Trumpocracy
So . . . we have a president elect who is completely unqualified, overwhelmed, surrounded by racists and conspiracy theorists, and openly supported by Neo Nazis and the KKK. After 7 days as president elect, he has yet to address the American People except for his acceptance speech and his bizarre appearance on 60 Minutes.
According to Rachel Maddow last night, the Trump team has not yet reached out to the DOJ, the intelligence community, Homeland Security or any other government entity we know about and they are not answering calls from people in the government who are anxious to begin working on the transition.
He has announced the appointment of Reince Priebus as WH chief of staff and Steven Bannon as chief White House strategist and senior counselor. Neither of these men has any experience in government. Priebus does know GOP leaders, of course; but he has little apparent knowlege about how the White House and the Federal government work. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is so ignorant of government that on Thursday he actually asked White House staffers how many of them would be staying on after Obama leaves!
Rudy Giuliani is the top choice to be Secretary of State. The second choice is John Bolton. One positive note: Ben Carson has said he doesn’t want a role in the Trump administration. He was being mention as Secretary of Education! So now many they’ll just go ahead and eliminate that department as Trump as threatened.
President Obama gave a press conference yesterday in which he provided veiled warnings about what may happen, announced that he will be visiting a number of foreign countries to try to reassure them, and that he will be helping Trump get ready for a job he will never be ready for.
Brian Beutler at The New Republic: Obama Is Warning America About Trump’s Presidency. Are You Listening?
President Barack Obama’s remarks about Donald Trump in his Monday press conference contained some of the most ominous words I’ve heard since news networks began calling the election for Trump early last Wednesday morning….
In a tense environment in which reporters, government workers, world leaders, and anxious citizens and immigrants understandably are scrutinizing every Donald Trump tweet and utterance and leak, Obama’s closing thoughts on the presidency and his successor will inevitably be given short shrift. But the things he says about the transition contain critical information about its progress and his confidence that, on the other side of it, things will run fairly smoothly.
His Monday comments suggests he has very little confidence that they will.
On the subtext of Obama’s remarks:
On the surface, his comments were reassuring. He was chipper. He did not doomsay. He searched for the generous and hopeful things to say about Trump and Trump’s designs on the presidency. But the sum total of his remarks, on close reading, were frightening—a stage-setting, at the very least, for an administration that Obama expects will be hobbled by incompetence and likely to fail.
Obama kept returning to three basic themes: that Trump will be given every opportunity to succeed, thanks to the tutelage Obama and his team will be providing, and the fact Trump won’t be inheriting massive crises—which should give him the kind of running room Obama never enjoyed; but that the work of a presidency is ceaseless, and much of it highly detail-oriented; and finally that Trump’s grasp of what he’s been elected to do is at best remedial.
Obama may be subtly trying to communicate to the Trump transition team that they need to make massive strides, and quickly, or they will be, in Obama’s words, “swamped.” But his expectation that Trump and his entourage will get their act together is clearly very low.
Please go read the rest.
Steve Bannon
On November 10 Elliot Cohen, a conservative, hawkish foreign policy guy who worked for awhile under Condoleeza Rice and who helped organize other national security experts to oppose Trump, wrote this at The American Interest: To An Anxious Friend…
First, the buffers and restraints built into our system—Congress, the courts, the press, bureaucratic inertia, federalism, and certain norms—are really quite strong. Republican politicians know that with a better candidate they would not have eked out a bare tie in the popular vote, but would have crushed Clinton and added to their Senate majority rather than reduced it. They are not beholden to Trump and do not feel that they should be. He will not be able to rule as a dictator. And in truth, Democratic fears that he may are salutary. So many of them dismissed Republican complaints about a politicized Internal Revenue Service—my guess is that they are rediscovering a healthy respect for older values of rigid political neutrality, as well as the larger system of checks and balances.
Second, Trump may be better than we think. He does not have strong principles about much, which means he can shift. He is clearly willing to delegate legislation to Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. And even abroad, his instincts incline him to increase U.S. strength—and to push back even against Russia if, as will surely happen, Putin double-crosses him. My guess is that sequester gets rolled back, as do lots of stupid regulations, and experiments in nudging and nagging Americans to behave the way progressives think they should.
Third, part of the magic of America is its ability to regenerate itself. Both parties produced rotten outcomes at the presidential level; both deceived themselves about the actual concerns of the American people; both desperately need new generations of leaders. Those will emerge. What one can hope for as well is a sobering realization about the extent to which both have played dangerous games—with identity politics, with falsehoods, with cultural contempt, and above all, with the transformation of politics into a matter of unthinking tribalism.
Tough times ahead, no doubt. But I think about my grandparents, who fled pogroms, arrived here penniless, and experienced World War I and the influenza pandemic, as well as ethnic and religious discrimination of a kind now unthinkable. My parents lived through the Depression and World War II—and then the social upheavals of the 1960s.
Then he apparently reached out to the Trump people. Here’s what he tweeted about that today.
Not very reassuring.
A couple more stories that caught my attention:
NBC News: Trump Transition Shake-Up Part of ‘Stalinesque Purge’ of Christie Loyalists.
The Donald Trump transition, already off to slow start, bogged down further Tuesday with the abrupt resignation of former Congressman Mike Rogers, who had been coordinating its national security efforts.
Two sources close to Rogers said he had been the victim of what one called a “Stalinesque purge,” from the transition of people close to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who left Friday. It was unclear which other aides close to Christie had also been forced out….
He [Rogers] and his top aide had been working for months, preparing the groundwork for transition. Two sources close to the situation described an atmosphere of sniping and backbiting as Trump loyalists position themselves for key jobs….
Rogers’ departure follows Christie’s demotion from head of the team to a vice-chair, with Vice President-elect Mike Pence taking over for him last week.
The purge indicates the emphasis on loyalty — and significant influence of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, husband of Ivanka — that characterized Trump’s campaign will carry over into his White House.
Multiple sources indicated that Christie was demoted because he wasn’t seen as sufficiently loyal to Trump, failing to vocally defend him at key moments on the campaign trail.
Rogers had been mentioned as a candidate for CIA director, but now he’s out.
USA Today Exclusive: Fox anchor Megyn Kelly describes scary, bullying ‘Year of Trump.’
In her new memoir, Settle for More, Kelly describes how an unexpectedly anxious Trump complained to Fox News executives last year about what she’d do as a moderator of the debate. The questions Kelly and her colleagues planned to ask the candidates were secret. She wrote that days before the debate, Trump called Fox “in an attempt to rein me in. … He said he had ‘heard’ that my first question was a very pointed question directed at him.” Kelly’s first question was in fact for Trump and about his treatment and descriptions of women. She wondered, she wrote, “How could he know that?”
In an exclusive interview Monday with USA TODAY — one in which she discussed what she called her “Year of Trump” and her stand against former Fox News chief Roger Ailes — Kelly said she did not believe her question leaked to Trump beforehand. “I don’t think he had any idea,” she said. “What I think he was worried about was his divorce from Ivana Trump. … He was afraid I was going to bring that up.”
Much more about Kelly’s dealings with Trump and his pal Roger Ailes at the link.
More reads, links only:
NYT: Donald Trump’s Far-Flung Holdings Raise Potential for Conflicts of Interest.
Columbia Journalism Review: Eight steps reporters should take before Trump assumes office, by Dana Priest
WaPo: Paul Ryan’s plan to phase out Medicare is just what Democrats need, by Paul Waldman
LA Times: Paul Ryan is determined to gut Medicare. This time he might succeed, by Michael Hiltzik
Daily Beast: Steve Bannon’s Dream: A Worldwide Ultra-Right, by Christopher Dickey
WaPo: Hate crimes against Muslims hit highest mark since 2001.
TPM: Jeff Sessions, Now Up For AG, Once Rejected From Judgeship For Racist Remarks.
That’s all I have. I’m still really struggling with my emotions, and I don’t know how long it’s going to take before I find my center again. This situation has triggered my deepest childhood fears and traumas. I just hope it isn’t going to be as disastrous as I expect.
Courage, Sky Dancers!
I’m feeling even worse this morning than I did yesterday. I woke up in fear, my heart pounding. I’ve been reading a lot this morning, but I’m not ready to do a real post. I just can’t. I hope you guys can fill in for me a bit for now. I’ll try my best to write something later today. I can’t guarantee anything though.
I’m not giving up, but I’m going through an emotional reaction that could take some time. I’ve said before that it feels like a death in the family. It’s similar to how I felt when my father died, but in some ways it’s worse. My dad lived a long and productive life. His time came and he went quickly. This could mean the death of democracy, the death of everything we hold dear, everything that made the U.S. a place of hope, despite its many serious flaws.
I wish all of you the best today. I love you all and care about you. I’ll definitely be back later, but right now I need to take care of myself as best I can.
HE TELLS HER | WENDY COPE
He tells her that the Earth is flat—
He knows the facts, and that is that.
In altercations fierce and long
She tries her best to prove him wrong.
But he has learned to argue well.
He calls her arguments unsound
And often asks her not to yell.
She cannot win. He stands his ground.
The planet goes on being round.
This is an open thread.
Trump Tower AKA Mount Doom
The light is fading; the darkness is rising. We are on the precipice of a national tragedy, a global cataclysm. We must take time to mourn and then gird ourselves for political battles. Young people are our hope for the future now. We must support them and use what wisdom we have to help and guide them. This is the what the electoral map would have looked like if only voters aged 18-25 had voted.
Watertown NY WIC provides services for persons over 18 who are physically or mentally impaired and who are in a situation where they are harmed or threatened with harm by the actions of themselves or others. This often involves the frail elderly and adults who are physically or mentally disabled, seriously ill or alcohol/substance abusers.
I’m not capable of writing much today. It feels like a death in the family. I woke up this morning and for a moment everything seemed normal. And then I remember the horror that has befallen our beloved country. At least there were people out in the streets protesting in cities around the country.
On the Boston Common:
Berkeley High school students on the UC Berkeley campus:
In New York City:
Outside Trump Tower in Chicago:
And in many other places.
This morning I talked to my brother on the phone and we both cried. I’m so fearful for my nephews, but I’m determined to do anything in my power to protect and support them. Yesterday an old friend called me to see if I was OK. She was sobbing. It’s going to take some time to process what has happened and figure out how to react to it. But I refuse to give up. I will keep writing on this blog and I’ll try to find some ways to volunteer and/or donate to help others.
I’m going to post a bunch of links and let you decide which ones you want to click on. Every time I think about posting excerpts I have a huge amount of resistance because I don’t to traumatize myself or anyone else with unwanted information. Dakinikat suggested that I post this letter from Aaron Sorkin to his wife and daughter, so here it is. I haven’t even read it yet, but I trust Dak’s judgment.
Sorkin Girls,
Well the world changed late last night in a way I couldn’t protect us from. That’s a terrible feeling for a father. I won’t sugarcoat it—this is truly horrible. It’s hardly the first time my candidate didn’t win (in fact it’s the sixth time) but it is the first time that a thoroughly incompetent pig with dangerous ideas, a serious psychiatric disorder, no knowledge of the world and no curiosity to learn has.
And it wasn’t just Donald Trump who won last night—it was his supporters too. The Klan won last night. White nationalists. Sexists, racists and buffoons. Angry young white men who think rap music and Cinco de Mayo are a threat to their way of life (or are the reason for their way of life) have been given cause to celebrate. Men who have no right to call themselves that and who think that women who aspire to more than looking hot are shrill, ugly, and otherwise worthy of our scorn rather than our admiration struck a blow for misogynistic shitheads everywhere. Hate was given hope. Abject dumbness was glamorized as being “the fresh voice of an outsider” who’s going to “shake things up.” (Did anyone bother to ask how? Is he going to re-arrange the chairs in the Roosevelt Room?) For the next four years, the President of the United States, the same office held by Washington and Jefferson, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, F.D.R., J.F.K. and Barack Obama, will be held by a man-boy who’ll spend his hours exacting Twitter vengeance against all who criticize him (and those numbers will be legion). We’ve embarrassed ourselves in front of our children and the world.
And the world took no time to react. The Dow futures dropped 700 points overnight. Economists are predicting a deep and prolonged recession. Our NATO allies are in a state of legitimate fear. And speaking of fear, Muslim-Americans, Mexican-Americans and African-Americans are shaking in their shoes. And we’d be right to note that many of Donald Trump’s fans are not fans of Jews. On the other hand, there is a party going on at ISIS headquarters. What wouldn’t we give to trade this small fraction of a man for Richard Nixon right now?
So what do we do?
First of all, we remember that we’re not alone. A hundred million people in America and a billion more around the world feel exactly the same way we do.
Second, we get out of bed. The Trumpsters want to see people like us (Jewish, “coastal elites,” educated, socially progressive, Hollywood…) sobbing and wailing and talking about moving to Canada. I won’t give them that and neither will you. Here’s what we’ll do…
Read the rest at Vanity Fair.
People participate in a protest against the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States in New York, New York, USA, 09 November 2016. EPA/ALBA VIGARAY
Here’s one more from Garrison Keillor at the WaPo: Trump voters will not like what happens next.
So he won. The nation takes a deep breath. Raw ego and proud illiteracy have won out, and a severely learning-disabled man with a real character problem will be president. We are so exhausted from thinking about this election, millions of people will take up leaf-raking and garage cleaning with intense pleasure. We liberal elitists are wrecks. The Trumpers had a whale of a good time, waving their signs, jeering at the media, beating up protesters, chanting “Lock her up” — we elitists just stood and clapped. Nobody chanted “Stronger Together.” It just doesn’t chant.
The Trumpers never expected their guy to actually win the thing, and that’s their problem now. They wanted only to whoop and yell, boo at the H-word, wear profane T-shirts, maybe grab a crotch or two, jump in the RV with a couple of six-packs and go out and shoot some spotted owls. It was pleasure enough for them just to know that they were driving us wild with dismay — by “us,” I mean librarians, children’s authors, yoga practitioners, Unitarians, bird-watchers, people who make their own pasta, opera-goers, the grammar police, people who keep books on their shelves, that bunch. The Trumpers exulted in knowing we were tearing our hair out. They had our number, like a bratty kid who knows exactly how to make you grit your teeth and froth at the mouth.
Alas for the Trump voters, the disasters he will bring on this country will fall more heavily on them than anyone else. The uneducated white males who elected him are the vulnerable ones, and they will not like what happens next.
To all the patronizing B.S. we’ve read about Trump expressing the white working-class’s displacement and loss of the American Dream, I say, “Feh!” — go put your head under cold water. Resentment is no excuse for bald-faced stupidity. America is still the land where the waitress’s kids can grow up to become physicists and novelists and pediatricians, but it helps a lot if the waitress and her husband encourage good habits and the ambition to use your God-given talents and the kids aren’t plugged into electronics day and night. Whooping it up for the candidate of cruelty and ignorance does less than nothing for your kids.
We liberal elitists are now completely in the clear. The government is in Republican hands. Let them deal with him. Democrats can spend four years raising heirloom tomatoes, meditating, reading Jane Austen, traveling around the country, tasting artisan beers, and let the Republicans build the wall and carry on the trade war with China and deport the undocumented and deal with opioids, and we Democrats can go for a long, brisk walk and smell the roses.
Read more at the WaPo. Revenge will not be so sweet for those of us who aren’t as wealthy as Keillor, but it will still be interesting to see the Republicans try to deal with their madman and watch the yahoos come to their rude awakening. But it’s a good piece and it gets better, so do read on at the WaPo link.
And just one more from fantasy novelist Saladin Ahmed: Fantasy and the Real World.
Let me tell you a few stories
Story #1: After years of abuse at the hands his foster family, a talented British boy escapes to private school, which holds challenges of its own.
Story #2: A small group of agents from several nations works to destroy a powerful weapon of mass destruction before it falls into the hands of the enemy.
Story #3: Terrifying creatures, neither women nor men, lurk near the privies, waiting to snatch unsuspecting children and turn them into similar creatures.
Story #4: Savages stand poised to destroy the Eagle Republic. Traitors threaten it from within. Only the Orange Man and his Great Southern Wall can protect us.
Which of these stories is fantasy? Which is a story from the real world? Which of them is “true?” Stories 1 and 2 are of course ‘real world’-toned descriptions of Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings, respectively. On the other hand, stories 3 and 4 are fantasies that millions of American voters have accepted as accurate descriptions of the real world around them. All of these fantasies have the power to shape not only our own realities, but the real lives of millions of other human beings….
Despite the best efforts of those who insist that we somehow –magically, one might say– keep politics out of the stories we tell, our fantasies are, inevitably, shaped by the world around us. And, perhaps more to the point, the world around us is shaped by stories. The stories we choose to live by, the fantasies we choose to believe in, matter.
“Why should a man be scorned,” Tolkien once wrote, “if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?” Fantasy provides us a noble escape from an imprisoning world, he reminds us, and we must not “confuse the Escape of the Prisoner with the Flight of the Deserter.”
That escape, however, is always temporary. Eventually we are dragged, kicking and screaming, back to prison. What then? “The night is dark and full of terrors,” George RR Martin writes, and at its best fantasy is not only an escape from those terrors but a bulwark against them. Magic glasses that help us recognize and counter the bad fantasies at work in the world around us. The best fantasies offer us true and beautiful stories that do battle with the ugly fever dreams of the real world.
UT students block bridge in Austin, TX
More headlines in no particular order.
WaPo: Moscow had contacts with Trump team during campaign, Russian diplomat says.
Charles Blow: America Elects a Bigot.
Daily Beast: Team Trump Struggling to Fill National-Security Jobs.
Reuters: Trump due in court before Oval Office.
Here’s a weird one: Trump Win Dashes Dreams of UFO Disclosure.
Politico: President-elect Trump invites British prime minister for a visit.
NYT: World Is About to Find Out What Donald Trump Really Believes.
NYT: Trump Rides a Wave of Fury That May Damage Global Prosperity.
Linda Greenhouse: The Choice Confronting the Supreme Court’s Chief Justice.
Nieman Lab: The forces that drove this election’s media failure are likely to get worse.
Buzzfeed: Secretary Of Education Ben Carson? Here’s A List Of Potential Trump Cabinet Picks.
The Education Reference Desk considers students who enrolled in UWW online degree programs that do not come to campus for those courses to be Distance Education (DE) students.
The New Yorker: Hillary’s Powerful Concession.
Market Watch: Siemens warns wave of populism threatens business.
CNN: Mexico stunned by election of Donald Trump.
The Economist: What does Donald Trump’s victory mean for the world?
Reuters: Tough reality check for Trump’s pledge of better heartland jobs, wages.
NYT: On Late Night, Comedians Grapple With Trump’s Victory.
If you want to, please share how you are doing after this incredible shock to our political and cultural systems; and post any other comments and links you want in the comment thread. Courage Sky Dancers!
Sorry about this. I’m not a in a very good mood right now. I’m trying to figure out what to do next. I’m in a pretty precarious situation and I can’t afford to lose my Social Security and Medicare. My living situation is up in the air too. I may have to leave most of my belongings behind and move in with my mother in Indiana.
I just can’t believe this is happening. My dream of a woman president looked as if it was about to be realized, and instead we may end up with a psychopathic sexual predator doing his personal business out of the White House. A psychopath who is a willing puppet of Vladimir Putin. Thanks to Jim Comey. Thanks to the FBI, Thanks to the fucking assholes in the media who spent 600 days obsessing about emails and let Trump get away with not releasing his taxes. Thanks to CNN for hiring all those idiotic Trump surrogates to trash Hillary.
Hillary technically could still pull this out, but it’s not looking good. NATO is massing troops in Eastern Europe, the stock market is crashing, and all those people who voted for Trump are going to check ou these numbers on the opioid problem or whatever retirement funds they had along with their health care. But they don’t care, because they wanted hate to win.
This is an open thread.
That’s Hillary finishing a speech in the rain in Florida.
Here’s a fresh thread as we continue to watch the returns. North Carolina is looking very good for Clinton right now. Remember she doesn’t need to win Florida, and if she wins North Carolina, Trump won’t have a good path to 270. He also needs to win a blue state, and I don’t see a good candidate. Hillary is way up in Michigan and Wisconsin. She could still pull out Florida, because there are votes still out in high Democratic areas in the southern part of the state.
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
jjlo
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Memeorandum Crooks and Liars Democracy NOW The UK Guardian
The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
Recent Comments