Mourning in America - Trump Year One: November '16 to

when does trump appoint that papa johns creep as the official white house chef

Is Dave Thomas alive to take the job? Wider variety at Wendy's.

he knows they're likely to be in the minority as soon as Trump fucks up.

i admire your optimism

ditto

i still don't really understand how US politics works, still trying to read that thing Morbs linked about "cloture" lol

i've been on a pendulum this week. i haven't noticed it really until today, thinking -gutted and nauseated though i was feeling on the 9th- that i was keeping a level head, but today the Bannon pick has my heart racing, and i'm realizing that i've been holding a certain panic at bay. this sense of the ground slipping out from underneath me, the disorientation and sense of strangeness even, like when you return to your house after a long trip, feels ancient and familiar for me. it dates back to my childhood, which i thought far down the tunnel of memory, and the feelings leading up to the overthrow of Allende, except it's not far down a tunnel after all, it's right here after all, hovering over me, or even right here in the pit of my stomach.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2016/countycartrb512.png
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2016/countycartpurple512.png

Mark Newman's adjusted-by-population cartograms are back, and even if they seem a bit premature (aren't we still waiting on a large number of votes to be counted?) or incomplete (pity Alaska and Hawaii) they may still be helpful in the ongoing quest to grasp What Happened and What's To Be Done.

I work with a lady that leans conservative (and I won't ask about her vote) that is buying private health insurance, is knowledgeable about politics and medicine (her daughter is a doctor), is not insured at work (part-time with no options in the company for full-time) and she makes too much for a subsidized market place plan (because of alimony and investments and such), but is 7 months away from Medicare. Her current options are $1200 a month for catastrophic care that doesn't cover much of anything at a day to day basis or the unthinkable of going without. She's figuring out how to juggle expenses while she waits for Medicare.

I won't be laughing at her gradual realization that there may not be anything for her in the short or long term future. Maybe she should have made better life choices.

My parents went through a pretty rough ten years after my dad lost his job, and finally getting on Medicare has made a big difference to them. After what happened to my dad, seeing him lose medicare might make me angrier than anything else I can think of right now.

Torsten Bell, director of the Resolution Foundation, provided a useful breakdown of voting patterns in last Tuesday’s presidential election. Taken at face value, the results seem to show that Hillary Clinton did well among those voters on the lowest incomes. She led 53%-41% among those earning less than $30,000 a year and by 51%-42% among those earning between $30,000 and $50,000.

But these statistics are misleading. There was actually a 16-point net swing to the Republicans between the 2012 and 2016 elections among those earning less than $30,000 a year and a 6-point swing among those earning $30,000 to $50,000. By contrast, there was a swing to the Democrats among those on higher incomes, and this was particularly pronounced among those earning more than $100,000 a year.

The reasons for Trump were also the reasons for Brexit | John Harris
One interpretation of these numbers would be that Americans on average or below average incomes voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 because they expected fundamental change from which they would benefit. They were still waiting for the change to come in 2016 and thought Trump was more likely to provide it than Clinton. The better off, who have being doing just fine out of business as usual, supported Clinton as the candidate of the status quo. For Wall Street and Silicon Valley she was the safer choice. As in other western countries, the party ostensibly of the left had nothing to say that its traditional base wanted to hear.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2016/nov/13/donald-trump-product-of-new-economic-depression

https://twitter.com/lottelydia/status/798211511915319296

xp this interpretation largely relies on not know what 'numbers' are.

Mark Newman's adjusted-by-population cartograms are back, and even if they seem a bit premature (aren't we still waiting on a large number of votes to be counted?) or incomplete (pity Alaska and Hawaii) they may still be helpful in the ongoing quest to grasp What Happened and What's To Be Done.

― dustalo springsteen (Doctor Casino)

was this deliberately made to look like a phoenix?

Can totally imagine, when the shit settles, the new administration cutting off press access entirely. They did not run a fact-based campaign, many of the knuckleheads being hired are controversial or idiots or both, why would they want to face questioning ever? In some ways our only hope is their arrogance and ego.

Hmm, they'll probably want the big news orgs on board to propagandize for forthcoming wars though.

Useful idiots, sure. Maybe they will gravitate exclusively to things like this 60 minutes set up. A highly controlled environment.

https://twitter.com/lottelydia/status/798211511915319296

― Andrew Farrell, Tuesday, November 15, 2016 5:09 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That's pretty righteous.

qrealDonaldTrump: If the election were based on total popular vote I would have campaigned in N.Y. Florida and California and won even bigger and more easily

remember when we thought george w bush was simple

Yeah, stick a fork in me etc

if the 21st century has taught us anything so far it's that things can always somehow get worse

This remains surreal, it's like karmic payback for decades of reality shows that snobs dismissed as "not real" so here you go, fuckers, here's your reality show, except this time, it is real and it's your life and you can't turn the show off.

I can no longer distinguish between the real and parody tweets

Note that the president-elect of the United States continues to talk about himself and himself and himself and himself and not, like, ANY FUCKING PLAN OR VISION FOR THE COUNTRY AND WHAT HE INTENDS TO DO AS PRESIDENT.

Drop fucking dead, you heap of ochre shit.

None of this should be at all surprising. He was still publicly nursing wounds about his defeated opponents long after winning the nomination.

Twitter is gonna be that dumb motherfucker's downfall, mark my words. Either his handlers have now taken a hands-off approach or he doesn't feel like he needs to listen to their advice anymore. It's just a matter of time until he tweets classified information or something equally stupid and dangerous.

The Associated Press ‏@AP 55m55 minutes ago

President-elect Donald Trump criticised after tweeting, then deleting, a nude picture of himself.

The Associated Press ‏@AP 15m20 minutes ago

America officially the first all-blind nation after accidentally viewing nude picture of president-elect Trump.

Kinda feeling like, instead of appointing Giuliani or Bolton as Secretary of State, Trump could do away with the position altogether and just have one foreign leader after another come to visit so that he can piss directly into their faces.

?????

xp

Oh, jokes. Sorry just got here.

See, we can't even tell!

So much of what transpires over the next 2-4 years is going to be decided by whether the GOP displays any backbone whatsoever in opposing the more odious efforts of Trump and his Legion of Doom. After witnessing their spineless equivocation wrt Trump's candidacy, I am not hopeful in that regard.

I'd been concerned and curious and navigated over to Google News to do a search for something that was sadly right on the front page: Trump Win A 'Public Health Crisis,' Suicide Hotline Calls Spike: Officials. So that's probably a great avenue for volunteer work if you have the stomach for it.

I have a friend who is a psychotherapist and is offering low-cost post-election counseling.

Personally, I'd have no idea what to say, and might be rather less than helpful. "Yeah it sucks for you, a person who is probably going to be fine. It's going to suck a lot more for those more vulnerable than you. The lives of the downtrodden and the marginalized were already pretty dire and they're likely to get worse. But, um, hey! Cheer up! Go for a walk or something!"

How long until Trump hires a foxy security detail and lets cameras follow them 24/7.

xpost I'm just trying to encourage people to channel their dread into something positive. Volunteer, donate, educate themselves and others about voting rights and voting registration, protest, converse with other people and try to find areas of agreement whether you're on the exact same page or not.

Here's a channel: call AND email your congressmen about Speaker Ryan's Medicare ambitions.

I had been meaning to post this, maybe it helps some people:
Concrete Suggestions in Preparation

apparently congressmen are starting to earn about it: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/details-trickling-in

How long until Trump hires a foxy security detail and lets cameras follow them 24/7.

Charlie's Angels strangely prescient

is it ok for suicide hotline counselors to recruit for the resistance

what does mike rogers stepping down mean?

Personally, I'd have no idea what to say, and might be rather less than helpful. "Yeah it sucks for you, a person who is probably going to be fine. It's going to suck a lot more for those more vulnerable than you. The lives of the downtrodden and the marginalized were already pretty dire and they're likely to get worse. But, um, hey! Cheer up! Go for a walk or something!"

Yeah. Trump is an incompetent, corrupt, unstable man if you're a minority, but he all of a sudden becomes an incredibly gifted leader and administrator without an ounce of corruption if you're white. Like magic! Just about everyone is screwed under Trump, just some more than others, unfortunately.

xp - if you bleeve this WaPo guy:

@gregpmiller
Reports that Mike Rogers pushed off Trump transition team in purge of Christie allies. Intel officials see Rogers as voice of reason.

not much to do re calling my congressman, he's about as liberal as they come:

https://twitter.com/RepJerryNadler

It was just dawning on me today how many undocumented immigrants there likely are all around me and how insane it would be if they were all deported. Queens would be a ghost borough. My wife's school would empty out. It's really horrifying.

Mike Rogers stepping down is one more post they don't have a name for, that's it.

This is going to be the longest transition ever.

hopefully this means his org will be a headless chicken and unable to coordinate with congress on anything

also looking forward to all the conflicts of interests stories that these next four years will bring http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/us/politics/donald-trump-holdings-conflict-of-interest.html

i mean:

The labor dispute in Nevada represents another potential complication. The president appoints all five members of the National Labor Relations Board. But over the past year, the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas has been in a battle with the culinary workers union, at first challenging an effort by hotel employees to unionize. The labor board ruled against him in July. Then the hotel, which Mr. Trump co-owns, refused to begin negotiations with the new union, and the labor board again ruled against it, in November. Other labor disputes with employees are pending.

“Will he as president of the United States of America use the power he has to interfere — given that he has a financial interest in the outcome of these matters?” said Bethany Khan, a spokeswoman for the 57,000-member Culinary Workers Union Local 226 of Nevada.