to do are not the blue collar Democrats. They are the college educated Republicans or independents who lean Republican in the suburbs”
Wrong, wrong, wrong senator. It really is unbelievable how they deluded themselves and abandoned their base.
Schumer is another Parliamentary Dem who should be purged. Link for your horrid quote:
I think you left out the bestest part; I’ve helpfully underlined it. Gimme an S!!!
Thats gold! Go Jimmy.
Trade traitors: sadly, as far as I can tell, from Vatch’s list only Brad Ashford (NE-2) lost.
Ami Bera (CA-7) seems to have squeaked out a win, surviving to betray yet another day.
Both Patty Murray (WA. Sen. D) and Derek Kilmer (WA. Rep. D) treasonous trade traitors ….. were voted back into office ……..
the politically tribal just love their incumbents ….. because ??
hint ….. Boeing & Big MIC contract $$$$$
Well, the alternative to Patty was rather poisonous and would almost certainly have favored TTP also. That said, there is deep resentment here among the very large Bernie contingent toward her. As a superdelegate she committed early to HRC and ignored the fact that Washington caucused very strongly for Sanders. I’m just learning about Washington politics, it will be interesting to see how things shake out for her over the next six years. I think she’d better keep a close eye on her friends and take the seat against the wall.
The Hill’s concession speech was the biggest crowd draw of her entire campaign! Go figure…
Hillary didn’t even hint at having another go in 2020. So it pretty clearly was the swan song of a 42-year political career that began in the House Judiciary Committee in 1974.
Poor dear never had any fashion sense. Her shimmering, oversaturated purple blouse and lapels had me cowering in the corner, shielding my eyes with my forearm, as if from deadly kryptonite.
Speaking of her pantsuit, variations of this story were popping up everywhere I looked online yesterday:
What Message Did Hillary Clinton Send with Her Purple Pantsuit?
If this is the last story about Hillary’s pantsuits that I ever hear, I will be happy.
Ya. Think of it like when they “fade to black” at the end of a movie.
Hillary: pantsuit_whisperer.
Citizen Clinton: … pantsuit …
It looked like a tuxedo to me, tastefully adorned with the subliminally unifying color purple.
Royal purple, Queen Hillary leading and signaling her courtiers. To continue the royalty aspect, Clinton and her neo-lib/elitist class were symbolic of Marie Antoinette going to the guillotine. /sarc
No guillotine here, pardon coming.
Makes it easier to go after the sycophants.
Similarly, if I never hear another word about the actual state of Hillary’s physical health, that will be just fine. No one really wants to hear about a little old lady growing even older. That’s what doctors are paid to do.
Let her epitaph read, “She fell off her white horse while robbing the Republic.”
Bill had a purple tie! That’s what I wanted to know!
The first 2 theories make sense, the second came to mind.
Would the mixing of red & blue represent the Bush/Clinton alliance that has fallen, or the Trump coalition? (Bit of humor…)
Every politician and business person wears a pant suit, male or female. Women can replace the pant with a skirt, which are often less than comfortable.
It’s pathetic that part of the reason I’m glad Clinton’s gone is so I don’t have to hear people incessantly picking on what the woman wore, something so thoroughly banal and irrelevant in the face of everything else.
She never knew how to dress well. So what? Most guys don’t, either.
There was apparently some sort of message that Hillary gave out about wearing white. Many, many women turned up wearing white at the poll where I was working on Tuesday. I thought black and purple was appropriate – like a big bruise.
First, a big thank you to NC – your coverage of the elections and the Trump phenomenon was an eye-opener for someone living on the other side of the Atlantic and without a TV. It seems I was the only one (in the office, at home, at the supermarket) not being surprised by the result.
Second, the reaction to the results in the Netherlands is shockingly venomous. Trump’s rhetoric flies in the face of everything the Dutch have been taught to believe since the end of WW II.
The main newspapers are furious, the politicians can barely hide their disgust, people cannot stop talking, disparagingly, of Trump. My oldest son (6 years old!) watches children’s news: even there is Trump portrayed in purely negative terms and as a new Hitler.
In the office it is non-stop Trump bashing, and I feel compelled to keep my mouth shut – not that I ever was a Trump supporter, or ever even cared about the results, but I was scared and sickened by Clinton even more than Trump.
I am surprised by these reaction in quiet, tolerant Holland. None of this happened even for Brexit, a vote much closer to Dutch interests.
For Europeans (much like Americans who go abroad), what America do they see? They see Beyoncé and Justin Timberlake expressing the wonders of Americans. Blacks are just naturally poor because of European racism, so they ignore the decay of cities if they get that far. Then they see portrayals of racist and rural Americans (the most right wing Republicans live in suburbs) in exported media.
Their news on domestic America (a country as large as the Roman Empire in size and population at its height) is just headline news, but how many Euro types go, “hey, do Americans count unemployment the same way we do?”
NotTimothyGeithner
November 10, 2016 at 9:09 am
Just an off the wall thought: What do you think the odds are that repubs (not alone of course, but they have to acquiesce) impeach Trump at some point in the future?
scenarios
A – trump really has broken enough tax and other laws that he has to go (implausible I know at least from the standpoint of taxes – what repub is gonna defend penalties for not paying taxes?)
B – more interesting, Trump’s New Youk liberal comes out and it is a bridge too far for the establishment (dem tribalism and the fact that they are not actually liberal prevents any of them defending Trump – maybe way too much disarmament with Putin?)
C – ???
Zero. Trump isn’t a criminal, and he doesn’t have enough close associates* who could bring him down. He just beat the snot out of the “responsible Republicans” who couldn’t beat Obama in 2012 either. After what he did to the GOP, he’s just so far beyond the potential for impeachment.
I do see politics as tribal, and Trump is the leader of the tribe until he dies, is done with two terms, or loses. If the Republicans don’t do what Trump wants (Trump can still be manipulated, but it will have to come from him), the GOP rank and file will crush whoever opposes Trump from their side as blood traitors. Even with a predictably poor economy, less than loyal Republicans will be blamed first by Trump voters.
*Giuliani maybe?
You forgot “or loses interest” (a distinct possibility)
Thank you. You are right. Every year since the turn of the century, I spend a good month or so on business and pleasure in the US, often off of the beaten track. I have been visiting the country for over thirty years, including every school holiday in 1986 – 8 when my dad was seconded from the Royal Air Force to the US Air Force. The decline and discontent is unmistakeable and can be observed on the tourist trail, but it amazes me how visitors fail to notice. My former GF has lived and worked in mid-town Manhattan for nearly three years and has no idea of what goes on off the island. She gives the impression that if one does not live in mid-town, or St John’s Wood when she was in London, that is a form of social death. There has been a lot of gnashing and wailing amongst the people I know, including most, but not all, of the American colleagues, and silly phrases like the “redneck revolution”. They just don’t get it.
Americans do the same thing abroad. Oh, I went from London to Paris and have seen the world. Why? No, I never left the tour.”
A revolution in America by voters voting – that’s the greatness of this country.
Not to get all gooey but I agree. If nothing else this election may give the system a kick in the pants. The powerful must never be allowed to take their impunity for granted. Regardless of whether Trump turns out to be one of them after all, the elites now realize that their control may be in jeopardy. Even dictators need “the consent of the governed.”
Just to add that for democracy to work you do need a choice. Half the candidates on my ballot were unopposed Republicans. America’s problem is not too much democracy but rather far too little.
Many people are living in a bubble. A wealthy urban elite bubble.
If you really want to see what’s up in the US, try driving across it. Stop off at all the little towns, stay a day or so and walk around. The sort of places that only have one stoplight, if any. Sample the local foods and cultures, the places that are barely on any map. Drive from coast to coast and border to border that way, take a month.
I do this about every 5 years, visiting family. And its probably the best education you can get regarding current events: you get to hear it directly from those who are actually living it. Not what the pundits say.
Annual pilgrimage for me, helps keep me grounded. There are so many by-ways that provide instruction. Talk with the locals, dine with them, patronize the small shops and restaurants to get more of a feel for how their lives are going, and keep a little more money in the community, too. Avoid the touristy places.
The Roman Empire had, at its height, some 60-70 million inhabitants. Not even close to the US today. Italy had less than 10 million people – less than a fifth or a sixth of today.
About the size, I think you need to count waters (i.e. the Mediterranean sea) to get to America’s size.
Do not underestimate how much Europeans know about the US – most people I know have been there a few times, many people get their news, movies, music, blogs… from the US. Textbooks in college are often American, political ideas are copied verbatim from the US, and so on.
Therein lies Europe’s problem. My liberal Euro friends bemoan the rise of the far right all over Europe, and the threat it posses to the EU, but are incapable of seeing how the EU is being destroyed from within precisely because it took the neoliberal path due to US influence, nay, being US empire’s obedient errand boys and girls. The EU elites have begun to dismantle the great social democratic base upon which Euro prosperity and peace was built, and now they are aghast that the Farages, Le Pens, and the Wilders have reared their hateful xenophobia all over Europe.
You’re right, on the pop culture front at least.
Percentage-wise, more, say, Italians know about the top grossing movie actresses than Americans know about about the top grossing movie actresses in Italy.
Who writes the text books? Wise sages who descend from the mountain top with an additional ivory tower on top to share their wisdom? Nope. The Texas Board of Education is the driver of textbook purchasing as California, Florida, and New York come later in the purchasing cycle. What gets taught and omitted is decided by allies of Rick Perry. That filters to college text books as if they are good they have to deal with what Texas politicians decided such as Shrub. I’m terrified they are using U.S. textbooks.
Pop culture in an era of extreme wealth inequality is a poor indicator of much of America.
Schoolyard bullies…peer pressure.
Reading comments here about friends (or whatever they call them) on social media, politics is very much peer pressure based.
“My friends threaten to dump with me…”
The question is, are younger people more social and older fogies more likely to be stubborn curmudgeons? They say men after 50 or so stop caring what other thinks of their appearance.
That should be ‘others think’ not ‘other thinks.’
Maybe us old guys are just keeping up with the concept of othering by not wanting to be othered by others caring about our appearance :p
That bad? What kind of office? graduate work? business? call-center? People are whining at my wife’s work as well, probably has something to do with the combination of a weird-haired-perceived-hack winning (though ‘ours’ could just as easily be described as a plain-spoken, longest-sitting parliamentary rep of the VVD) and a GE coming up in march ’17.
I work with young, well-paid mechanical and chemical engineers with good contracts and sport cars.
I would simply inform people that the US voters were presented with a terrible choice and took the lesser evil. Most voters are aware that Trump is bad, but not nearly so bad as the alternatives. And the US media is a pack of propaganda spreading liars.
On a more personal note, greetings from the US :D my family came to NY from the Netherlands (Texel) in 1609. We’ve been here a while, but I’ve always wanted to learn the old language and to go travel NL.
In Argentina, my experience has been the opposite. Until this morning everyone I had met was encouraged by the Trump win. The head of the Workers Party (PO) and other leftist politicans and pundits had been highly critical of HRC, especially because of her “imperialism” (bearing in mind that many of us have experienced the direct effects of same). My very non-political BIL spent the day yesterday flipping channels between TeleSur and Spain’s ETV and marvelling at the difference in coverage: the latter was all hysteria and the former was borderline glee at HRC’s defeat.
I said until today, because the landlord came around today and he was in the “Trump is Antichrist” hysteria group. He told me everyone here is “sh*itting themselves with fear about Trump”. So my takeaway: rich people and Europeans in hysterical panic, poor people and workers happy with the results.
Well, not all Europeans are in panic. I suspect a good proportion of those sympathizing for UKIP, Wilders, Le Pen, Lega Nord, Orban, AfD and so on do not mind Trump.
Also, vote participation has been plummeting in Europe in the past ten years. I suspect many of those who stay home instead of going to vote do not mind either (I gave up voting, for example).
Perhaps we Europeans and the Americans should learn more about Argentina, a country that has been in decline for far longer than our countries.
You’re right, I should have specified that the “Europe” I get is usually from elite media sources or as you mentioned in your original post.
That said, calling Argentina “a country that has been in decline for far longer than our countries” is just silly.
In the twenties, before peron, Argentina was the 6th wealthiest country in the world.
Sillier and sillier.
1. Perón was first elected in 1946. You omit the “infamous decade” between the coups of 1930 and 1943 when the country’s political system was decimated, and the hyper-mercantilistic Roca-Runciman Treaty of 1932 which decimated the country’s economy. WTF does Perón, who reversed both of those trends, have to do with that?
2. “6th wealthiest economy” is about as irrelevant an economic indicator as possible. In the 1920s the vast majority of Argentines lived in squalor, but there was a very, very rich minority who owned just about all the wealth of the world’s 6th largest economy. A parallel today would be India: the world’s 3rd largest country by GDP (PPP) but also home to the world’s largest destitute population.
I’m seeing similar reactions from friends, family and what little of the media I look at these days in not so quiet or tolerant Germany. A lot of “are these/you guys crazy?”
There’s a pretty typical comment in Der Spiegel (sorry, no English translation) by Jacob Augstein (IIRC publisher of the Spiegel and son of the original publisher) calling it an end to an era of “liberal democracy” and a “rise of fascism”. It takes some reading through the article until he acknowledges that capitalism may have eaten large parts of the said democracy and that it produced a lot of economic losers in the past 20 years. Oh, and the fact that it might be a good thing if Trump keeps his promise and stops meddling in the Middle East.
HRC was portrayed in the German media as the only sane and competent choice, with The Donald being labelled a buffoon and essentially a joke. Based on the media coverage I think pretty much everybody expect HRC to be a shoo in.
What hardly any of my friends who hadn’t spend a reasonable amount of time over here realised is how divisive and disliked a figure HRC is amongst a large part of the electorate over here – funnily enough it doesn’t look like anybody in the media over in Germany spent any time talking to “the deplorables” over here either, or if they did they didn’t bother reporting it.
And no, I’m not a Trump supporter. Far from it, I’m pretty much in the Bernie camp despite (or maybe because…) I spent a fair amount of time working in investment banking IT.
I wonder if people in many other countries even understand that the U.S. is a 3rd world country, because really in many ways for many people, it is. It is not the 1st world country they think it is.
In my somewhat limited experience (ie, friends and family who visited me over here in the US and the German and British papers I read occasionally) – probably not.
The foreign media that I read rarely ever mention it unless maybe it’s a story about the decline of Detroit or back in 2005, the Kathrina flustercluck. You used to find the occasional article in European newspapers about the dire situation in US healthcare, usually in a rather condescending way while the healthcare systems in the same countries were slowly crapified in the background. There was a lot of “welcome to the civilised world” type writing when Obamacare passed, but it’s been “accepted fact” that everything should be good now, no?
Heck, I’ve had had discussions with my then-boss (a resident of the Rochester, NY area) a few years back who had trouble understanding that out here at the edge of the NV boonies, a generator for the office and UPSs under everybody’s desk are necessary but not sufficient tools to ensure survival of a tech company. He honestly had trouble wrapping his head around the idea that the infrastructure out here would be in such a state that power outages in winter are not unusual.
The European liberal class is just as clueless as its US equivalent. I told my Euro liberal friends (mostly Dutch and British) that there are many parallels between Brexit and the rise of Trump, and that their shocked reactions to both focused on the symptoms, not on the underlying causes. They refused to listen, much like US liberals refuse to listen, and prefer to focus on kicking the “deplorables” and blaming them for being racists, sexists, ignorant, and uneducated haters. As Colonel Smithers notes on this thread, the Euro and US liberals have lost all touch with people outside their strata and enclaves. I am now forwarding Glen Greenwald’s article to all of them with a gentle “I told you so”. I am not very hopeful that they will unbury their heads from the sand, but I will try to do all tat I can to influence my group of friends into seeing beyond their narrow, identity-based political worldview. Both Europe and the US sorely need for the liberals to wake the fack up.
Also living in the Netherlands i m not that amazed by all this. Our media, tv, radio and press subscribes Neoliberalism, is strongly proEU, anti Russia etc, in short washington consensus.
This world view has shattered, pundits not knowing who to blame as everything was ready for the next experienced leader of the free world. It s the bubble of the Hague and the Amsterdam canalzone (grachtengordel) “intelligentia”. And in general dissident voices are not allowed.
Ps
Thank you NC for the antidote, keep it up!
Eu is next on the deplorables’ list.
The Source of our Rage: The Ruling Elite Is Protected from the Consequences of its Dominance Charles Hugh Smith
Always like Charles Hugh Smith’s links to FRED graphs that irrefutably show the downward slide – uh, I didn’t say that right. I enjoy his use of data to show the point that it is pretty easy to understand why our politics is collapsing – most people are in fact getting poorer. And a very few are getting much richer.
Trump is the beginning of the collapse. I doubt Trump will be very successful at rebuilding, but he is a necessary precursor.
IMHO the repubs are even more “politically correct” than the dems ever were.
Poor Hillary got in a situation where the first repub in history unabashedly said that the country is not great (as opposed to temporary economic difficulties) and had to had to carry the awkward phrase “America never stopped being great”
Just like Nixon had to be the one to go to China, Trump had to be the repub to say this place isn’t so great. – – what with Bush as president and another in the offing.
Trump won’t be able to fix it, but like they say in 12 step programs, the first step is admitting you have a problem. And if Trump fails, Trump opens the resulting brawl to a much wider debate than we have had going on 50 years. Maybe even its NOT JUST a bigger pie inanity we hear so often, but who has been getting to cut the pie???? And maybe the person with the knife isn’t just some nice official (NPL – national pie league referee) who is always scrupulously fair and gives everybody the precise meritocratic earned slice of pie
Remember – Trump at least started the first step: got rid of the Bush and Clinton dynasties….
Shares of gross domestic income: Compensation of employees, paid: Wage and salary accruals: Disbursements: To persons
Steve H.
November 10, 2016 at 10:35 am
Another great graph. One of those things that lays it all out there IF you want to know what is happening.
Hard to argue that the dems didn’t help…wrong word…. didn’t participate and impossible to argue that they certainly didn’t stop it….
Agree that Trump is a necessary precursor.
When you are in the fight of your life, you grab whatever is closest to hand — a brick, a board, a crow bar, a human Molotov cocktail (ht Michael) — it doesn’t really matter what the weapon is.
Dear President-Elect Trump;
Sincerely,
Big Insurance
Big insurance’s schedule is certainly at risk.
First hook the fish with somewhat low price buy in. Then reduce the number of carriers to the point that insurers can select price and coverage options. Then really pump up the IRS non-coverage fine. Then miraculously insurers pile back in at the new, improved, maximal profit point. Wash, rinse, repeat. It’s almost as if the whole thing was planned.
It seems likely that some of those Heritage Foundation representatives, that came up with RomneyCare in the first place, will be spending time with Trump explaining the wonders ACA. The rest is marketing. Relabel it RepubliCare and we’re good to go.
When that inevitably happens, we can always hope Trump calls up the kids and asks them how the health insurance policies are doing at the casinos.
Unless he really wants corp America to dump health insurance as a benefit and make it an “externality” for the “free stuff” USG to pick up and become deficit stimulus spending for the health care_pharma industries.
Ya gotta decide who gets to win the game. I just hope a Trump advisor points out that we have a price list already for Medicare/Medicaid/VA and you can “extend” those programs without too much difficulty.
If you don’t like the term “single payer”, call it Medicare For All. You can even charge a reasonable price for it. (or sliding scale)
The New York Times article:
Given that its not-at-all-neutral coverage helped Trump, it should be ‘…its ability to have an intended impact,’ for the unintended impact helped Trump.
I will also say that, in addition to soul searching, it probably needs psychotherapy. It’s been a traumatic week for the newspaper so far. So, a good psychiastrist is needed.
+1 … was about to post the same thing.
They need a psychiatrist but I would rather they get what they deserve. Send them an economist.
To be serious about the New York Times’ so-called failure to influence the electorate — I suspect the working class voters who came out en masse to support Trump aren’t among their shrinking elitist readership.
Yeah but… NYT still sets the news agenda in most of the country (if not the world). The first question editors of smaller newspapers and even new media sites ask each night is “what is the NYT running tomorrow”. So yes, it is transmitted from the big elite to the small elite, and the hoi polloi are rejecting both.
I saw a comment today in another link (The old democrat playbook is dead…) that I thought was so good I am reproducing it below
===================================
Paul Art
November 10, 2016 at 7:40 am
I think a long time back I made the statement here that Trump is basically the White Man’s Obama and my prediction is that is exactly what he is going to be. Paul Jay is on the money here. The flyover people are going to be very disappointed. Ferguson overestimates the role of the CEA in dictating economic policy. Paul Ryan and Mitch are going to rule the roost. It is going to be scorched earth for the White base that voted for this guy. But this is something that needs to happen if the public has to knock some sense into both parties. The GOP got its medicine with Trump and with his election one has to hope that a stake will have been driven into the heart of the DLC and its nauseous and noxious brand of Wall Street and Corporate Water Carriers.
=========================================
“I think a long time back I made the statement here that Trump is basically the White Man’s Obama and my prediction is that is exactly what he is going to be.”
IMHO a great line and a great insight. There is a lot to making Washington actually function. The fears about Trump are way overblown. So are any hopes.
Most laws are written by lobbyists and most politicians don’t read them, don’t understand them, and merely try to jump in front and claim that the parade is wonderful…instead of that the elephants all have projectile diarrhea…
Trump will be great for cable TV – MSNBC more than FOX.
If only there was an ETF for extreme cable news networks….
I hope you’re wrong.
When Jerry Brown was reelected governor a few years back, my wife and I’s feeling was, he was old enough (72?) he didn’t have anything left to prove, he’d been governor already, he’d run for president, perhaps he’d do what was best for California rather than what was best for his political career. Seems like it’s worked out that way.
Perhaps Trump, who’s life has been focused on financial success, also doesn’t have anything left to prove, maybe he doesn’t need to bow to the billionaires. Maybe, for his last act, he will do something to help the poor, the widows, and the orphans, maybe he’ll do what is right and just.
On the Independence front, Trump can be the founding father of the second republic, if he can free the nation from foreign government lobbyists and their Big Money.
Jerry Brown should have clamped down hard on big ag during the continuing drought in California, but he didn’t. Instead, he forced people in urban areas to cut their water use by 25%. He should have included the corporate farms, since they are the biggest users of water in the state. My memory may be faulty, but I recall that he also let the frackers off the hook, even though they waste a large amount of water, too.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-snowpack-20150331-story.html
Jerry Brown is actually a huge corporatist – bad on the environment, bad on charter schools, loves Big Ag, totally beholden to the prison industrial complex. He has done some Not Bad Stuff but his reputation outside the state and to those not paying attention far exceeds the damage he’s done.
All true, speaking as one who lived in Oakland under Brown’s treacherous Mayoralship. All the more reason that is is seemingly strange that Brown has suddenly begun speaking about Kali’s monstrous incarceration state and how something needs to be done about it. Maybe one last flash of Moonbeam before sunrise?
Oh, goody! John “I am the Walrus” Bolton or Newt Gingrich might be Trump’s Secretary of State! An oil executive might be Secretary of Energy, and a 17-year-veteran of Goldman Sachs could be the Treasury Secretary. I have trouble believing that a GS veteran will have any interest in restoring Glass Steagall. And a climate skeptic for the EPA administrator – Yikes!
It’s great that Clinton lost, and it’s a disaster that Trump won.
The Democratic party insiders who torpedoed the Sanders candidacy are responsible for this catastrophe.
Trump will likely go through those candidates like he went through his campaign managers, until he finds those that work (that is, implementing his objectives).
As for D insiders, if they are not replaced, in their current weak state, by those who want change, who else will do it for them?
Yes, well, my greatest fear is who Trump picks for cabinet and friends. This certainly bears watching. At this point I prefer focusing on the words here “might be”.
His list of friends so far have not been confidence inspiring, but OTOH, I expect a lot of fear mongering out of places like Politico, etc….
And they’re proud of it, Bernie threatened their rice bowls, if trum goes neolib then he won’t. He’s not their fav, but they hate Bernie.
Question: how surprising was it really that the Ds lost the house and senate? Could it have been something Hillary had sorta hoped for, or was it truly just collateral damage because She was so desperate to win that she + Trump-Hate sucked up all the attention and money, and everyone else forgot about the other races?
How do you lose something you never had? It’s not that Dems “lost” the House and the Senate, it’s that they failed to win a majority. They failed to plan for the possibility that the WH would pass into GOP hands, perhaps deluding themselves into believing in the inevitability of Clinton presidency.
“They failed to plan for the possibility that the WH would pass into GOP hands, perhaps deluding themselves into believing in the inevitability of Clinton presidency.”
Let me rephrase: did they not care, did they forget, did they not “get around to it”, or did they decide to ignore it because they wished to take “bipartisanship” to the next level?
She was sucking mucho hopium …. that the neocons would save her ass !!
Seemed to me the party abandoned the states and focused solely on running Clinton. They did the fundraising at the state level and funneled the money into the DNC and Clinton. They didn’t run anyone in some districts, paid no attention to many districts and when some individuals asked for help, they got nothing. It looks like the DNC shared Clinton’s governing strategy goal of working with Rs. They just felt they didn’t need Ds and walked away.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2016/11/10/daily-202-trumpism-and-ryanism-are-on-a-collision-course-who-blinks-first/5823d6c4e9b69b6085905def/
Ryan is strongly pro-trade, pro-immigration, pro-entitlement reform, pro-religious tolerance and pro-NATO. After the 2005 “Access Hollywood” video came out, the 2012 vice-presidential nominee said he would no longer defend or campaign for him. While he would reverse himself soon after, that pronouncement prompted the thin-skinned Trump to unleash a stream of vindictive attacks. Keep in mind that the next president posted this less than a month ago (before his staff took control of his Twitter account): (I can’t copy it – but Trump said Ryan was weak….but not nearly that nice)
Trump has solemnly and repeatedly vowed to never reduce Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security benefits. Ryan’s career has been defined by his quest to reform entitlements and the tax code.
Donald even said during the primaries that he knew Mitt Romney would lose the election once he picked Ryan as his running mate. “I said, ‘You got to be kidding,’” Trump recalled. “He represented cutting entitlements, etc., etc. The only one that’s not going to cut is me!” At another event, he said of Ryan: “This guy lost four years ago in like a landslide.” Trump went on to criticize the so-called “Ryan budget” for costing Republicans House seats.
============================================================
Again, I have no idea of how truthful Trump will be with any of his pledges – but how many politicians are?
We say we like compromise…..
But I actually do think Trump does not buy the rather random facets of the repub policy platform. And I think there may be some fireworks. And I think the crushing of the other 16 repub nominees, shows, only the smallest fraction actually buys the current republican party beliefs. If Ryan defies Trump, Ryan will be crushed. Will Ryan be able to convince Trump that Ryan’s policy prescriptions are sound? It would be ironic is Trump’s obstinacy were to save social security….
entitlement reform is newspeak for destroy social security and medicare.
Would be great for Trump to oppose and prevail over Ryan.
Yes, and when will entitlements for the rich* be challenged?
We’d best get to attacking those entitlements since all defense is no defense.
*e.g. positive interest paying sovereign debt.
e.g. other privileges for the rich and banks including government provided deposit insurance and the lack of a Postal Checking Service for all citizens.
Ryan is Pete Peterson’s re-incarnation. The doctors forgot to bury Pete’s old body, and it’s still walking around. Or they thought a nurse would do it.
But anyway, Ryan wants to balance the budget by “entitlement reform” – those things like SS and Medicare they keep deducting from your paycheck, but you never seem to get – and cut corporate taxes. Mr. Ryan says the math results in a [nearly] balanced budget. Plus a lot of cool cocktail parties and dinners at fancy restaurants.
Let issue only negative yielding sovereign debt and then who can legitimately complain? Since the national debt would eventually be a net revenue source?* And don’t say it can’t be done because it already has been – in Switzerland, iirc.
*Technically, a net reserve drain since the monetary sovereign does not need revenue.
for some diversion during the change-over, tune in to the new ABC show Designated Survivor. It has some interesting commentary about the sausage-making, egos and public/private statements.
Seems to be a faulty link for the Cabinet-in-waiting piece. Here is good one:
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/who-is-in-president-trump-cabinet-231071
re: Neil deGrasse Tyson
It appears he read a lot of Asimov when he was a kid. I know I did. The only difference is that I understood that all knowing, ethically pure technocrats doing only what was best for the greater good was fiction. People have been hiding ideology, and personal gain, behind the label of science long before eugenics was ever discussed publicly.
Given current trends, the biggest threat to humanity are current trends.
Thanks for noticing. Got tired of this guy a few years ago.
‘ethically pure technocrats doing only what was best for the greater good’-gone-wrong is practically the hallmark of science fiction. You could wish they were more imaginative.
It’s weird how Tyson has become a public spokesperson for science. He’s pretty much the definition of a failed astrophysicist. Earning a PhD just means you have a fancy degree; your true worth as a scientist is measured in how many papers you contribute to and how many times other scientists reference you. Tyson has contributed to about 10 papers in his entire career.
Asimov’s writing of non-SF books provided an inspiration for my love of science. he was a clear and convincing writer who distilled the essence of new and challenging material for a young novice to access.
Biggest threat?
maybe?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyson_Foods
Speaking of Tysons, the current election analysis reminds me of this 1994 debate between James Goldsmith and Laura Tyson – an earlier version a billionaire versus a technocrat where the billionaire is the one who understands the practical implications of careless free-trade economic policy (NAFTA and GATT/WTO).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwmOkaKh3-s
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-democratic-party-deserves-to-die_us_58236ad5e4b0aac62488cde5
I did not expect Krystal Ball of MSHRC ill repute to step in and drop a big fat dose of reality upside the head, but these are strange times…
JohnnyGL
November 10, 2016 at 11:12 am
They said they were facing an economic apocalypse, we offered “retraining” and complained about their white privilege. Is it any wonder we lost? One after another, the dispatches came back from the provinces. The coal mines are gone, the steel mills are closed, the drugs are rampant, the towns are decimated and everywhere you look depression, despair, fear. In the face of Trump’s willingness to boldly proclaim without facts or evidence that he would bring the good times back, we offered a tepid gallows logic. Well, those jobs are actually gone for good, we knowingly told them. And we offered a fantastical non-solution. We will retrain you for good jobs! Never mind that these “good jobs” didn’t exist in East Kentucky or Cleveland.
===========================================
I was all for Trump destroying the repub party because it just said the most Godawful stupid inanities. It is actually amazing to me how long people were patient with the ideas that:
DEMS: “O well, the rich are just going to keep getting richer – that’s just nature and we can’t mess with nature. O, get a college loan….
REPUBS: We need tax cuts. Of course that won’t help you – talk to me when you get rich you stupid, lazy, filthy red neck, and if you vote for a dem your a gay commie pervert…
I really didn’t think Trump could win the presidency, but at least in getting rid of Hillary, Trump is also causing a re-evaluation that is much more critical and open to reality than I thought possible so soon.
Will the dem establishment (i.e., the Clinton foundation) rebound?
I can only hope this is the end of both the conventional dem and repubs….
The thing is do good jobs for “retraining” actually exist ANYWHERE in this country for people beyond age 35 or so? No company on earth wants to hire a middle aged person who has just trained for a new field (I’m not saying that is how it should be, just how it is).
On the other hand, there was another column on Huffington Post (I haven’t been able to find the link) where a woman said she was so through with other white women, since 53% of them supported Trump. It was about as bad as you would expect (hint: intersectionality makes an appearance). It’s almost as if women weren’t allowed to vote based on issues other than feminism.
Quite a screed from a woman who, on msnbs the weekend before election day, predicted a win for hillary with somewhere around 330 electoral votes.
Where the hell was she when Bernie was being branded with the hammer and sickle? Cashing her comcast paycheck in East Liverpool, Ohio, I guess, along with her good friend and admirer joy reid.
she did write an article SAYING sANDERS WAS THE BEST CHANCE TO BEAT tRUMP
I knew Krystal Ball when, not terribly well, but she is flippant. She can be bright when she chooses to be. Gore’s description of Shrub as intellectually incurious is a good fit, but I’ve never liked economics majors at UVA such as Ball.
The comments are a den of complete ignorance and denial though.
I am sickened and repulsed by mainstream corporate media.
Their trashing of Bernie and their outright lies around Trump, plus burnishing the ClinTurd mean, at least in our household, the MSM is right up there with the credibility of evangelical pastors.
“The New York Times says….”
is now is as meaningful as
“Pastor X interprets scripture to mean….”
Oh, and that means any product or service advertised in the same media is suspect.
The media is another failed institution. Owned by just a few individuals, nothing but propaganda outlets right now.
I kept shaking my head ‘no’ with regards to Clinton. I supporter HC in 2008. There was a large difference between 2008 and 2016. I noticed differences in body language and the refusal to do interviews hid, for me, a likely inability to be responsive to questions. The report that HC could not speak on election night as HC was distraught, is not reasonable. The report that HC was inconsolable the next morning with a friend, is not reasonable. The report that HC was blaming Comey and BC was blaming Obama for not stopping Comey, is not reasonable.
I am angry with the D party, the D elite and the media. What the h#ll were they all thinking?
I fully expect a pardon for Clinton now. Obama will have to in order to appease Clinton circle. I’d bet his access to an overpaid, cushy retirement position and the right to payoffs via the lecture circuit are being threatened as I type.
Not to fear … we can all just watch a sickly sweet Disney Flick ..and dreamwork our way into happiness ! …… ‘;[
… ‘sigh’ …
now where did I put that rabbit’s … I mean ‘bunny’s’ appendage ?
Russia ships ‘chase away’ Dutch submarine in Mediterranean BBC (furzy)
In which the Royal Dutch Navy steals the DNC playbook:
“Yes we got caught red-handed, no we’re not going to officially deny it. But Putin is the anti-christ.” I’m definitely trying that the next time Ms RG confronts me with the credit card bill.
Yeah, they “caught” a Dutch submarine. Supposedly. In a relatively confined body of water. Did they “detect” the US attack boat(s)? Or did they just make the logical inference that one was there?
Eleven miles? Too funny. This, from a navy who doesn’t have a problem with “trading paint” with US ships in the Black Sea. How is a submarine “endangering” anyone eleven miles away? If anyone is in danger, it’s the submarine.
I personally wouldn’t be commenting on it, myself. Let a “real” threat get that close, and you are screwed.
How about the fact that it was there at all? Last I checked, Holland is nowhere near the Mediterranean.
Well here’s your chance to tell the president elect what you think needs to be done. My advice, Damn the deficit, full speed ahead.
https://apply.ptt.gov/yourstory/
Take this fwiw, Trump advisors considers Jamie Dimon for Treasury Secretary.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/10/donald-trump-advisors-considered-jpmorgans-jamie-dimon-for-treasury-secretary-sources.html
Aljazeera: Spoiled Americans now want to flee what they created
What will be the over/under on how many of those Sweet 16 celebrities (Dunham et al) actually leaving the US? My guess is low single digits. However, I’d crowd-fund a few of them to leave it that got them off the air.
Trump is considering JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon for Treasury Secretary
http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-is-considering-jpmorgan-ceo-jamie-dimon-for-treasury-secretary-2016-11
Did Hillary win after all? Will Nuland be considered for SoS?
It’s the cuff links ….
It does sound ominous.
What’s next to betray his supporters – Hillary for the Secretary of State?
Holy Crap! What if Trump is Dmitry Medvedev? o.O
Of course, Steven Mnuchin of Goldman Sachs is more likely to be Trump’s Treasury secretary. Still…
You really have to pretend if you want to believe that Trump didn’t use racism to build his constituency. I would argue that when it comes to racism there are two wings of the Republican party, the dogwhistle wing, and the air horn wing.
When it comes to racism, we can distinguish these two types as well:
1. Provincial racism
2. International racism (think foreign-lives-matter protests).
Those focusing solely on the former, and overlook the latter, are guilty of racism squared.
Really good point.
Ethical arithmetic will be followed by moral calculus.
You make a very good point.
‘Tis hard not to believe. They’re out there, ripe for the picking. R playbook, no doubt.
It’s almost like the parties said, “OK, kiddies. Racists (including those against the female race) stand on that side of the room. Snowflakes, gently move to this side of the room, as best you can. We like a large, empty, safe space in between.”
And yet for all of Trump’s racist air-horning he received 1,229,000 fewer votes than Romney did in 2012. That’s hardly a racist wave. So how did Trump win? Clinton suppressed her own votes by a total of 5,977,000 less than Obama in 2012 due to a lack of enthusiasm for her centrist policies in a year in which voters were clearly fed up with the status quo.
She lost Wisconsin by 27,000 votes while receiving 95,000 less votes in Milwaukee than Obama in 2012, similar story in Michigan and Pennsylvania. In my opinion it wasn’t the rise of the racist white underclass, or the Greens that killed Clinton. Her defeat was self inflicted by her inability to see outside the neoliberal bubble.
Good point, Romney captured his constituency with the old dog whistle, and after the South Carolina primary, Clinton forgot about her constituents, and it shows in Wisconsin.
Another point people are forgetting is that during the primary, Hillary and her team worked to unregister Democratic and Independent voters that they thought would vote for Sanders, and her team did not work to register new voters for fear of strengthening Sanders. A number of people predicted that this would come back to bite Hillary.
Yep, HRC brigade could have taken it if they had bothered to actually vote. Trump voter base turned out.
I haven’t a large social circle, but many seem to have thrown up their hands, and stayed home, instead of making the difficult choice.
That said, I have a blue collar background, and blue collar friends. I have spent many a long night drinking, talking, and listening in the Moose lodges, VFW and American Legion halls, and “church social” type functions where you can find same on a Saturday night. I spent my days working in mills, copper smelters, and ammunition plants.
I cannot absolve them of a certain amount of racism. Some guys, when in private, use N****r more than a LA rapper, members of my own family included! Trying to deny the existence of this is just wrong.
I don’t point to it as a primary driver, but it is an easy sell for people who use finger pointing tactics. It’s not very hard to convince them that “others” are the problem.
My good friend, at whose house I spend much of my time, will admit he does not do any reading about politics, but gets most of his information from friends who tell him ‘stuff’. And the radio, when he is in the car. I try to be one of his sources, to contradict what he is getting from C&W radio talk!
Me, I will sit here with NC on the laptop, and CNBC on the TV, watching the incredible disconnect between two worlds play out. On every subject. All the time.
“No one ever is to blame”
-some darn earworm pop song, can’t remember who.-
You really need to drop this sh*t.
1) Hillary is white, did you notice?
2) the black guy won two terms, did you notice that?
3) Trump got 48 million votes — all racists? If that’s really true and this is a democracy, then I guess they really should be represented
No doubt about it, but let’s see the evidence for how many voters this actually put in the Trump pack – the poll where the #1 concern is keeping down a particular race/group/ethnicity. The racist slur is in part still the same attempt to slander the coalition that put Trump in office and scare people back into the Democratic fold. Same goes for the media that threatens the corporate dominance thereof. Just as the takedown of Trump started Day 1 after the convention, this takedown starts the eve of & day after the election.
Does anyone believe that not a single racist anywhere voted for HC? Let’s get real…
[Response was supposed to be to OP.]
Prior to the election I was preoccupied with the machinations of Clinton and her neoliberal cabal. I believed that her presidency was inevitable and that it would have profoundly disastrous consequences. This was a grave error in judgement, and reflective of my own bias towards coastal, educated elitism. I now can see that Clinton was a paper tiger, so incompetent and unaware that she handed the presidency to the most unpopular man to ever run for it. My lesson for anyone who wants to build a better world would be well served to realize that we never have to listen a single thing her types ever say again, the Democratic party is functionally dead, and she has been consigned to the dustbin of history.
Trump is not the democratically elected president. Approximately 70% of the electorate did not chose him. All signs indicate that he will be a demagogue working on behalf of Wall Street and energy corporations. I hope everyday the groups of young people in the street grow larger, show the world that he is illegitimate, and that politics can be expressed outside of the corrupt, self-serving party machinery.
Sanders would have won against Trump.
Correct. Clinton won about 220,000 more popular votes. Trump won the Electoral College votes. It’s a little reminiscent of 2000, when Gore won about 540,000 more popular votes that Bush. However, in 2016, Trump’s Electoral margin was convincing, whereas Bush’s in 2000 was very slender, and he required interference by 5 members of the Supreme Court to win.
Probably also true — and this is exactly what Hillary Clinton would be doing, had she been elected.
The advantage being now we won’t have to wade through a wall of “progressive” Bots running hypocritical interference for Clinton-Obama as they pursued the same policies.
OTOH there’s a new wall going up apparently from the right, that denies there was anything “racist” about Trumps election. If Trump is steered towards working for the same gang, it won’t matter.
DJT is as legitimate as any other president-elect. Only those who register to vote, and do, get to make that determination. We have a 2 party system only as much as fear of losing makes people vote for candidates who are not their choice. As said here many times, by many people, Dems picked the only candidate who could lose to Trump.
The EC is what it is, and in the current political climate, I hope no one gets any SERIOUS ideas about changing the Constitution, beyond amendments. I can’t even imagine what foolishness would arise from a Constitutional Convention right now! (You think HRC and Trump are scary?)
Apparently, much of Dem base was more afraid of the scary socialist, than scary Trump. Otherwise, Bernie.
And you might at least have had a shot at a sympathetic ear at the top.
i said then that the elites in washington would rather lose with clinton than win with bernie, and i still think that’s true. and with all the voter suppression and rigging things like debates, i don’t know if the dem base preferred her or not.
“”Why these enormous snowballs in Siberia could mean America is in for a very brrr-acing winter Daily Mail (Li)”
I used to think of the Daily Mail as a joke—-a guilty pleasure like TMZ.
Over the past 12 months, Daily Mail has proven more impartial, and credible, than CNN/NBC.
no joke.
perrrrrfect timing…food cost going up…rail slowing…lay offs already revved up and the next qtr will be worse…housing busting no matter how’s its being reported…child hunger growing.
When a condition or a problem becomes too great, humans have the protection of not thinking about it. But it goes inward and minces up with a lot of other things already there and what comes out is discontent and uneasiness, guilt and a compulsion to get something–anything–before it is all gone.
Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent
“Thousands protest in US cities over Trump election victory Financial Times.”
This was obviously an emotional reaction. It’s too bad they didn’t do a bit of organizing and used this to protest against the electoral collage and demand it be eliminated in favor of a popular vote.
Eliminate that and the Senate as well.
When senators are elected based on population size, they are like super-sized congresspersons. And they will be redundant as well.
“The New England states get one.”
Wyoming, Montana, North and South Dakota together get one.
Which is why all states get two.
Partially offsetting the “tyranny of the majority” stuff.
And one of the reasons why Flyover is pizzed at the coastal elites/liberals. No one on the coasts would give a flying crap about what happens out here, unless they could do sob stories about how mean/backwards/racist/conservative those idiots in Flyover are.
Never mentioned is the fact that many of the factory closings out here in BFE are driven by Wall Street analysts/stock prices, because they could “make more money” by offshoring/outsourcing.
Also unmentioned is the fact that many industrial processes are moved overseas, because the environmental cost of compliance is stratospherically high in the US. (When was the last time anyone heard of a chrome plating shop opening, or expanding in the US?).
Kissing Wall Street’s ass, and exporting industries/jobs due to environmental issues may be good policy; but don’t pretend like there isn’t a price to be paid. As we’ve seen repeatedly, all kinds of decisions can be justified, especially when you can shove the bill onto someone else.
It would be interesting if each state gets two electors in the electoral college.
Then, like baseball records, all (or many) previous presidents will have an asterisk next to the name.
“…the Secretary of Education is such a lightweight job that it could probably be filled by a potted plant and no one would notice.”
Many people SHOULD notice what Arne Duncan did as “a potted plant”… or more accurately a plant for the privatization movement… As a public school advocate neither candidate took positions that made me believe there would be a change of course in public education, a course that has led to the privatization of public education. Thanks to No Child Left Behind followed by Obama’s Race To The Top and now Every Child Succeeds we have been giving children standardized tests designed to prove Reagan was right about “Government funded schools” and Friedman was right about the need to subject public schools to “market forces” as if they were fast food chains. If Trump follows through with his campaign promises regarding public education expect to see a green light to use federal $$$ to supplant local funds http://wp.me/p25b7q-1CD and to divert $20,000,000,000 to vouchers that can be used to pay tuition at sectarian schools and/or deregulated virtual for-profit schools http://wp.me/p25b7q-1CF… And remember this quote from Mr. Trump in the NV primary early in the campaign: “….we won with poorly educated! I love the poorly educated!”
“Trump has other long-standing business allies, such Carl Ichan, who he has named as his pick for Secretary of the Treasury…”
Carl Icahn? Carl Icahn?? Heard him yesterday on CNBC gloating about the Trump win. He was more or less calling for the outright abolishment of the EPA, ranting on about “environmental regulation” as THE number-one hindrance of a “robust” oil, gas, and fracking sector, yadda-yadda. Not only is Icahn hard-line on “regulation”, he is one of the more slimy corporate raiders of the 80s school, continuing to hold corporate board hostage to his demands after taking a minority position in company shares. Frankly, I would of thought that the Goldman dude Steve Mnuchin already has SecTreas locked up, as Goldman seems to have a long-term lease at the Treasury Building.
Icahn…oy vey.
This job is different.
The country needs a Secretary of Treasury who can burst bubbles while containing damage at the same time.
Can he do it? I have no idea.
That brings up an old, but still interesting question. From what pool of people should government draw for these positions?
Obviously, if you want a really good person in the job,they need to have the expertise. But that usually means pulling from the very interests who are the source of corrupting influence.
Bankers? Academics? Plumbers?Pols? Regulators? (I could feel comfortable with Bill Black).
Where do you find people who REALLY know the workings, but are not part of the scam.
Who can be trusted to operate on evidence and fact, and not ambitions?
Yves.
Also, earlier, Icahn was said to be buying up Time Warner shares.
Perhaps he had since sold it, as Trump is against the proposed merger with AT&T.
CNBC plugging Jamie Dimon for Treasury all day today. Supposedly Trump people “put out a feeler”.
So, don’t say I didn’t warn ya.
Give me the bad news first.
(That means, hopefully, good news after that – but there is no guarantee in life, except something or something).
Get your bucket ready…..
The Liberal party is vulnerable to rightwing populism. It should fight for neoliberalism
Sabine Wolff
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/10/the-neoliberal-elite-consensus-isnt-dead-yet-but-unless-it-gets-a-lot-more-inclusive-it-soon-will-be
disheveled marsupial…. off to the pit… at least it has river views…..
Center. Consensus.Reasonable. HURLLLLLL!
I can’t help but think this is good news. They’re that desperate to save neoliberalism.
Guess the whole “enlightened” elite thing isn’t working out too well.
Scientists say THIS is how to make your smartphone battery last longer ThaiTech (furzy
Quick tips: How to make your smartphone battery last longer
Do not let your smartphone battery drain completely
Do not leave your phone switched off for long periods of time
Do not leave your phone unused for long periods of time
And most important – do not let it get too hot
well ok then, not too much insight here..The last one is very helpful.
“And most important – do not let it get too hot”
Is there anything on the planet that shouldn’t get TOO hot??
Rapidly changing preferences in battery chemistry have made for confusion, for sure. People are going to use them however suits their needs, anyway, notwithstanding long life. What choice, really?
The really stupid thing is requiring a service call to replace a bloody soldered-in battery. This is the superior tech?
People are strange. (yeah, that song.)
on this subject, is at least a useful place to go.
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries
>Saudi Prince Who Called Trump a “Disgrace” – Kisses Trump’s Butt Today
I wonder if we’re going to see a lot of this domestically. Conan O’brien, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver. Many, many people have been mocking and insulting Trump from day one, confident it didn’t matter because he would never win. But now he has. He’s president. Or should I say Mr. President. It’ll be amusing to watch them backpedal and grovel, because Americans (both born and adopted) seem to think The President is a hallowed position that inherently deserves a certain amount of respect.
It was risky for a while to be mocking and insulting Hillary.
The safe course was to do it to Trump.
And when I looked at some of the comments here, I was inspired.
fresh off the press:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/11/kissinger-order-and-chaos/506876/
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/12/the-lessons-of-henry-kissinger/505868/
not a fan of kissinger, but maybe interesting.
“Michael Moore’s “Morning After To-Do List” Facebook Post For Democrats Is Going Viral Good ”
All it does is direct energy back into the wasteland of the Democratic Party.
This is exactly what Bernie tried: he wanted to rescue the Democrats. Turned out they didn’t want to be rescued. They still don’t.
Everybody forgets about the Greens in their election analysis… not me!
None of that means the Green Party is going to be the alternative political party that replaces the Democrats in our two party system. The Greens arose in the 1960s/1970s when the middle classes became enamored with left-wing radicalism. As a consequence of their individualistic values they’ve always struggled to generate any support outside of college students and a small clique of the upper middle class. They don’t offer any solutions to the importation of cheap labor that undermine working class wages or union busting.
Their posturing over environmental causes and their proposed solutions only rouses the suspicion that they have no intention of making any change that would threaten the social structure which provides the basis of economic privilege of the upper middle class and the aspirational class of college graduates.
So, why support them?
*I’m not white, nor do I have a college education, so don’t play that identity politics game with me. Just another prole… deplorable.
Maybe you should ask Glenn Ford and Bruce Dixon at Black Agenda Report about that. Or Ajamu Baraka.
In short, while it’s true there are a lot of ex-hippies in the Green Party, at least in Oregon, that’s a very odd caricature.
I’m not characterizing or smearing them as hippies. If anything I’m smearing them as middle class liberal radicals. I don’t have any malicious intent regarding the Greens outside of pointing out how disconnected from the electorate they are.
They’re hardly alone in that so don’t think I’m unfairly singling them out.
If the Greens couldn’t make it this year, they’ll never make it (1%)*. Another wonderfully clarifying result.
NOTE * For the record, I don’t think third parties “take votes” from the major parties, because parties don’t own people’s votes. If a party fails to register its voters, fails to get them to the polls, and fails to get enough voters to back its candidate, then it fails in its central mission as a party. The Democrats failed to do those things. It wasn’t the Greens or the Libertarians that made them fail.
Is the choice of today’s Antidote a bit pointed? Topical, perhaps?
Syria news:
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2016/11/264230.htm?src=ilaw
The State Department has changed course and is no longer playing semantic games. al-Qaeda is al-Qaeda is al-Qaeda.
This could be a super big deal. We might be seeing a major change in direction regarding Syria before Trump even formally takes office.
Know which way the wind blows.
Since the Syrian Army, backed by Russian firepower, is likely to have cleared the remaining `moderate terrorists (TM)’ out of Aleppo before Jan 20 this is no more than getting ahead of the mob & calling it a parade.
It could turn out to be a bigger deal than that. The Washington Post raises the possibility of direct cooperation with Russia when Trump takes office.
It’s probably too much to hope for a joint Syrian Arab Army & Syrian Democratic Forces operation with Russian/American support to liberate the city of Raqqa.
But I can dream.
Yves,
“given the corruption of science these days.”
“Nature” follows such outings pretty closely. Most of them seem to be in psychology, which I wouldn’t call a science, and medical biology which definitely is one; the pressure in the latter field must be intense.
What are you referring to?
Back to the Obama pardon I have a question (for Jerri-Lynn ?): How many pardons is he allowed to issue ? Is this power limited by anything other than not wishing to taint his `legacy’ … or any shreds of it left after the DNC/DWS/HRC debacle ?
Short answer: He can issue as many pardons as he wants to. Remember, though, these only cover offenses against the United States (aka, federal crimes).
Wow – I just read that Trump team is floating Jamie Dimon as Treasury Secretary – that is like my worst nightmare.