But now, contrary to their expectations, they have to govern. They are supposed to run one of the three branches of government. And it's becoming clearer, day by day, that they have absolutely no fucking clue how to do that.
So at this point Miller is on TV screaming so loudly about voter fraud that nobody believes him. Of course, as I've said before, when a tyrant continues about things that aren't true, he plans to act like they are.
"You say alt-right. Let's be clear, alt-right is a euphemism for white supremacy and what he was trying to do on that platform," Booker corrected.[Emphasis in original]
(Karoli Kuns, Crooks and Liars)
Democrats need to stop listening to the beltway pundits telling them they need to make false choices. We don’t have to decide between base voters and working class voters: in fact, most of our base are working class people who have been as hard hit by this economy’s heavy tilt to the top 1% as anyone, and populist economic messages work for both base and swing voters. We don’t have to choose between being populists and being pro-business: progressive populism is very much aligned with the small businesses, start-ups, green energy companies, and good neighbor companies that we ought to be helping. We don’t have to choose between rural and urban America, as progressive policies on energy, health care, Wall St, farming, anti-trust, education, the minimum wage, and health care are major assets in both big cities and small towns. Democrats need to stop playing either/or politics and stop having debates between ourselves that don’t make any sense.In short, knock off the dichotomizing.
One last thing: There is another reason why Republicans and racist conservatives and Nazis want you to think that Democrats are the party of the KKK. They're saying none-too-subtly that non-white people are stupid because they support Democrats. See, Republicans can't be the racists, despite all the plainly racist policies they want because there is this one racist thing that they're not guilty of. It's a fuckin' low bar they've set for themselves and they barely crawl under it.
Conservative Trumposceptics are having a hard time processing it. On the one hand, because it's Trump, they've given themselves permission to see one aspect or another of how bad the decree was, its terrible drafting, its incompetent execution, even some of its hideous consequences; but on the other hand, the court decision is an example of dread JUDICIAL ACTIVISM, or a violation of the sacred constitutional principle that judicial review applies only to the actions of Democrats, and thus ipso facto bad in its own right
If that sounds like populism, we definitely have a bridge to sell you.Actual populism favors consumer protections.
Since GOP-ers in Congress probably don't have enough votes to overturn Dodd-Frank, they may have to settle for crippling enforcement of it, which they can fairly easily do by "undermining the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, whose goal is to protect ordinary families from financial scams," Krugman points out. The recent Wells Fargo scandal was only revealed because of this entity.
What gives then? Why are consumer protections in the so-called president's sights? His oh-so populist Goldman Sachs appointee to his National Economic Council, Gary Cohn, made the analogy that the fiduciary rule is like “'putting only healthy food on the menu' and denying people the right to eat unhealthy food if they want it," Krugman writes. And we do know that Trump likes fast food. Krugman thinks the analogy is inapt, however. To him, it is more like "preventing restaurants from claiming that their 1400-calorie portions are health food."
The GEO Group and CoreCivic will be paid millions if not billions of our tax dollars via the Trump Administration. Trump will insist he’s keeping America safe when in reality he is tearing families apart, destroying our economy that relies on immigrant workers and business owners and creating an endless supply of clientele for private prisons.
In the early 1980s, while researching a book on internment cases, lawyer and University of California, San Diego professor Peter Irons came across evidence that Charles Fahy, the Solicitor General of the United States who argued Korematsu v. United States before the Supreme Court, had deliberately suppressed reports from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and military intelligence which concluded that Japanese-American citizens posed no security risk. These documents revealed that the military had lied to the Supreme Court, and that government lawyers had willingly made false arguments. Irons concluded that the Supreme Court’s decision was invalid since it was based on unsubstantiated assertions, distortions, and misrepresentations. Along with a team of lawyers headed by Dale Minami, Irons petitioned for writs of error coram nobis with the federal courts, seeking to overturn Korematsu's conviction.
On November 10, 1983, Judge Marilyn Hall Patel of U.S. District Court in San Francisco formally vacated the conviction. Korematsu stood in front of US District Judge Marilyn Patel and said, "I would like to see the government admit that they were wrong and do something about it so this will never happen again to any American citizen of any race, creed, or color."[31] He also said, "If anyone should do any pardoning, I should be the one pardoning the government for what they did to the Japanese-American people."[32] Peter Irons described Korematsu's ending statement during the case as the most powerful statement he'd ever heard from anyone. He related the statement as being as empowering as Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech.[33] Judge Patel’s ruling cleared Korematsu’s name, but was incapable of overturning the Supreme Court’s decision.
So far they are following the same playbook they used to let Scott Walker defeat them. Mass demonstrations are all very nice, but if they don't lead to people going out into the communities and finding a way to talk to strangers about the things they have in common and getting them onside, they end up being worthless.
[...]
(And while I would never say that demonstrations are useless - they're not - I do want to see people do more than just demonstrate. I'm happy to say that whatever made people numb-out over the last 17 years seems to be evaporating, but you still need to talk to people who don't already agree with you if you want to get something done.)
Hitler needed only five months to establish his power. By the summer of 1933, fundamental rights and the constitution had been suspended, the states had been forced into conformity, the unions crushed, the political parties banned or dissolved, press and radio brought into line and the Jews stripped of their equality under the law. Everything that existed in Germany outside of the National Socialist Party had been "destroyed, dispersed, dissolved, annexed or absorbed," François-Poncet concluded in early July. Hitler, he claimed, had "won the game with little effort." "He only had to puff -- and the edifice of German politics collapsed like a house of cards."
In Venezuela, we fell into the abstraction trap in a bad way. We wrote again and again about principles, about the separation of powers, about civil liberties, about the role of the military in politics, about corruption and economic policy. But it took our leaders ten years to figure out they needed to actually go to the slums and to the countryside. And not for a speech, or a rally, but for game of dominoes or to dance salsa – to show they were Venezuelans too, that they had tumbao and could hit a baseball, could tell a joke that landed. That they could break the tribal divide, come down off the billboards and show they were real. And no, this is not populism by other means. It is the only way of establishing your standing. It’s deciding not to live in an echo chamber. To press pause on the siren song of polarization.
Hatred and fear certainly don't need to reach the level of genocide to destroy a country, and many lives before that. We know how these stories can go. The United States has plenty of ugly history but also some great accomplishments. Right now, we're seeing shades of the same spiteful, hateful and fearful spirit that displaced and killed Native Americans, enslaved black people, held lynchings as public entertainment and perpetuated Jim Crow laws. We don't need to and dare not wait for those impulses to grow further to oppose them. Luckily, we're also seeing some of the same spirit that moved abolitionists, suffragettes and freedom riders and we can't encourage or support those impulses enough. As Klein says, we can "demonstrate what this country truly stands for." We don't need to be silent bystanders. The lessons to be learned from World War II and the Holocaust are many, but they include: The nation that held the Nazis accountable to the rule of law at Nuremberg should not throw away those principles every time some insecure bully with a megaphone shits his pants. Bigotry must be challenged. And we can empathize, intervene and support one another.
TRUMP: MY CROWD BIGGER THAN OBAMA'S
If you count no-shows
Fox News host Shep Smith recapped Trump's call for a major investigation into widespread voter fraud and explained why there is no data, facts, or evidence to prove there is voter fraud at all.Not. Even. Fox. News.
"I want hearings immediately. I want to see them bring up witnesses that will validate president Trump's claims because they won't be able to find any."Reported at Crooks and Liars.
"This is going to show that president Trump is lying. There's really no other way to put it. He's just making stuff up. We live right now with a White House that puts out alternative facts. We have a president that lives in alternate reality. It's highly disturbing for America this is happening."
The conservative activist cited by Donald Trump as an authority on voter fraud owes the US government more than $100,000 in unpaid taxes, was once accused of lying about his qualifications, and has faced several allegations of ethical impropriety.
The epistemological ground thus pulled out from under them, most would depend on whatever the leader said, no matter its relation to truth. “The essential conviction shared by all ranks,” Arendt concluded, “from fellow traveler to leader, is that politics is a game of cheating and that the ‘first commandment’ of the movement: ‘The Fuehrer is always right,’ is as necessary for the purposes of world politics, i.e., world-wide cheating, as the rules of military discipline are for the purposes of war.”Includes more links to Hannah Arendt's work.
This is an interesting development (taken from Variety.com):Mmmmmmm-hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
The White House has shut down its public comment line some time in the past few weeks, instead telling callers, with an automated message, that they should contact the administration via Facebook Messenger instead. There’s only one problem: Neither the new White House administration nor President Donald Trump seem to currently maintain an active Facebook Messenger account.
Beyond that, Sam Stein summarizes how various federal departments are being told to cease communications (taken from Huffington Post.com).
Multiple federal agencies have told their employees to cease communications with members of Congress and the press, sources have told The Huffington Post.
The freeze has startled aides on the Hill and people at those agencies, who worry that it could abruptly upend current operations and stifle work and discussions that routinely take place between branches of government.
Agencies reporting that they have received such messages from the White House so far include:
the Department of Health and Human Services
the Environmental Protection Agency
the Department of Agriculture
the National Institutes of Health
the Department of Transportation
People tend to forget the extent to which the last Republican administration was also characterized by cronyism, the appointment of unqualified but well-connected people to key positions. It wasn’t as extreme as what we’re seeing now, but it was striking at the time. Remember “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job”? And it caused very real damage.
But isn’t this sinking to their level?
That depends. After you punch the Nazi, do you espouse the tenets of National Socialism?
No.
Then you’re better than a Nazi.
Christian scholars are indeed a subversive influence. Critics are right in labeling us a subversive influence if what they mean is that we subvert the subordination of facts to falsehoods calculated to sway popular opinion, the substitution of shallow shibboleths for deeper reflection, and the sacrifice of principle on the profane altar of political expediency. And there will be a greater need for us to keep on subverting these things with all the energy we can muster in the age of Trump.
The times call for renewed conviction, creativity and courage on the part of Christian scholars.
You can't get hired by McDonald's unless you have some concept of what the job entails. But apparently, you can get a position in Trump's cabinet if you have no idea what your department does.Mark Evanier points to a David Remnick essay.
"Look, nobody wants to believe Trump paid Russian hookers to pee all over a bed more than I do, but there is zero proof that happened," he explained. "Plus, I find it hard to believe Trump actually paid somebody for services rendered."AlterNet. Why we should retire the term "fake news." Entirely aside from the suspicion that most fake news emanates from Faux Noose.
Of all the failures that have led to the historical disaster of the Trump presidency, perhaps the least-remarked-upon is the abdication of responsibility of the American center. Those of us with moderate inclinations need an effective center as a brake against extremism. When one party veers too far from the center, the center joins the opposing party, until the extreme one can be coaxed back into the mainstream. David Brooks calls for a rejuvenation of the center under the Trump presidency. But Brooks himself is the perfect encapsulation of why the center has proven so hapless, allowing itself to enable extremism rather than prevent it.Read the rest. Including the Upton Sinclair quote.
Everyday life in the modern authoritarian regime is, in this sense, boring and tolerable. It is not outrageous. Most critics, even vocal ones, are not going to be murdered like Anna Politkovskaya, they are going to be frustrated. Most not-very-vocal critics will live their lives completely unmolested by the security forces. They will enjoy it when the trains run on time, blame the government when they do not, gripe at their taxes, and save for vacation. Elections, when they happen, will serve the “anesthetic function” that Philippe Schmitter attributed to elections in Portugal under Salazar in the greatly underappreciated in 1978 volume Elections without Choice.Consider yourself warned.
Life under authoritarian rule in such situations looks a lot like life in a democracy.
Her writing helped GNB in ways public and private. It is fair to say Maggie's writing was core to the respect and fierce devotion our readers gave GNB at its peak. In addition to her public contributions Maggie as a person, as a force of nature, caused numerous behind the scenes changes at GNB which made us better writers, better advocates for our readers and mission (which mission she helped redefine), and better with each other. She made us better people.(Loads slowly. Be patient.)
[...] We now know the driver's license closures saved little money -- somewhere between $200,000 and $300,000, tops, according to Bentley's former ALEA secretary Spencer Collier. The routine shortfalls in the General Fund budget typically range from $100 million to $200 million. The closures didn't even scratch that. They were a naked act of political vengeance.ETA: via twistedchick on Dreamwidth
[...] In the 10 counties with the highest proportion of minorities, the state closed driver's license offices in eight. The other two remained open because it might be too much to explain, I suppose, for Alabama not to have driver's license offices in Montgomery or Selma.
Maybe the governor didn't intend to target minority citizens with the closures, but ultimately his intent is beside the point.
What a damn mess in Arkansas. It seems that some Republican members of the State House and the State Senate conspired to dump a ton of money on rightwing Christian colleges in the state. For about $600,000 of taxpayer money to tiny Ecclesia College in Springdale, Arkansas, the Republican politicians got about $38,000 each in kickbacks.Crooks and Liars, Juanita Jean (I've moved her link, but it's the one she used.)
"We respect and appreciate how our students and alumni feel about our participation in this parade," Hawkins said in a statement Thursday.I'm hoping the optimistic view is correct.
"As many of those who chose to participate in the parade have said, we feel the inauguration of a new president is not a political event but a civil ceremony celebrating the transfer of power," Hawkins added.
The announcement followed several days of intense debate on social media.
Intelligence agencies have reportedly found substantial evidence that Russia meddled in the US election to help Trump, but Trump has steadfastly continued to cast doubt over the credibility of US intelligence officials on the subject. He is set on Friday to receive a briefing from US intelligence agencies on the Russian hacking.Breaking news:
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Russia was behind fake news during the presidential election when questioned at a Senate hearing on Thursday.
Democratic Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed asked Clapper, “One of the aspects of this Russian hacking was not just disseminating information they had exploited from computers, but also the allegations of fake news sites, fake news stories that were propagated. Is that an accurate- is that one aspect of this problem?”
“This was a multifaceted campaign,” Clapper replied. “So the hacking was only one part of it, and it also entailed classical propaganda, disinformation, fake news,” he said during the hearing, which is focused on the topic of Russian hacking.
Adult bullies have lots of tools. The right wing bull[ies] have no problem screaming foul at any action they don’t like and crying to authorities who actually do their job. [...] “Sure I killed people, but nobody expects me to follow the law! But the good guys are supposed to follow the law!” Then, when it’s shown the law was followed, “Okay, he did it legally, but I was tricked, so it’s not fair!”Emphasis added. Spocko uses Trading Places to illustrate his points, so follow up by reading his post.
When the bad guys are out-maneuvered, [...] they go into denial, they demand justice. They present themselves as victims, but [image]
it’s yet another way to try and bend the system to their will.
[...]
In this case part of the win is to let the other lesser Capone-types know they aren’t safe. Then it’s changing laws to make it harder to game the system.
Part of winning is acknowledging the corrupting power of money, and setting up systems to monitor it that aren’t easily captured. This is all part of the fight. It’s not as exciting as epic battles, but it is crucial for future success.
[...] We will win some. We will also lose some. Activists who are taking on powerful interests need powerful friends during the losses and the wins.
I’m encouraged and excited by reading about re-energized activist groups and new ones. We need lots people to understand the system we are in now vs. previous systems.
We need to learn how to fight to make an impact. And we need to be reminded of the importance of persistence. We can never stop fighting until the fight is done.
Almost all of my 63 million neighbors who conspired to take my kid's health insurance away are the same neighbors who voted to re-elect Bush Administration monsters who lied us into the wrong war, bankrupted the country, pissed away our global reputation and crashed the economy.
