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

Ben Carson turned down an open offer to take an official role in President-elect Donald Trump’s administration, The Hill reported Tuesday.

Carson ally Armstrong Williams told the Hill that the retired pediatric neurosurgeon would serve only as an unofficial adviser. Fox News confirmed the report.

While Carson was floated as a possible appointee to oversee the Department of Health and Human Services or the Department of Education, Williams said he never received a formal offer for either post.

"Dr. Carson was never offered a specific position, but everything was open to him," Williams told The Hill.

"Dr. Carson feels he has no government experience, he's never run a federal agency,” he went on. “The last thing he would want to do was take a position that could cripple the presidency."

HE JUST RAN FOR PRESIDENT

loool

That's disappointing. Carson as secretary of education would have been a lot funnier than four years of drumpf jokes.

is anyone familiar with Virginia Heffernan? this is maniacal

http://www.lennyletter.com/politics/a613/hillary-clinton-is-more-than-a-president/

When people told me they hated Hillary Clinton or (far worse) that they were "not fans," I wish I had said in no uncertain terms: "I love Hillary Clinton. I am in awe of her. I am set free by her. She will be the finest world leader our galaxy has ever seen."

I wish, in those exchanges, I had not asked gentle, tolerant questions about a hater's ridiculous allergy to her, or Clinton's fictional misdeeds and imagined character flaws. More deeply still, I wish I had not reasoned with anyone, patiently countered their ludicrous emotionalism and psychologically disturbed theories. I wish I had said, flatly, "I love her." As if I had been asked about my mother or daughter. No defensiveness or polemics; not dignifying the crazy allegations with so much as a Snopes link.

...

I want to reverse the usual schedule of things, then. We don't have to wait until she dies to act. Hillary Clinton's name belongs on ships, and airports, and tattoos. She deserves straight-up hagiographies and a sold-out Broadway show called RODHAM. Yes, this cultural canonization is going to come after the chronic, constant, nonstop "On the other hand" sexist hedging around her legacy. But such is the courage of Hillary Clinton and her supporters; we reverse patriarchal orders. Maybe she is more than a president. Maybe she is an idea, a world-historical heroine, light itself. The presidency is too small for her. She belongs to a much more elite class of Americans, the more-than-presidents. Neil Armstrong, Martin Luther King Jr., Alexander Fucking Hamilton.

Hillary Clinton did everything right in this campaign, and she won more votes than her opponent did. She won. She cannot be faulted, criticized, or analyzed for even one more second. Instead, she will be decorated as an epochal heroine far too extraordinary to be contained by the mere White House. Let that revolting president-elect be Millard Fillmore or Herbert Hoover or whatever. Hillary is Athena.

Alexander Fucking Hamilton

there it is

Obama said in 2007 that his "number one ambition" was "to be remembered as the new century's Milliard Fillmore" iirc

would fund a kickstater, tbh.

lol

yeah, let's deify the woman who voted for the iraq war and then bungled an utterly winnable presidential campaign that allowed donald trump to become the leader of the free world, great idea

honestly the one silver lining to this past week has been the knowledge that clinton people are eating shit right now

I wish she had won (duh) but yeah I am not going to mourn the passing of the Clinton family's power

it took the Trump administration one week to begin a stalinesque purge.

Remember when it was going to be Bush vs. Clinton and we all groaned?

for all my alarmism "stalinesque"'s a bit of a lol there, call me when they shoot christie in the brainstem

what's their problem with christie? is he just the weak man at the moment? i mean, lol of course, but i don't really get it.

Over the last week, two of the world’s biggest internet companies have faced mounting criticism over how fake news on their sites may have influenced the presidential election’s outcome.

On Monday, those companies responded by making it clear that they would not tolerate such misinformation by taking pointed aim at fake news sites’ revenue sources.

Google kicked off the action on Monday afternoon when the Silicon Valley search giant said it would ban websites that peddle fake news from using its online advertising service. Hours later, Facebook, the social network, updated the language in its Facebook Audience Network policy, which already says it will not display ads in sites that show misleading or illegal content, to include fake news sites.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/technology/google-will-ban-websites-that-host-fake-news-from-using-its-ad-service.html

so courageous for them to take this principled stand a week after the election, after being confronted about it from all angles

I heard the pope endorsed trump

Eerie parallels to the Masha Gessen NYRB piece:

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/217831/what-to-do-about-trump

I like the closing paragraph a lot, though.

When the levers of power are seized by the small hands of hateful men, you work hard, you stand with those who are most vulnerable, and you don’t give up until it’s morning again. The rest is commentary.

Darn right.

virginia heffernan is the one who wants to believe in creationism contra science because it's got better stories

what's their problem with christie? is he just the weak man at the moment? i mean, lol of course, but i don't really get it.

― goole, Tuesday, November 15, 2016 1:01 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark

in my view it's punishment for christie prosecuting kushner

fuckin what

xp

what's their problem with christie? is he just the weak man at the moment?

He sent Jared Kushner's father to prison for his crimes. Knifing Christie sends a message that loyalty to Trump means impunity.

re: bungled - she still won the popular vote and without Comey would likely be President. Getting lost in the shuffle is that 40+% of Americans are cool with a rapist racist President no matter who the Democrats had run or how perfect a campaign.

call me when they shoot christie in the brainstem

How would you tell?

I do kinda wonder if Putin's gonna offer to assassinate Trump's enemies for him

otherwise yeah, Hitler/Stalin refs to purges are a little melodramatic. If these guys start actually murdering their enemies let me know

christie is also going to get indicted yall

my dad just sent me and my sister a 4-page "debunking" of factcheck.org that somehow takes a detour to mention that "ACORN and many other left agencies work closely with them" (them meaning Snopes.com) and offers the sage wisdom "I know, do more than play with your so called smart phone to get facts. Actually read volumes of books as I have to see the truth."

christie is also going to get indicted yall

^^^ this is why

in other news, a statement from Mayor San Jose: https://medium.com/@SamLiccardo/weve-got-your-back-4c2fdcb0b915#.6il2rhxtc

I heard google is releasing a new search engine that only gets "true" results.

Honestly, if pretty much any of the proper names involved, from Trump on down were indicted in the next few years, who would be shocked?

If I print out pages of forwarded emails and bind them, does that count as a book?

midterms traditionally tend to go poorly for the party in charge. but we are now living in perpetual Anything Can Happen Day.

wasn't Virginia Heffernan's greatest crime til that piece being an awful TV critic for the NYT? omg she got promoted to op writer.

your precious Waze app won't give you directions to the truth, karl

The Sainted Reagan still holds the record for most corrupt admin, AFAIK and horrifyingly few people ever gave a shit (including Democratic leadership since Bill).

there's gonna be epic corruption in this admin, the question is who is going to be able to prosecute it

List of men and women convicted for crimes in Reagan administration.

Back to that Lapham essay, here's another excerpt from a better distillation of the idea of the provisional vs. permanent government: (plus the "ceaseless war of bureaucratic attrition" line that I love for some reason)

https://fabiusmaximus.com/2009/11/19/lapham-7/

The permanent government —

* the Congress,
* the civil and military services,
* the media,
* the legion of Washington lawyers and expensive lobbyists

occupies the anonymous hierarchies that remain safely in place no matter what the political truths voted in and out of the White House on the trend of a season. It is this government — sly and patient and slow — that writes the briefing papers and the laws, presides over the administrative routine, remembers who bribed whom in the election of 1968 and why President Carter thought it prudent to talk privately to God about the B-1 bomber. Except in the rare moments of jointly opportune interest, the permanent government wages a ceaseless war of bureaucratic attrition against the provisional government that once every 4 or 8 years accompanies a newly elected president to Washington.

is that meant to be encouraging

Latham often tried do sound like dollar edition Gore Vidal didn't he?

*Lapham

I'm mostly seeing "their ideological interests have aligned" fucking us all for decades to come.

KM, i'm really sorry you and your sis have to field that stuff your folks have bought into. That must be hard.

TNR piece on Obama's subtext seemed chillingly accurate. this is probably the biggest minefield an outgoing prez has had to tiptoe around.

now wait milo, the current Dem Admin certainly gave a shit about prosecuting the thieves and banksters who engineered the '08 bubb -- ohfuckit

this is your deep state america, cherish it

xp

there's gonna be epic corruption in this admin, the question is who is going to be able to prosecute it

State AGs finding heretofore questionable bases for state charges?

lapham's institutions of permanent government are real but as recently as the nixon admin a president imo attempted to quietly build shadow institutions, dependent on his person, to usurp or co-opt the functions of that whole list.

(That's not very recent)

i still wonder if trump winning stopped a lot of violence. bombings. race war type insanity. obviously we'll never know. could have been bad though. am i the only person who wonders that? i'm sure there were people waiting for that excuse.

trump winning stopped a lot of violence that would have happened in that scenario. trump winning will also create a lot of violence, probably much, much more violence. sorry to get all miss cleo but i think it's true

you're probably right.

christie is also going to get indicted yall

― carthago delenda est (mayor jingleberries), Tuesday, November 15, 2016 1:17 PM (thirty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/11/president-trump-can-thank-paula-jones-his-legal-troubles