Monday Reads: Chaos Happens
Posted: December 5, 2016 Filed under: 2016 elections, American Gun Fetish, Black Lives Matter, Congress, misogyny, morning reads 44 Comments
It’s Monday! It’s cold, gloomy, drizzly, thundering, and gray here in Swampland. I’m trying to decide when exactly we get to start the America Held Hostage Day count. At the moment, I’m holding out hope on a few bits of good news so I’m going to start on that note.
A judge has ordered a Presidential Election recount in Michigan so Trump and the Michigan AG can stew in their evil soup with their evil hearts.
A federal judge has ordered Michigan election officials to begin a massive hand recount of 4.8 million ballots cast in the presidential election at noon Monday.
U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith issued a ruling just after midnight Monday in favor of Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, who sought to let election officials bypass a two-business-day waiting period that would have delayed start of the recount until Wednesday morning.
Goldsmith’s order said the recount “shall commence and must continue until further order of this court.” Goldsmith wrote.
The deadline to finalize the vote total for the Electoral College is Dec. 13 and federal election law requires a period of “safe harbor” for presidential electors before the presidency is finalized on Dec. 19.
The manual recount process was scheduled to begin Wednesday as specified by state law, and in a rare Sunday hearing in federal court, Goldsmith had questioned the harm posed by waiting.
“Defendants shall instruct all governmental units participating in the recount to assemble necessary staff to work sufficient hours to assure that the recount is completed in time to comply with the ‘safe harbor’ provision,” of federal election law.
Senate Democrats may actually be steeling themselves for a fight over nominations if you believe what’s being reported on Tiger Beat on the Potomac. Will enough of them stall the Republican menace headed our way? There’s an old church down the street dedicated to St. Jude built during the yellow fever days. Maybe I should adopt that altar for awhile.
Senate Democrats are preparing to put Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks through a grinding confirmation process, weighing delay tactics that could eat up weeks of the Senate calendar and hamper his first 100 days in office.
Multiple Democratic senators told POLITICO in interviews last week that after watching Republicans sit on Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court for nearly a year, they’re in no mood to fast-track Trump’s selections.
But it’s not just about exacting revenge.
Democrats argue that some of the president-elect’s more controversial Cabinet picks — such as Jeff Sessions for attorney general and Steven Mnuchin for treasury secretary — demand a thorough public airing.
“They’ve been rewarded for stealing a Supreme Court justice. We’re going to help them confirm their nominees, many of whom are disqualified?” fumed Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). “It’s not obstruction, it’s not partisan, it’s just a duty to find out what they’d do in these jobs.”
Senate Democrats can’t block Trump’s appointments, which in all but one case need only 51 votes for confirmation. But they can turn the confirmation process into a slog.
The latest abomination of appointing a political lackey with absolutely no credentials for the job is Ben Carson to HUD. It appears that Trump is just going to fill the cabinet with one Heckuva Job Brownie after another. I don’t see much point in excerpting the bad news which you can go read at the NPR link if you so choose.
First Americans have won a concession from the Army Corps of Engineers. The agency will find a way to avoid the land of a sovereign nation of Lakota. The Feds have denied the permit to build the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Federal officials have denied the final permits required for the Dakota Access Pipeline project in North Dakota.
The Army Corps of Engineers on Sunday announced it would instead conduct an environmental impact review of the 1,170-mile pipeline project and determine if there are other ways to route it to avoid a crossing on the Missouri River.
“Although we have had continuing discussion and exchanges of new information with the Standing Rock Sioux and Dakota Access, it’s clear that there’s more work to do,” Army Assistant Secretary for Civil Works Jo-Ellen Darcy said in a statement.
“The best way to complete that work responsibly and expeditiously is to explore alternate routes for the pipeline crossing.”
The announcement comes one day before the Army Corps of Engineers’ deadline for demonstrators to leave the protest site. The governor of North Dakota had also issued an emergency evacuation order.
Protestors have clashed with police, and Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in a Sunday statement that the Department of Justice “will continue to monitor the situation in North Dakota in the days ahead” and stands “ready to provide resources to help all those who can play a constructive role in easing tensions.”
One of the weirdest things to come out of the trend of right wingers to completely fall for fake news happened in the District this weekend. A whack from NC with a very large gun showed up at a restaurant to investigate a supposed child sex ring Hillary Clinton was running at the location. How dumb exactly are these Trump-Billies and how dangerous are they?
A North Carolina man was arrested Sunday after he walked into a popular pizza restaurant in Northwest Washington carrying an assault rifle and fired one or more shots, D.C. police said. The man told police he had come to the restaurant to “self-investigate” a false election-related conspiracy theory involving Hillary Clinton that spread online during her presidential campaign.
The incident caused panic, with several businesses going into lockdown as police swarmed the neighborhood after receiving the call shortly before 3 p.m.
Police said 28-year-old Edgar Maddison Welch, of Salisbury, N.C., walked in the front door of Comet Ping Pong and pointed a firearm in the direction of a restaurant employee. The employee was able to flee and notify police. Police said Welch proceeded to discharge the rifle inside the restaurant; they think that all other occupants had fled when Welch began shooting.
Welch has been charged with assault with a dangerous weapon. Police said there were no reported injuries.
Interim D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham said police arrived on the scene minutes after the first call, set up a perimeter and safely arrested Welch about 45 minutes after he entered the restaurant.
This shooter lives in a conspiracy theory hell realm.
One of the key pieces of “evidence,” for example, comes from the emails WikiLeaks says came from Clinton campaign manager John Podesta. The emails include references to pizza. The conspiracy theory holds that based on how frequently pizza comes up, “pizza” must be code for pedophilia.
Comet Ping Pong owner James Alefantis told NPR that the entire theory is “an insanely complicated, made-up, fictional lie-based story” that people in the “reality-based” community quickly dismissed as an “insane sort of joke.”
But on the fringes of the Internet, some people have been taking it seriously. The restaurant has received hundreds of death threats. Now it has had an actual armed assault.
You can wonder no further when I saw that I avoid going to Jefferson Parish whenever possible. This is 
a white flight community of some of the worst looking strip malls and houses you could ever imagine. It’s also home to the folks that think Steve Scalise and David Duke are election material.
A former Jets Player was gunned down in a road rage incident and the Sheriff has basically let the man go because he may be “standing his ground”. New photo imagines of the scene show that to be highly unlikely. What isn’t likely but well documented is that we still need the Black Lives Matter movement more than ever. The white dude that shot the former player and black man has been cited for road rage incidents before.’
New details are emerging about 54-year-old Ronald Gasser, the man who confessed that he shot and killed former NFL player Joe McKnight in New Orleans last Thursday, an apparent road rage incident. According to the Jefferson Parish sheriff, Gasser was arrested at the same intersection a decade ago for another road rage incident in which he allegedly followed a victim and punched him several times. NBC’s Blake McCoy reports for TODAY.
The man who was attacked by Gasser was spit on but not shot. Try guessing the key variable in this scenario that saved his life.
As of Saturday night, no charges had been brought against Gasser, who was released Thursday night by the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office after questioning. The decision to release Gasser without pressing charges has prompted outrage on social media and led to questions about Louisiana’s stand-your-ground law.In recent days, McKnight’s family members, friends, teammates and supporters have expressed grief and outrage over the killing. At a candlelight vigil held Saturday night at the Lincoln Manner Gym in Kenner where McKnight first made a name for himself as a high school football standout, around a dozen speakers expressed anguish over the road-rage-prompted fatal shooting.
“It was senseless,” U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-New Orleans, told NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune at the vigil. “You’re in a car with the ability to drive away, with the ability to roll your windows up, and you feel the only choice you have is to shoot three times? I can’t comprehend that.”
I can only imagine how bad it’s going to get for all of us that don’t fall into the neat little category of “safe” that only the mind of a Trump-Billy can conjure. We can only look forward to more incidents of white male violence against minorities and women. I’d be willing to be the kathouse on it.
That’s it for me today! Please share what you’re reading! I hate to just keep raining bad news on your head like the weather down here rains the cold. So, what’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
PA vote margin has decreased. Source: http://tinyurl.com/gnbgwpx
PENNSYLVANIA –
Trump is down to a .8% lead in Pennsylvania
Are we sure the calendar is correct? I am thinking it is 12/5/1956.
Great if depressing post.
I posted this comment over at Uppity’s and in light of the Pizza Parlor incident, I’d love to read your thoughts.
What I want to add is this: would those of us who admire, respect and, yes, love Hillary Rodham Clinton really want her to enter the White House in these circumstances?
The basket of deplorables who voted for Trump would be enraged and “inspired” to new heights of vitriol and violence.
And they are armed to the teeth.
HRC would have to exist in the most protected bubble ever and, by the way, she’d be blessed with a Republican Congress.
Imagine the endless hearings and investigations.
Yes, I know that she was willing to take this on (she’s a patriot, unlike almost any other), but could I ask her to carry that burden?
No, I will find ways to resist, disparage and stymie President Loser and his cabinet of vipers, and I will self nurture, too.
Hell, I’m sixty six years old.
I’ve had the same thought!. I’m not sure I would want Hillary as POTUS as long as this Alt-right contingent of haters, bigots and traitors have a grip on the USA. They would have investigated, harassed, maligned and subjected her to all out assaults for 4 years. That’s not the sort of national environment I would wish on anyone, particularly the first woman POTUS. People I’ve known my entire life are buying into this bullshit and the only thing that explains it is white privilege stoking their fear of the “other”. I have ended quite a few relationships over this and I expect I’ll end more. I have no regrets about it and I’m over 70.
I’m going to fight this bullshit until I draw my last breath.
Onward…..Upward!
I too have had thoughts, of wish she were president, but just wonder how the lying ashols would treat her on a 24/7 basis.
Like you, I’ve lost friendships, just another yesterday, 45 frigging years, and I had read her in another light. I’ve never been perfect in my life, and I try awfully hard to be respectful of others, their beliefs and lifestyles, but she really wanted to focus on me being so negative. Not the sexual predator who feels good when he gets away with it for years, all because he is white, and rich. Too bad, I don’t have good damn thing about him. And no, it’s not about me getting over it, it’s more than that.
I completely agree with this sentiment. It would be insanely dangerous for Hillary to become POTUS now, even (and especially) if a recount or electoral roll call vote reversed things.
I’m ending relationships myself. I will never forget the abuse Trump threw at women, LGBTQ, PoC and on and on. I will never forget the people I know who turned their backs. This election uncovered an ugliness I knew was there but had no idea how much of it there was.
If HRC was willing to, I’ll defer to her experience!
Thinking like this is, I believe, exactly what the racist misogynist bigots want. They thrive on using fear and threats to intimidate people into submission or silence — one of the reasons they like guns. Resist this intimidation!
At the worst, with HRC in the White House, we’d have 2 yrs of stalling, until the 2018 elections when we would see progress. With Drumpf, we have the violent bigots who feel emboldened by him, and the wingnut Rs in Congress salivating as they start to roll back rights and environmental and worker protection. The gutting of the Civil Rights Voting Act probably was the main cause of #tRump winning the EC, by blocking votes by even more of the majority who oppose #tRump. It’s only going to get worse.
Resist!
I understand the POV that we shouldn’t be cowed by violent rhetoric. I’m just a bit concerned that at this point it’s gone too far and a non-violent transition is something we should consider. The Trump-billies will never believe a reversal was fair at this point. Hell – they WON and still think it wasn’t fair. Morons.
I do believe had Hillary won the EC on Nov. 8th and become POTUS she would have won over the electorate eventually as she did once in the Senate and as Sec. of State.
Sue, as always, you certainly make telling points. I had thought of things like that, as well. But of course, that is part of the psy-ops that the far Right employs. They want to make people feel that it if they elect a Democrat, particularly a Clinton, it will be a horror show of endless investigations, insane conspiracy theories, utter demonization of them every day. So, they imply, why go in for all of that, when you can elect a Republican whom the media will fawn over, and the far Right support and enable in all his daily lies? And I’m sure that there were some people who did indeed give into this extortion, and rationalized it by saying that Hillary wouldn’t have been allowed to govern.
Obviously, as you say, Hillary was willing and even eager to try. And she had Bill’s experience with all of it to help her. It would have been difficult at the outset, but I think she could have turned it around, particularly with her loyal supporters behind her. The problem we face, obviously, is that the other usual alternative, waiting for the Republicans to wreck everything, is far too dangerous under this insane regime. And Bush, not insane, but just incompetent, wrecked the economy, and people forgot about that within eight years. So there are ao many factors against us. not at all the least of which is a horribly uninformed and largely dumbed down electorate. One of the greatest tragedies is that while we may, if we survive, get a Democratic President, a Booker, or Murphy, or whoever, he or she will not be close to as brilliant and knowledgeable as Hillary. I think that the far Right, from the corporatists to the racists and haters, all sensed that. She was the ultimate threat to them. Obama was not, though most of them hated him. Hillary would not have let the Supreme Court seat stay unfilled for 300 days, or not told the American people that Russia was actively engaged in trying to swing the election, because it might have drawn criticism to have said it. Fill that seat, get your DOJ to go after illegal voting rights suppressions, and Hillary wins with about 320 electoral votes and four million more popular votes. Tell about the Russians, and it’s even more than that.
Even with the daily disappointments we suffer through, I will risk another one by saying that I think that with full hand recounts in Michigan, Hillary will very possibly win the state. I am extremely skeptical of 75,000 ballots leaving the Presidential iine blank.
Exactly! I can see Rs doing that, because moderate Republicans don’t agree with much of Drumpf, but not Democrats.
Agreed. Finding evidence of the methodology might cause a wider net to be cast.
Yes, me too. It doesn’t make sense that on that large a scale, people would go to all the trouble to vote for down ticket candidates. I think most people who are disinclined to vote for President, don’t bother to vote at all.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/05/google-must-review-its-search-rankings-because-of-rightwing-manipulation
About damn time. I would also say, as I have been since 2008, that Topix is a rat fucking infested sewer that is hooked up to all the small town newspapers and freely runs amok with the worst possible examples of “free” speech. The pop up ads are also the worst example of “Big Brother” propaganda.
OMG – I try to teach students about the dangers of trying to research with Google. We have good databases, but sometimes they don’t have the really current stuff the kids want to research. Glad to see there is a push back on this & hope Google corrects it.
I have thought for a few years, that the search engine algorithms were rigged. Even if my relatively unsophisticated and infrequent searches, I would find time and again that the search listings were always right-wing dominated. I’d look for a specific article about HIllary, and be directed to a list of about ten horrifically titled articles about her. I detest Google, so I used Bing, and that was about as bad. AOL also did it in their “welcome” news screeh, so I just closed my eyes and never looked at their biased headlines.
I consider myself a technological luddite, but of course I know that I am swimming against the tide. But I do think that for the good that the internet may do (like bringing together like-minded and intelligent people at a site like this), it is extremely susceptible to being used for propaganda, brainwashing, and control of a dumbed down populace. Apparently Google and Facebook were appalling in this cycle; and I think their fake news stories might have cost Hillary millions of votes. We may well have been better off before the internet, and certainly before the social media. How any CEO of such a site could let dreadful lying fake stories to be propagated, is a devastating commentary on their greed and selifishness. At this point, most people cannot even come close to discerning what is real and what is lies. And who is giong to tell them the difference in this hall of mirrors?
I use Duck Duck Go, which has a silly name but doesn’t track you. Before that I used the late lamented Scroogle, though that would have still given you the bigoted Google results, although with some privacy.
I remember way back when Google first came out and I was annoyed they had their links arranged in order of popularity. “I don’t care how many people click on that site — I want to know how appropriate and accurate the site is is on the topic!” and the geeks at the time dismissed my concerns.
Thank you.
This is a wonderful site.
It was a joy to read such thoughtful, well reasoned comments.
Yup … My daily dose of 🌈
Ahh, Lena..I had forgotten the dancing part of that.
🤗.
Will be live-streamed at 6:30 pm. It’s in NY, so East Coast time.
https://www.gc.cuny.edu/getdoc/5f845215-ef7c-4636-9165-607ebf4c9dd8/Is-Financial-Reform-Working-Barney-Frank-and-Paul-Krugman-in-Conversation.aspx
Kewl
Oh blast it — I posted that and then missed it! I’ll hope it’s archived.
A Republican elector in NYC won’t cast his vote in the EC for Trump
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/opinion/why-i-will-not-cast-my-electoral-vote-for-donald-trump.html?smid=fb-share&referer=http://m.facebook.com/
Art Sisneros, electoral of Texas refused to do the same, he resigned and they just replaced him with someone who will.
Wish they wouldn’t resign.
So the talk is to replace him with Kasich? http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/electoral-college-rogues-trump-clinton-232195
At this point, I’d go for any one that doesn’t seem to love the idea of full out nuclear war.
Screw them — they should replace with the person who won the popular vote and has tons of experience.
It’s a Republican elector in TX, not in NYC. The NY electors better not change their votes, since Hillary won NY!
http://www.baynews9.com/content/news/baynews9/news/article.html/content/news/articles/bn9/2016/12/5/florida_attorney_fil.html
Must.Read.
Turns out Twitter’s Propane Jane is a psychiatrist and what she writes about Drumpf is what we’ve all thought. He needs help. He’s not emotionally or mentally well.
http://m.dailykos.com/story/2016/12/06/1606096/-Instability-in-Chief
I had no idea Trump’s father had Alzheimer’s. And that repeating yourself over and over is a sign. AND I hadn’t given any thought to the fact he does seem to always have at least one of his kids with him in meetings.
Wow.
I remember that Reagan’s family &associates his his Alzheimer’s during his presidency.
I kept saying he was having the same signs as his father who died from Alzheimer.
I’m currently reading Raoul Wallenberg: The Man Who Stopped Death, I’ve read much about him in the past but this book has more n depth information about the way he got things done; unfortunately it also talks about how things happened in Hungary and in the description of the political and administrative level activities I once again awoke to the fact that we are living much of the decline here in the US at this time. Depressing
Jake Tapper is on the road to redemption
https://twitter.com/ezlusztig/status/805998661016514560
Mouse, you said “I’m not sure I would want Hillary as POTUS as long as this Alt-right contingent of haters, bigots and traitors have a grip on the USA.”
I’ve had the same thought, and that is exactly what those cowardice liars are counting on. But a very confused elderly colleague asked yesterday, “if there is no need for a recount , why are the Republicans fighting the recount?
“If they truly believe he fairly won the election, then a legal recount should confirm it” and in all her innocence she is right.
Dak, another must read – sure goes hand in hand with all the Nazi awareness that you have shared with us. I didn’t know who Theodor W. Adorno was, and that Stephen Bonnan wrote his thesis on him.
It starts out “lies have long legs”……………great read, and I was thinking that BB knew about some of his writings……there is so much that I have not read, so much.
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-frankfurt-school-knew-trump-was-coming
The Thomas Manns home sold for about 13 million dollars……….here is a bit more information on his writings, and his family.
http://www.dw.com/en/why-thomas-manns-family-had-a-facebook-mentality/a-18780414