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

I'm half-convinced that he's going to start recruiting death row inmates for cabinet positions at this point.

yeah just wait until an unarmed black man gets shot by the cops and blm protests it.. can see that escalating quickly

Trump will pardon the cops before there can be an investigation, and he'll spike in popularity.

is that after all the patriot gun squads have come out and shot up the town or before

Have we posted this yet?

DNC Aiming To Reconnect With Working-Class Americans With New ‘Hamilton’-Inspired Lena Dunham Web Series

https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/election/what-are-we-trying-to-figure-out

xpost I can't express to you the degree of relief I felt when I hovered over the link and confirmed that it was indeed an Onion article. My critical faculties are completely blown out at this point.

Funny but we're rapidly approaching Peak LOL Liberals Read Books

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/305920-two-presidential-electors-to-colleagues-dump-trump

thought at first this was a true case of faithless electors but nah it's just two democratic electors

oh the pushed down stairs thing looks more complicated. the person who did it was apparently not a trump supporter, but someone who progressives are friendly with and a disabled rights advocate who, due to their condition, freaked out. the person pushed down the stairs is trying to get the message out and control the story and make sure no charges are pressed.

You all know I say what I feel without filters and I have to say that I feel the prospect of a Trump presidency looks problematic at best

Funny but we're rapidly approaching Peak LOL Liberals Read Books

― Kiarostami bag (milo z),

Just three weeks ago I was snickering at the number of anti-Bush books groaning on the uni library shelf, most published between 2002-2005.

Could someone explain the whole "sanctuary cities" thing? I don't think I'd even heard the term until Trump made an issue of it.

usu it's a city that doesn't use municipal $ to enforce immigration laws and where cops don't ask abt immigration status

i think hitler coined that term.

it reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cities_of_Refuge

McCain Warns Against Russian Reset

"With the U.S. presidential transition underway, Vladimir Putin has said in recent days that he wants to improve relations with the United States. We should place as much faith in such statements as any other made by a former KGB agent who has plunged his country into tyranny, murdered his political opponents, invaded his neighbors, threatened America's allies, and attempted to undermine America's elections," the Arizona senator said in a statement, without any apparent irony or self-reflection.

(The last bit added by me for emphasis, just for the sake of clarity and to hopefully forestall the complete collapse of factual reality.)

nobody cares what McCain says

thx for Caribou Barbie, you "honorable" captured guy

It's less about caring what he says and more about the fact that he's halfway describing the dude he endorsed for president, who in turn spent his entire campaign showing clear favor for Putin.

oh I got that, believe me

thx for Caribou Barbie, you "honorable" captured guy

― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, November 15, 2016 3:52 PM

haha i loled

McCain, Graham and Cruz all on the Armed Services committee, Dems could probably work w them to frustrate any stupid major foreign policy blunders re: Russia

Really, how eager is the GOP to make nice with Russia? Maybe if it leads to some bilateral plan to carve up the Middle East?

Yeah, I'm sure Putin would give them whatever they wanted. He seems like a pretty equitable dude that way.

xxp:
Could they? What's the likelihood of Congress voting to halt funding for military action already in progress.

The imperial presidency created during Truman's tenure means Congress is reduced to performing policy autopsies.

obviously they can't stop Trump from putting planes in the air and dropping bombs, but the power of the purse isn't nothing

one more data point: the forclosure crisis was the unaddressed drag on obama's tenure and may have cost hillary too

https://mathbabe.org/2016/11/14/guest-post-the-foreclosure-vote/

Cue constituent howls of "not supporting the troops".

Under the War Powers Act, the president has 90 days after introducing troops into hostilities to obtain congressional approval of that action. It looks good on paper, but presidents have generally ignored the War Powers Act, citing Article II, Section 2 as their authority to send soldiers into combat.

I'd figure the numbers on Trump's promises will start to add up quick. You got to figure it would cost probably 2-3 billion to try and deport 2-3 million people. That would only be a cost of legal and logistics of $1000 a case and I would figure that it could cost lots more per case than that.

Many different things Trump and his admin supposedly want would create absolute chaos. My biggest fear is that they want to create chaos.

they don't actually want anything except money and respect

Like the best case right now is four years of infighting and bufoonery and blustery talk backed up by little action, with some real damage to federal govt and US standing along the way. My mind is playing out so many worse scenarios right now that I'm having a hard time concentrating on anything.

or rather that's all Trump wants

xp

yeah, it's not all Pence wants, and maybe not Bannon either.

pretty sure he genuinely wants to reduce taxes for his wealthy friends. dunno if that is part of what you mean by money.

I am aware of the toothlessness of the War Powers Act Sanpaku. Nonetheless, I can see avowed "mavericks" I mentioned doing their best to frustrate Trump military adventures in the service of Russia.

xp

dunno if that is part of what you mean by money.

duh, of course it is!

wasn't sure if you just meant himself and his family.

well they would benefit from those tax cuts, so yes

staffing VA psych patients has been v interesting today

huh Congress trying to rally against this Bannon appointment:

BREAKING: Rep Cicilline circulating letter to colleagues asking @realDonaldTrump to rescind Bannon appointment. 120 co-signers so far.

Οὖτις:

I don't see Trump adventurism, outside of unilateral strikes on Iran, being nearly as great a problem as his signals that the U.S. won't stand behind S.Korea/Taiwan/Baltic States.

What happens if Trump says to Russia: we're not going to interfere with bombing East Aleppo? If he removes specops guys working with the FSA? Not much, really.

And, from the nottheonion file:

Ben Carson declines role in Trump administration because he 'feels he has no government experience'

Late on that headline, it seems.

popular vote deficit passed 1 mill! lol mandate

I'd figure the numbers on Trump's promises will start to add up quick. You got to figure it would cost probably 2-3 billion to try and deport 2-3 million people. That would only be a cost of legal and logistics of $1000 a case and I would figure that it could cost lots more per case than that.
― earlnash, Tuesday, November 15, 2016 2:15 PM (twenty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he could just ask Obama what it cost and then try to get a better deal tbh

being nearly as great a problem as his signals that the U.S. won't stand behind S.Korea/Taiwan/Baltic States.

def a problem. I'm sure he'll back them if they "promise to pay up" sad lol

Speaking of thte permanent Washington class:

Michelle Obama has burned off her date-night meals at Washington’s new generation of acclaimed restaurants by pedaling at SoulCycle. President Obama has shopped for Jonathan Franzen novels with his daughters at local independent bookstores. Obama administration staff members, their barhopping chronicled in the gossip pages, have hit the 14th Street hot spots hard.

Decades ago, Washington was broke and run by a mayor best known for smoking crack with a prostitute on a surveillance tape. Neighborhoods had not fully recovered from the 1968 riots, and an aging Georgetown elite still set the tone. The administrations of two Bushes and a Clinton in between hardly had an effect on the city.

But Mr. Obama’s arrival in 2009 coincided with an urban renaissance. Economic development, federal and private investment, and an influx of highly educated young, gay and diverse professionals gentrified neighborhoods, leading to an explosion in restaurants, bars and cafes. And the Obama family — African-American, youthful, attractive and urbane — were archetypes of a modern city on the upswing

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, November 14, 2016 10:13 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

after freaking out for a few days last week, we went to DC to visit some good friends this weekend. my wife and i went to college in DC from 2002-2006, the peak of the GWB years, and we were heavily involved in campus activism (particularly the anti-war movement during that time). we've been back to the city since then for obama's 2008 inauguration and a couple of other trips but we hadn't visited our old neighborhoods or the AU campus, so we made an effort to do that this time. it was very surreal, being reminded of that time, having an idiot president, that empowering feeling of being part of a "resistance" but still feeling helpless to affect things, seeing the traffic circle where we held our first major iraq war protest, driving past the campus buildings where we held our organizing meetings. i left DC by the time obama was elected and i often wished we stayed there during the crazy revitalization of DC during the obama years (which was obviously years in the making -- obama came with it but major DC development and gentrification had been happening for some time)

my friends and i all talked about how it was kind of a fantasy world with the obamas in the white house. some of our radicalism had faded during those years but probably less so bc of age and more that we just felt more comfortable knowing obama was running things? obv there was much to object to and protest against w/ obama but we all have had so much affection for him.

our best friends there are an interracial couple who are godparents to our youngest son. the wife, from a working-class italian-american family in boston, talked about how her father voted for trump while her biracial son (about 10 years old) was in tears when she shared the news that trump had won. she was so frustrated that her father could love his grandkids so much but not see how a trump presidency could affect them at all.

one of the other friends we saw this weekend was the one republican guy in our college group of friends. he's a weird dude. he played in a punk band and almost all his friends are pretty far left. he's an extremely moderate republican - the pro-business but socially liberal kind of moderate republican, and he said he abstained from voting this year. it was interesting to talk to him, over a lot of whiskey, and his view was that trump, until a few years ago, was basically a "manhattan democrat" and that i shouldn't worry so much, that he's probably the most moderate and socially liberal republican president we could get right now. he's not a trump fan by any means but he ultimately felt that he wasn't going to do much damage. i had to counter that this "manhattan democrat" basically started his political career attempting to delegitimize the first black president and among other very obvious (to us) things we should be extremely nervous and vigilant, he acknowledged those things are fucked up. but he mostly said we should just expect incompetence and corruption and that the huge, dangerous, and sweeping changes trump promised would be nearly impossible to achieve, that our system isn't really that tolerant of dramatic actions like that. anyways. just one moderate DC republican's pov, lol

just incompetence and corruption nbd

That's in my pile of best-case scenarios for sure. I'm not convinced that it matters what trump "is," which implies that he has some kind of principles.