Trump’s children must keep their jobs

Nov 13th, 2016 12:36 pm | By

Again there’s that unprecedented issue that Trump has binders full of business interests that present unmistakable and undeniable conflicts of interest – and the fact that he wants to keep it that way. I guess nobody told him this was an issue during this entire campaign? That was sloppy. Is sloppy the word I mean? Do I mean reckless? Do I mean corrupt? Gosh it’s hard to choose.

The Washington Post reports that Giuliani – lawyer Giuliani, former prosecutor Giuliani – says it’s cool for Trump’s family to run his businesses and also help Daddy run the government.

Appearing on televised interviews on Sunday, Giuliani initially said Trump should set up some kind of “blind trust.” When pressed, Giuliani told CNN’s “State of the Union” that Trump has an unusual situation and that creating a traditional blind trust would “basically put his children out of work.”

He says they then would have to “start a whole new business and that would set up … new problems.”

Giuliani said Trump’s three children — Ivanka, Donald Jr. and Eric — who are involved in his businesses would not advise Trump once he becomes president in January. All three children are, however, are on the executive committee of Trump’s transition team.

And these people had the gall to call Clinton corrupt. Clinton was much too cozy with bankers and CEOs, yes, but this is a whole different level, one we can’t even see from where we are.

Also it’s interesting to see that Giuliani’s concern is what would be good for Trump’s children, and their employment, and the family’s business interests. It’s not for…you know…the country, and its people.

And then there’s the fraud division.

Donald Trump’s attorneys have filed a motion to delay until after the presidential inauguration a class-action fraud lawsuit involving the president-elect and his now-defunct Trump University.

In the motion filed Saturday in San Diego federal court, Trump’s lawyer Daniel Petrocelli argues that the extra months would give both sides time to possibly reach a settlement.

The San Diego Union-Tribune reports Petrocelli wants to postpone the trial until sometime soon after the Jan. 20 inauguration to allow Trump to focus on the transition to the White House.

Right, because once that’s over he’ll be able to kick back and relax. He’s not going to have anything to do after he’s inaugurated, naturally.

And then there’s the bullying and threatening.

The war of words between Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid and President-elect Donald Trump is escalating, this time through their top aides.

Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, on Sunday said Reid should be careful in a “legal sense” about characterizing Trump as a sexual predator. When asked whether Trump was threatening to sue Reid, Conway said no. Also on Sunday, Trump took to Twitter to taunt The New York Times.

So Conway first threatened and then lied. Good start.

Those tweets –

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For certain areas a wall is more appropriate

Nov 13th, 2016 12:09 pm | By

The deportations.

In a “60 Minutes” interview scheduled to air Sunday, President-elect Donald Trump said he planned to immediately deport two to three million undocumented immigrants after his inauguration next January.

“What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably 2 million, it could be even 3 million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate,” Trump told 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl, according to a preview of the interview released by CBS. “But we’re getting them out of our country. They’re here illegally.”

Stahl had pressed Trump about his campaign pledge to deport “millions and millions of undocumented immigrants.” Trump told her that after securing the border, his administration would make a “determination” on the remaining undocumented immigrants in the country.

“After the border is secure and after everything gets normalized, we’re going to make a determination on the people that they’re talking about — who are terrific people. They’re terrific people, but we are gonna make a determination at that,” Trump said. “But before we make that determination…it’s very important, we are going to secure our border.”

“Normalized.” As if anything about Trump were “normal.” Widespread, yes, but normal, no.

He’s scaring the other Republicans though.

Republican leaders who made the Sunday political-show circuit seemed to approach the issue of mass deportations more cautiously.

“I think it’s difficult to do,” Republican House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday earlier Sunday morning. “First thing you have to do is secure the border and then we’ll have discussions.”

McCarthy also hedged on the border wall, saying Republicans were focused on “securing the southern border” but with the aid of technology rather than necessarily a full-length brick-and-mortar wall.

…

Regarding his border wall plans, Trump told Stahl on 60 Minutes that he would accept fencing along some of the border, as Republicans in Congress have proposed.

“For certain areas, I would. But for certain areas a wall is more appropriate,” Trump said. “I’m very good at this. It’s called construction.”

Ah yes. He has experience at speculative building, therefore he is correct about where a wall is more appropriate. He knows about what kind of wall keeps out wind and dust and flies, and what kind keeps out foreigners.

He also said polite things about Clinton, which are not credible given all the things he said about her during the campaign. You can’t just cancel vicious name-calling by saying something polite later.

Trump’s tone in the interview was in sharp contrast to his bitter attacks on the campaign trail, in which he nicknamed Clinton “Crooked Hillary” and encouraged chants of “Lock her up!” at his rallies. Among other insults, Trump also referred to his competitor as “the devil,” “a bigot” and — at the tail end of the final presidential debate — “such a nasty woman.”

Then they talked about policy.

When Stahl questioned whether there would be a gap between the repeal of Obamacare and the implementation of a new plan that could leave millions of people uninsured, Trump interrupted her.

“Nope. We’re going to do it simultaneously. It’ll be just fine. It’s what I do. I do a good job. You know, I mean, I know how to do this stuff,” Trump said. “We’re going to repeal and replace it. And we’re not going to have, like, a two-day period and we’re not going to have a two-year period where there’s nothing. It will be repealed and replaced. I mean, you’ll know. And it will be great health care for much less money.”

No, he does not know how to do “this stuff.” Of course he doesn’t. He doesn’t know much of anything except how to extract money and/or labor and services from people. That is of course a big thing to know, and it’s made him rich and famous and president, but it’s still not at all the same as knowing how to make a new healthcare plan that will be “for much less money” while still actually being a healthcare plan. The only way to do it for much less money, of course, is to exclude millions of people from coverage.

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The aching boredom

Nov 12th, 2016 6:13 pm | By

Ashley Feinberg has all the sympathy for Trump’s plight.

Donald Trump does not want to be the president.

Donald Trump likes going to rallies. He likes hearing people scream his name in ecstasy while calling for the imprisonment and death of his enemies. He likes going on TV. He likes hearing about how high the ratings were after he goes on TV. He likes grabbing women by the pussy and moving on them “like a bitch.”

What Donald Trump does not like, however, is keeping his promises, sitting still for more than five minutes at a time, or doing any kind of work whatsoever, tedious or otherwise. It’s probably why so many of his business ventures were spectacular, blistering failures over the years.

But unfortunately for Donald Trump and everyone else in the world save Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump is about to be the president. And as miserable as it is for us, there is one small, saving grace amidst the despair: Donald Trump looks like he wants to die.

AP

He doesn’t look as if he wants to die any more than usual – he has resting furious face. But he doesn’t look happy and excited and thrilled, that’s for dang sure. He also doesn’t look like Obama – attentive, relaxed, human. Trump looks like a demon about to erupt…but then he always does.

As many noted, in the photos of their meeting in the Oval Office, Trump looks absolutely terrified. As well he should be—this is a man who has absolutely no business running anything, much less the United States. And apparently, he knows it.

But it’s more than just being scared of what he got himself into. Donald Trump is positively miserable. He hates this shit! He doesn’t want to walk around getting a tour with Mitch McConnell. Nor does he want to sit at a boring table next to boring Paul Ryan and talk about boring things that aren’t Donald Trump.

Of course he doesn’t. He’s easily bored because he’s a pinhead. There’s nothing going on in his brain, so boredom always lurks.

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The curate’s egg

Nov 12th, 2016 3:53 pm | By

The Post patiently explains to Trump why he can’t keep “the good parts” of Obamacare while throwing out the icky parts. It’s obvious, plus it was discussed endlessly, but the Post knows that Trump didn’t pay attention and is not quick on the uptake.

After reiterating his promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, President-elect Donald Trump has indicated that he may keep two of the law’s most popular provisions. One is straightforward enough — children up to the age of 26 being allowed to stay on their parents’ plan. The other — preventing insurance companies from denying coverage because of preexisting conditions — offers a perfect illustration of why Trump and most of the other Republicans critics of Obamacare don’t understand the health insurance market.

What’s wrong with this picture? If insurance companies can’t deny  coverage because of preexisting conditions, then what’s to stop people from skipping insurance altogether until they develop a Condition? And if that happened what’s to stop insurance companies from going into another line of work? Nothing. You have to pool the risk, one way or another. That means you have to mandate coverage, or you have to pay with taxes (Single Payer).

To guarantee that people with pre-existing conditions can get affordable health insurance, you need to have rules requiring guaranteed issue and community rating.  To keep insurance companies in business because of guaranteed issue and community rating, you need to have an individual mandate.  And because poor people can’t afford health insurance, you need subsidies. Combine all three, and what you have, in a nutshell, is … Obamacare.

…

Of course, if you want to scrap guaranteed issue, scrap community rating, scrap the individual mandate and scrap the subsidies, as Republicans, propose, then you end up where the country was in 2008—with a market system that inevitable gives way to an insurance spiral in which steadily rising premiums cause a steadily rising percentage of Americans without health insurance.

There are no easy solutions here, no free lunches.  You can’t have all the good parts of an unregulated insurance market (freedom to buy what you want, when you want, with market pricing) without the bad parts (steadily rising premiums and insurance that is unaffordable for people who are old and sick).

At the same time, you can’t have all the good parts of a socialized system (universal coverage at affordable prices) without freedom-reducing mandates and regulations and large doses of subsidies from some people to other people. Anyone who says otherwise – anyone promising better quality health care at lower cost with fewer regulations and lower taxes—is peddling hokum.

That would be Donnie from Queens.

The post included a very unfortunate photo of Donnie talking to an adult with the article. He does that ludicrous pinching gesture even when talking to an adult.

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Question authority

Nov 12th, 2016 3:10 pm | By

Who is Myron Ebell? He’s a climate change denialist who directs environmental and energy policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

(What’s the Competitive Enterprise Institute? Let’s ask SourceWatch:

The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) is a advocacy group based in Washington DC with long ties to tobacco disinformation campaigns and more recently to climate change denial. It calls itself “a non-profit, non-partisan research and advocacy institute dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government. We believe that individuals are best helped not by government intervention, but by making their own choices in a free marketplace.”[1] The Competitive Enterprise Institute is an “associate” member of the State Policy Network, a web of right-wing “think tanks” in every state across the country.[2])

Why do we need to know who Myron Ebell is? I bet you can guess.

In looking for someone to follow through on his campaign vow to dismantle one of the Obama administration’s signature climate change policies, President-elect Donald J. Trump probably could not have found a better candidate for the job than Mr. Ebell.

Mr. Ebell, who revels in taking on the scientific consensus on global warming, will be Mr. Trump’s lead agent in choosing personnel and setting the direction of the federal agencies that address climate change and environmental policy more broadly.

Mr. Ebell, whose organization is financed in part by the coal industry, has been one of the most vocal opponents of the linchpin of that policy, the Clean Power Plan. Developed by the Environmental Protection Agency, the plan is a far-reaching set of regulations that, by seeking to reduce carbon emissions from electricity generation, could result in the closing of many coal-burning power plants, among other effects.

So…sorry kids and grandkids. Sorry everybody who won’t be dying in the next two or three decades. Donald Trump and Myron Edell would rather protect the immediate profits of the coal industry and other carbon-emitting industries than worry about your late-to-the-party asses.

Mr. Ebell, who did not respond to a request for an interview, grew up on a ranch in Oregon. He got his undergraduate degree at Colorado College and master’s at the London School of Economics, where he studied under the conservative political philosopher Michael Oakeshott. He has described himself as “sort of a contrarian by nature and upbringing,” and has said he was very strongly influenced by the “question authority” ethos of 1960s and ’70s counterculture.

“I really think that people should be suspicious of authority,” he told an interviewer last year. “The more you’re told that you have to believe something, the more you should question it.”

Right, and the coal industry is the epitome of that “question authority” ethos of the 1960s and ’70s counterculture. All the critical thinkers work for the coal industry, and the mindless authoritarian dogmatists are found only among climate scientists.

This is Trump draining the swamp again.

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Guest post: The same 60 million-ish white middle-class Americans

Nov 12th, 2016 2:56 pm | By

Originally a comment by G Felis on Trump’s lobbyists.

Trump was elected by the same 60 million-ish white middle-class Americans who voted for McCain and Romney. (He actually received fewer total votes than either of the preceding candidates.) While some of those Trump voters were surely enthusiastic first-time voters from the deplorable categories (white supremacists and such), they appear to have been balanced by the more traditional Republicans who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Trump (but also refused to support Clinton), leaving the total number of votes for Trump roughly on a par with Romney and McCain. That is to say, most of the 60 million Trump voters were the same individual citizens — not the same demographic categories, but the same people (older, but no wiser) — who turned up the last two times to pull the lever for Republicans. Maybe more of them did it holding their nose this time, or maybe they actually bought into his anti-Muslim religious bigotry (and every other possible form of bigotry) — but they voted for him either way.

But that doesn’t make the anti-establishment narrative of this election false. The people who were genuinely opposed to and disillusioned by the DC establishment are the ones who didn’t show up to vote for Clinton, but did show up to vote for Obama in 2008 and 2012. The votes Clinton DID NOT get but Obama DID get are really what decided this election. (See the chart linked below.) And I honestly do think that is in large part because Clinton is seen as the embodiment of the DC establishment. Yes, it’s also due to 30 years of conservatives smearing her and irresponsible media repeating and reinforcing those smears, and due to plain old-fashioned sexism; there’s no separating out or ignoring those factors, of course. But there is also no denying that Clinton was the establishment candidate in an election where the electorate was rife with anti-establishment sentiment — which is why Democratic Party outsider Bernie Sanders had such a strong showing in the primary against her. I don’t at all think that anti-establishment sentiments drove people to vote AGAINST Clinton and FOR Trump; it just led to voters who voted for Obama not showing up to vote for Clinton. And that’s a damned tragedy, because Clinton isn’t that different a person from Obama in terms of political ideals and platforms, and she is probably the more savvy negotiator and hard-nosed political player of the two, and could have accomplished a great deal of good despite being a fair bit more centrist/moderate than I would prefer.

Total votes chart:

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Reward

Nov 12th, 2016 12:07 pm | By

Good god. He’s managed to surprise me.

Remember that Florida AG who dropped a possible investigation into Trump “University”?

Yes?

Well guess who is on the transition team!

Orlando Weekly:

Dropping that investigation into Trump University is apparently really paying off for Florida’s Attorney General Pam Bondi because she was just named onto President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team.

The Tampa Bay Times reports Bondi joins Vice President-elect Mike Pence, Ben Carson, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, New Gingrich, Gen. Michael Flynn, Rudy Giuliani, Sen. Jeff Sessions, Trump campaign CEO Stephen K. Bannon and several of Trump’s children in the transition team.

Such fun! And when that’s over maybe she’ll be appointed Secretary of Integrity.

Earlier this year, Bondi was engulfed in controversy over a $25,000 donation Trump made to her political committee while she was considering whether Florida should investigate complaints that Trump University had defrauded consumers. Ultimately, she decided not to pursue the allegations and has adamantly denied a connection between the contribution and her office’s handling of the issue.

The political donation from Trump to Bondi ultimately cost him a $2,500 penalty to the IRS this year after it was discovered the donation was an illegal political contribution from the businessman’s charitable foundation, which can’t make political donations.

Swamp: drained!

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Trump’s lobbyists

Nov 12th, 2016 11:30 am | By

Trump the populist, elected, we’re told, by people who want to overturn the DC Establishment and speak up for the workers.

President-elect Donald J. Trump, who campaigned against the corrupt power of special interests, is filling his transition team with some of the very sort of people who he has complained have too much clout in Washington: corporate consultants and lobbyists.

Jeffrey Eisenach, a consultant who has worked for years on behalf of Verizon and other telecommunications clients, is the head of the team that is helping to pick staff members at the Federal Communications Commission.

Michael Catanzaro, a lobbyist whose clients include Devon Energy and Encana Oil and Gas, holds the “energy independence” portfolio.

Michael Torrey, a lobbyist who runs a firm that has earned millions of dollars helping food industry players such as the American Beverage Association and the dairy giant Dean Foods, is helping set up the new team at the Department of Agriculture.

Well…maybe they wear baseball caps and drop their ‘g’s while doing it?

Mr. Trump was swept to power in large part by white working-class voters who responded to his vow to restore the voices of forgotten people, ones drowned out by big business and Wall Street. But in his transition to power, some of the most prominent voices will be those of advisers who come from the same industries for which they are being asked to help set the regulatory groundwork.

The president-elect’s spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, declined a request for comment, as did nearly a dozen corporate executives, consultants and lobbyists serving on his transition team, which was outlined in a list distributed widely in Washington on Thursday.

It’s almost as if the whole thing has turned out to be a giant fake. Who could have seen that coming?

“This whole idea that he was an outsider and going to destroy the political establishment and drain the swamp were the lines of a con man, and guess what — he is being exposed as just that,” said Peter Wehner, who served in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush before becoming a speechwriter for George W. Bush. “He is failing the first test, and he should be held accountable for it.”

Should, but won’t. This is TrumpAmerica now.

Transition teams help new presidents pick the new cabinet, as well as up to 4,000 political appointees who will take over top posts in agencies across the government. President Obama, after he was first elected, instituted rules that prohibited individuals who had served as registered lobbyists in the prior year from serving as transition advisers in the areas in which they represented private clients. They were also prohibited, after the administration took power, from lobbying in the parts of the government they helped set up.

Well, yes, but he was born in Kenya, so it doesn’t count.

The energy sector is especially well supplied with interested parties.

Mr. Catanzaro’s client list is a who’s who of major corporate players — such as the Hess Corporation and Devon Energy — that have tried to challenge the Obama administration’s environmental and energy policies on issues such as how much methane gas can be released at oil and gas drilling sites, lobbying disclosure reports show.

He also worked with oil industry players to help push through major legislation goals, such as allowing the export of crude oil. He will now help pick Mr. Trump’s energy team.

Michael McKenna, another lobbyist helping to pick key administration officials who will oversee energy policy, has a client list that this year has included the Southern Company, one of the most vocal critics of efforts to prevent climate change by putting limits on emissions from coal-burning power plants.

Advisers with ties to other industries include Martin Whitmer, who is overseeing “transportation and infrastructure” for the Trump transition. He is the chairman of a Washington law firm whose lobbying clients include the Association of American Railroads and the National Asphalt Pavement Association.

David Malpass, the former chief economist at Bear Stearns, the Wall Street investment bank that collapsed during the 2008 financial crisis, is overseeing the “economic issues” portfolio of the transition, as well as operations at the Treasury Department. Mr. Malpass now runs a firm called Encima Global, which sells economic research to institutional investors and corporate clients.

Mr. Eisenach, as a telecom industry consultant, has worked to help major cellular companies fight back against regulations proposed by the F.C.C.that would mandate so-called net neutrality — requiring providers to give equal access to their networks to outside companies. He is now helping to oversee the rebuilding of the staff at the F.C.C.

Dan DiMicco, a former chief executive of the steelmaking company Nucor, who now serves on the board of directors of Duke Energy, is heading the transition team for the Office of the United States Trade Representative. Mr. DiMicco has long argued that China is unfairly subsidizing its manufacturing sector at the expense of American jobs.

Swamp: drained!

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On the to-do list

Nov 12th, 2016 10:53 am | By

There is of course the schedule of court cases.

US president-elect Donald Trump heads to court later this month to face charges that he ran a scheme that “preyed upon the elderly and uneducated to separate them from their money”. It’s the first of an unprecedented slew of legal issues to face an incoming president.

On Thursday, Judge Gonzalo Curiel will hold a hearing on jury instruction and what evidence can be admitted in the class action lawsuit brought by students of the president-elect’s now defunct Trump University.

Another first. How well it reflects on us, that our new president-elect ran a fraudulent not-university named after himself.

The first day of the trial, at which he has been called as a witness by both sides, is set for 28 November. Daniel Petrocelli, Trump’s lawyer, has attempted to delay the trial, however Curiel seems intent on starting it before the inauguration.

The hearing is the first of an unprecedented slew of legal difficulties that the president-elect must overcome.

Trump is suing celebrity chef José Andrés for pulling out of his just-opened Washington DC hotel. Andrés, a Spanish-born immigrant, found Trump’s explicit racism so offensive that he joined Hillary Clinton’s campaign, declaring himself “a proud immigrant”. Trump sued him for $10m; Andrés countersued for $8m.

One has to wonder what basis Trump has for suing. People aren’t allowed to stop working for him? In what universe?

In solidarity with Andrés, a fellow celebrity chef, Geoffrey Zakarian, also pulled out of Trump’s DC hotel, which opened two weeks ago a stone’s throw from the White House. Trump is suing him as well, for damages “in excess of $10m”. Their mediation is scheduled for next year in the same court as the suit against Andrés.

Let’s have a round of applause for both of them. I hope they win.

The New York attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, who filed another suit against Trump University in 2013, is continuing his investigations.

Schneiderman’s office is also investigating the president-elect’s namesake charity, the Donald J Trump Foundation, for alleged violations of the tax code governing nonprofit organizations.

There is also the case of Kashiya Nwanguma, a woman who is suing Trump for inciting violence at a a rally in Louisville, Kentucky. The violence was caught in a video. One of the men pushing Nwanguma is prominent white nationalist Matthew Heimbach, who is also named in the suit. The suit is waiting for western district of Kentucky judge David Hale to rule on two motions to dismiss, a clerk told the Guardian.

https://youtu.be/D-GEdJjVuIs

This is how it goes when you elect a lying cheating violence-inciting bully president.

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Not in any way a blind trust

Nov 12th, 2016 9:52 am | By

And then there’s that whole thing about the conflicts of interest. Sam Thielman in the Guardian:

When President-elect Donald Trump enters the White House next year he will bring with him potential conflicts of interest across all areas of government that are unprecedented in American history.

Trump, who manages a sprawling, international network of businesses, has thus far refused to put his businesses into a blind trust the way his predecessors in the nation’s highest office have traditionally done. Instead he has said his businesses will be run by his own adult children.

As someone on NPR said yesterday, that’s not a blind trust, that’s a 20/20 vision trust.

Donald Jr, Eric and Ivanka Trump are all on the president-elect’s transition team executive committee, per ABC’s Candace Smith, as is Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

HONK. Conflict of interest, right there.

[A]ccording to regulators who have overseen potential conflicts of interests under two former presidents, Trump’s arrangements were unprecedented and present a host of issues.

This is in no way a blind trust, said Karl Sandstrom, former chairman of the Federal Election Commission (FEC), the regulatory body that oversees campaign finance, under Bill Clinton and George W Bush. “A blind trust is not anywhere near the same. You don’t still have access to the decision being made. That’s why you put assets in and don’t just have someone else manage the company,” he said. Trump’s assets will instead apparently remain united under his company, and operated under his name even if he is not directly in charge.

“Reagan spent some time in the private sector but he certainly wasn’t a CEO,” said Robert Lenhard, also a former FEC chair, appointed by George W Bush. “He wasn’t operating a set of companies like Trump is. Most of our presidents have come out of political careers – Eisenhower’s time out of office was mostly a hiatus between the military and the presidency.”

Trump on the other hand is a huckster. He’s in it for the bucks. That’s what he knows. That’s all he knows.

Trump owns hotels in Chicago, New York City, Las Vegas, Waikiki and, most recently, in Washington DC, just down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. As with any hotel chain, the Trump Organization will oversee power, water, maintenance, security, billing and any number of other logistical details that will now essentially be negotiated between the provider and the family of the president.

Abroad, Trump holds properties in Istanbul, where his election was met with satisfaction by that country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, as well as Mumbai, Vancouver and Seoul, among many others. With Trump’s children running his businesses, there is also the matter of their bearing his name, and thus the name of the president, anywhere in the world when they arrive to negotiate leases and construction deals.

Squalid, isn’t it.

Also in Russia, there are Trump’s ties to Paul Manafort, who ran his campaign from March to August. Manafort, who helped to install Putin ally Viktor Yanukovych as president in Ukraine, was named in a corruption investigation by a Ukrainian authority working with the FBI.

Then there is the matter of the president-elect’s stock portfolio. Trump has holdings in Dakota Access pipeline company Energy Transfer Partners. In his first 100 days, Trump has pledged to remove every impediment to the pipeline, which has been the subject of protests violently suppressed by police in North Dakota. He also owns stock in Facebook, whose CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted that he was “feeling hopeful” on Wednesday, and in Bank of America – he has promised to deregulate the banking industry.

This should go well.

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He longs to stay with the unit

Nov 12th, 2016 7:55 am | By

Uh oh, poor President Pussygrabber, he’s realized that he’s taken on an actual job, one with a lot of work attached, and he doesn’t want to. He wanted to win the prize, he didn’t want no stinkin’ job.

Plus he wants to go on living in the tower. He’s got it just the way he likes it.

Mr. Trump, a homebody who often flew several hours late at night during the campaign so he could wake up in his own bed in Trump Tower, is talking with his advisers about how many nights a week he will spend in the White House. He has told them he would like to do what he is used to, which is spending time in New York when he can.

The future first lady, Melania Trump, expects to move to Washington. But the couple’s 10-year-old son, Barron, is midway through a school year in New York, and it is unclear when the move would happen.

The questions reflect what Mr. Trump’s advisers described as the president-elect’s coming to grips with the fact that his life is about to change radically. They say that Mr. Trump, who was shocked when he won the election, might spend most of the week in Washington, much like members of Congress, and return to Trump Tower or his golf course in Bedminster, N.J., or his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach on weekends.

That’s so Trump. He ran for it without stopping to think about actually doing it, and whether he wanted to or not. Of course he doesn’t want to. He’s not equipped to do it, and that’s going to be

  1. humiliating
  2. hard work

People are going to know he’s not equipped to do it, and he’s going to have to do a lot of hard homework along with doing the actual job. Pity the poor guy – he’s not as bright as Obama, to put it mildly, and that’s going to be obvious when he can’t learn the material. He doesn’t have the usefully relevant education and experience that both Obama and Clinton have – he has no usefully relevant education and experience.

That was no doubt brought sharply home to him during that meeting with Obama on Thursday. He must have had a revelation of how completely out of his depth he was. Here was this Kenyan guy talking about briefings and foreign policy and undersecretaries and poor Donnie from Queens couldn’t understand a word of it.

Mr. Trump’s advisers hold out the possibility that the president-elect may spend more time in the White House as he grows less overwhelmed and more comfortable in the job.

Poor Donnie, so overwhelmed.

Mr. Trump’s affection for his penthouse apartment runs deep, as his biographer, Michael D’Antonio, learned when Mr. Trump invited him inside the three-story unit in 2014 for an extended interview.

Mr. Trump reveled in recalling the challenges required to design and build the apartment, decorated in 24-karat gold and marble in the Louis XIV style, saying he simply wanted to see if such an ambitious undertaking could be accomplished. He described it less as a home than a tribute to his own self-image.

“I really wanted to see if it could be done,” Mr. Trump said at the time, as he showed Mr. D’Antonio around the apartment. “This is a very complex unit. Building this unit, if you look at the columns and the carvings, this building, this unit was harder than building the building itself.”

“This unit” – I love that. That’s real-estate jargon. But the White House is just grubby tacky civil servant housing in comparison – how can anyone expect him to live in that slum?

Returning home to Trump Tower from the White House may not be Mr. Trump’s only embrace of the familiar. His aides say he has also expressed interest in continuing to hold the large rallies that were a staple of his candidacy. He likes the instant gratification and adulation that the cheering crowds provide, and his aides are discussing how they might accommodate his demand.

Of course he does. That’s why he ran in the first place – it was a chance to have people cheering him for hours every day. He didn’t want to have to do any god damn work at the end of it.

Not least, Mr. Trump is finding Twitter a familiar comfort, although it is unclear if he will be the first president to wholly control his own Twitter account once he is in the White House.

Twitter is way nicer than being president. With Twitter and the dear unit and a few visits to adoring crowds every day, what more could a guy want? Couldn’t Obama just stay there doing the work, kind of like a garden boy, while Trump enjoys the title but stays in New York playing with Twitter?

Mr. Trump’s aides got him to agree to restrict his use of Twitter in the waning days of his campaign, but on Thursday, his second day as president-elect, Mr. Trump posted the kind of Twitter missive for which he has become known: a message complaining that “professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting.”

“Very unfair!” he wrote.

Mr. Trump checked himself later when he offered a more unifying message: “Love the fact that the small groups of protesters last night have passion for our great country. We will all come together and be proud.”

Well he didn’t so much “check” himself as contradict himself, no doubt after various pimpled flunkies reminded him that we’re allowed to protest things.

For now Mr. Trump remains in Trump Tower receiving congratulations, thanking those who stayed with him and venting to associates his lingering grievances with the news media over coverage of the campaign. He has stayed in touch with reporters at Fox News, checking in to ask about ratings and, as he has done for months, polling people about whom he should put in top jobs.

He misses The Apprentice, doesn’t he. Poor Donnie.

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The KKK celebrates

Nov 11th, 2016 5:29 pm | By

A chapter of the KKK says it’s holding a victory march for Trump next month.

Yeah. The president-elect is being celebrated by the Ku Klux Klan.

This is no dream. This is really happening.

A North Carolina chapter of the Ku Klux Klan announced it will hold a rally in December to celebrate Donald Trump’s presidential victory, in what a national hate-tracking group called the latest evidence that white supremacist groups are feeling emboldened since the election.

The Loyal White Knights of Pelham, North Carolina, one of the largest Ku Klux Klan groups in the U.S., said on its website it will hold the event on Dec. 3. The time and location of the event were not listed. The group is based in Pelham, a small, unincorporated community in Caswell County near the Virginia border. It organized a rally in South Carolina last year protesting the removal of the Confederate flag from the state Capitol building.

The US just elected a president welcomed by the KKK.

Trump was previously criticized for being slow to condemn former Klan leader David Duke after he gave the candidate his backing. The Republican has also repeatedly retweeted messages from white supremacist sympathizers.

Duke celebrated Trump’s win over Democrat Hillary Clinton, tweeting early Wednesday, “This is one of the most exciting nights of my life. Make no mistake about it, our people have played a HUGE role in electing Trump!”

…

James Edwards, a white supremacist who runs “The Political Cesspool, a radio show based in Tennessee, wrote about Trump’s opponents, “I hope President Trump shows them no mercy. Don’t be magnanimous, Mr. President. Crush the defeated, especially those in the media, and Make America Great Again!”

Lenz said The Daily Stormer, the most influential Neo-Nazi website, put out a call Thursday to harass Hispanic and Muslim immigrants and to make them feel a genuine sense of fear.

This is where we are now.

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Somewhere between disastrous and cataclysmic

Nov 11th, 2016 5:17 pm | By

Paul Waldman at the Washington Post underlines the obvious: if you think Trump is going to do away with “the establishment,” you’re smoking something.

This was near the heart of Trump’s appeal to the disaffected and disempowered: Send me to Washington, and that “establishment” you’ve been hearing so much about? We’ll blow it up, send it packing, punch it right in the face, and when it’s over the government will finally be working for you again. And the people who voted for Trump bought it. After all, he’s no politician, right? He’s an outsider, a glass-breaker, a guy who can cut out the bull and get things done. Right?

But the idea that he would do this was based on a profound misunderstanding of what the establishment actually is, and who Donald Trump is.

…

An organizational chart of Trump’s transition team shows it to be crawling with corporate lobbyists, representing such clients as Altria, Visa, Coca-Cola, General Electric, Verizon, HSBC, Pfizer, Dow Chemical, and Duke Energy. And K Street is positively salivating over all the new opportunities they’ll have to deliver goodies to their clients in the Trump era. Who could possibly have predicted such a thing?

Everyone. Absolutely everyone. Mr Rich Guy favors policies that help rich guys; stop the presses!

What are the priorities Trump and the Republican Congress will be pursuing right out of the gate? There’s the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, of course. “Take that, establishment!”, 20 million people can say when they lose their health coverage. Next on the list is that eternal Republican priority, cutting taxes. If you’re waiting for your fat rebate from the government once the establishment has been sent packing, you’re in for a shock. It won’t actually be Trump’s plan precisely that will pass Congress and he’ll sign, it will be some combination of what he wanted and what congressional Republicans want. But the two share a driving principle in common, and you may want to sit down while I tell you that helping regular folks is most definitely not it.

No, their commitment is to be of service to that most oppressed and forgotten group of Americans, the wealthy. Trump’s tax plan would give 47 percent of its benefits to the richest one percent of taxpayers. Paul Ryan’s tax plan is even purer — it gives 76 percent of its cuts to the richest one percent in its first year, and by 2025 would feed 99.6 percent of its benefits to the top 1 percent.

One in the eye for those establishment types, right? Making the obscenely rich even richer; that’s how it’s done.

Now to be clear, the fact that in some ways — hiring lobbyists, cutting taxes for the wealthy, gutting regulations — Trump is going to be little different from any other Republican president doesn’t mean that he isn’t uniquely dangerous. He’s reckless, impulsive, vindictive, hateful, and authoritarian, and his presidency is going to be somewhere between disastrous and cataclysmic, likely in ways we can’t even imagine yet.

But one thing it will not be is a threat to the establishment, or the system, or whatever you want to call it. The wealthy and powerful will have more wealth and power when he’s done, not less. There’s a lot that Trump will upend, but if you’re a little guy who thinks Trump was going to upend things on your behalf or in order to serve your interests, guess what: you got suckered.

I expect what will happen is that an army will come to all our doors, break them down, and take away all our stuff to sell on eBay, proceeds to benefit the rich.

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The deranged distillation of the angry white male id

Nov 11th, 2016 4:35 pm | By

Michelle Goldberg considers the role of misogyny in the recent disaster.

Forty-six years ago, Germaine Greer wrote in The Female Eunuch, “Women have very little idea of how much men hate them.” Well, now we do.

On Tuesday, faced with a choice between a highly competent if uncharismatic female candidate and the deranged distillation of the angry white male id, America chose the latter. (Or, at least, the Americans whose votes count most in the Electoral College chose the latter: Hillary Clinton won the popular vote.) We don’t yet have a full picture of the electorate, but according to exit polls published by the New York Times, 54 percent of women voted for Clinton while 53 percent of men chose Donald Trump. Men—joined by white women, a majority of whom voted for Trump—banded together to award the presidency to the most shamelessly misogynist candidate in modern history. They’ve given us a kakistrocracy because they couldn’t bear the sound of Clinton’s voice.

But we’re told it wasn’t that at all, it was a Rebellion Against The Liberal Elites, it was The Working Class Pushing Back Against Trade Deals, it was The Economy Stupid.

I don’t begrudge any Bernie Sanders supporters the consolation of thinking that their man could have saved us from this calamity. All of us are grieving, trying to make sense of the worst thing to happen to our country in modern history. All I can say is that I’ve been to Trump rallies in the Midwest, South, and Northeast, and I never saw a single sign or T-shirt about free trade. I never heard chants about NAFTA or TPP. What I heard was “Trump That Bitch” and “Build That Wall.” When Clinton delivered her heart-shredding concession speech, traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange reportedly booed and chanted “Lock her up!” They know Trump’s victory was no rebellion against Wall Street.

It would be very odd if it were, given his bank accounts and his stated views.

Clinton ran for president on an explicitly feminist platform and promised a half-female Cabinet. Her victory would have been a sign that the gender hierarchy that has always been fundamental to our society—that has always been fundamental to most societies—was starting to crumble. It would have meant that men no longer rule. We have to come to terms with the fact that a majority of men would rather burn this country to the ground than let that happen.

They’d rather punch women in the face than let it happen, too.

I thought we were going to get there. I thought my daughter was not going to be consigned to a lesser life than my son. I no longer do. We are going to lose Roe v. Wade. There will be no push for paid leave (whatever Ivanka Trump might promise) or a higher minimum wage. If Trump’s campaign is any indication, our new administration will be a priapic junta. Roger Ailes was too toxic to remain at Fox News but not too toxic to be a close Trump adviser. Campaign CEO Steve Bannon has been charged with domestic violence and accused of sexual harassment. As Indiana governor, Vice President–elect Mike Pence signed a cruel law mandating the burial or cremation of miscarried fetuses. Trump’s first campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, grabbed a female reporter so hard he left bruises on her arm, then tried to smear her as “delusional.” Trump senior communications adviser Jason Miller took journalists to a strip club the night before the Las Vegas debate. “Women, you have to treat them like shit,” Trump once said. It might be America’s new unofficial motto.

The era of President Pussygrabber begins.

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He has a long memory

Nov 11th, 2016 3:58 pm | By

How charming.

Donald Trump surrogate Omarosa Manigault said the President-elect’s campaign is keeping a list of people who did not support his run to the White House.

“Let me just tell you, Mr. Trump has a long memory and we’re keeping a list,” Manigault, the campaign’s director of African-American outreach, told the Independent Journal Review, an online news outlet started by two former GOP staffers aimed at a center-right audience.

Manigault made the comment in response to Sen. Lindsey Graham’s tweet that he supported conservative presidential candidate Evan McMullin.

It’s always a good idea to keep a list, and to say you’re keeping a list.

President Pussygrabber is welcome to add me.

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Extended to protect Planned Parenthood

Nov 11th, 2016 3:05 pm | By

Obama blocks one move.

Barack Obama is moving to protect funding for abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood from political attack.

The landmark ruling will block individual US states from stopping funds to Planned Parenthood, or any other family planning provider, as was threatened by President-elect Donald Trump.

President Pussygrabber doesn’t care. He’ll never have to deal with an unwanted pregnancy or need contraception to avoid getting pregnant. He can afford to prevent women from having bodily autonomy.

The service has been widely contested in some states, however, who oppose it on the grounds that some clinics provide abortion services – usually paid for by the patient.

Under the new rule, proposed by the US Department of Health and Human Services, funding would only be withheld to the service if the provider’s “ability to deliver services to program beneficiaries” is not done “in an effective manner”.

In effect, services under the “Title X” programme, which provides basic preventative healthcare for four million low-income earners, cannot be withdrawn due to political reasons.

This notion will be extended to protect Planned Parenthood in all states, regardless of political and religious resistance.

Well done Baz.

Planned Parenthood’s president, Cecile Richards, said: “This will make a real difference in so many people’s lives. Thanks to the Obama Administration, [low income] women will still be able to access the birth control they need to plan their families, and the cancer screenings they need to stay healthy.

“This rule makes it clear that politicians cannot ignore the law as they pursue their agenda to stop women from getting the care they need.”

The misogynist-in-chief-elect will be disappointed.

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And all the good people will do nothing

Nov 11th, 2016 2:48 pm | By

Damon Lewis on Facebook:

What do you tell your kids?

You tell them the truth.

You tell them that the majority of Americans are good people. But, you also tell them they can’t rely on the good people of this country to protect them from evils because here, being a “good person” does not require actually being good. Being a “good person” merely means not being actively evil. Here, you can still be a “good person” if you don’t stop an evil. You can still be a good person if you don’t even try. You can still be a good person if you just maintain an unawareness that you’re being evil.

You tell them the truth that the majority of Americans are either hateful or find hatred acceptable.

You tell them the truth that you are very sorry that so much is being placed on them, but that not telling them this will leave them unprepared for the inevitable day they find out on their own. When someone grabs a woman by the pussy. Or rips off a man’s turban. Or chokes out a man for selling loose cigs. Or builds a wall. And all the good people will do nothing. And you’ll be tempted to be yet another good person.

You tell them being a good person is not enough. You tell them being a good person is a participation trophy. Evil thrives off the existence of good people. You tell them do not accept being a good person.

You tell them to be a great person.

Voting for Trump isn’t just voting for a very right-wing person or for very right-wing policies. It’s voting for a profoundly bad person, bad in many ways – ways I’ve been enumerating for months, along with many other people. It’s a vote for badness. It’s a vote for cruelty, insults, assault, contempt, ridicule, shaming, mockery, bullying – for nearly every kind of moral badness you can think of. That’s what Trump stands for. Not the rage of the underclass, not a rebellion against the elites, but badness.

 

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Is too so a victory for hatefulness

Nov 11th, 2016 11:47 am | By

Another way I don’t agree with Robert Reich’s take. This piece is in AlterNet and it’s either identical to the one in the Guardian or almost identical.

What happened in America Tuesday should not be seen as a victory for hatefulness over decency. It is more accurately understood as a repudiation of the American power structure.

I wish.

For one thing – what sense does it make to claim it’s more accurately understood as a repudiation of the American power structure when Trump exploited that power structure to get rich as fuck?? Just being vulgar doesn’t make you not part of the power structure. Just being “an outsider” in the sense that you’ve always worked for your own profit doesn’t make you not part of the power structure. Being sexist and racist and a hateful bully doesn’t make you not part of the power structure. Trump is part of that power structure, and he’s certainly not any kind of friend of the powerless. He calls powerless people losers.

For another – again, average income of Trump voters is higher than Clinton’s, not lower, so how would that work exactly?

For another – many Trump fans may have thought they were striking a blow against the American power structure, but that doesn’t rule out their being also up to their eyes in hatefulness.

For one more, Trump’s conspicuous noisy relentless hatefulness didn’t prevent him from being elected, so yes, in fact, his election is a victory for hatefulness. That’s a major reason it is such a bad terrible horrifying thing.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 12 comments


Different

Nov 11th, 2016 10:47 am | By

Apposite.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 3 comments


Backsies

Nov 11th, 2016 10:10 am | By

President Pussygrabber tweets again.

Nine hours between the two. I suppose somewhere in those nine hours one of his handlers reminded him he needed to start acting presidential now.

Good save.

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