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

...better than secretary of defense... i suppose... ?

he can have an incompetence-off with condi

One of the articles about how really Trumps win was about the economy told the story that he went to Michigan and said that he would demand the Ford factory kept it's carmaking in Michigan, otherwise he'd levy a 35% tariff on imported Ford cars. How the fuck would he keep that promise? Well, he just tweeted that Ford won't move it's carmaking to Mexico. From Kentucky.

The Kentucky production was never getting moved to Mexico to begin with. Trump's known this for weeks. The Michigan cars will still move to Mexico. And none of this matters at all...

read that as "officially retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn's job as national security adviser" at first

So uh flynn's son

http://cnn.it/2g15qZ6

notably that position doesn't require a Senate confirmation

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/us/politics/rudolph-giuliani-possible-cabinet-pick-faces-scrutiny-over-finances.html

In 2006, Rudolph W. Giuliani, a former New York City mayor, made $10 million from 108 speeches he delivered around the world, and more money from other projects.

flynn got his ass fired for being a douche

xpost https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ohxbpP45Mzw

couldn't make it through that Remnick Obama piece, too sad

last paragraph is really good

The Richard Rorty excerpt (from 1998) in that Reminick piece is incredible:

"Something will crack," he wrote: "The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for--someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots. . . . One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. . . . All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet."

morelike David Rimlick

So Flynn is a complete shithead:
https://twitter.com/genflynn/status/703387702998278144

Breh

https://twitter.com/genflynn/status/753772080471179264

The more shit like this happens the less I can understand giving people a pass for voting for him on the grounds they didn't realize he was a racist

No no deej, you're crying wolf. If you're calling Flynn an islamophobe now, what will you then call a guy called who won't subsequently lie about having said those things, and then share a picture of himself eating a dürüm? Huh? And what will you do then?

can't believe how badly the liberal lamestream media dropped the ball on these guys prior to 11/9.

http://www.npr.org/2016/11/17/502476139/were-not-going-away-alt-right-leader-on-voice-in-trump-administration?sc=17&f=2

i was all over the Flynn stuff yesterday while the Shakey-Deej Revue was in center ring. Sad!

john r stanton
‏@dcbigjohn

Key Clinton fundraiser Heather Podesta touts connections to Trump transition in email to corporate clients

https://www.buzzfeed.com/johnstanton/lobbyists-have-no-clue-how-theyre-going-to-work-under-a-trum?utm_term=.ivAAgmjD9P#.dqdvnzYZOe

@ggreenwald 2h2 hours ago

Glenn Greenwald Retweeted john r stanton

How can you not love the bipartisan DC lobbyist class?

Sessions for AG (NYT)

Who knew Trump's job plan would mean giving jobs to all these unemployable losers.

Meanwhile, the interview with Mark Warner on the radio this morning about the intelligence community's checks on Trump was chilling. Not that they necessarily couldn't do it, but there was such a dark tone in his voice every time he had to say "let's hope that hypothetic does not come to pass" when asked how to would respond to an order to bring back something illegal, like torture

Nytimes (and other) editorials have been working overtime, but this brings up yet another issue with his inchoate policy:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/opinion/donald-trumps-plan-to-purge-the-nation.html

Observations in the piece:

Start with the fact that the target number is made up. There simply aren’t as many criminal immigrants as he imagines. According to rough estimates by the Migration Policy Institute, of the country’s 11 million unauthorized immigrants, about 820,000 have criminal records. About 300,000 of those have felony convictions and are presumably the bad people Mr. Trump is talking about. If he deports those and only those, it will be a remarkable display of law-enforcement discretion, since he said that there were lots of “terrific people” among the unauthorized who might be allowed to stay, “after the border is secured and after everything gets normalized.”

And yet he also said that two million to three million would go, a population about the size of Chicago’s. He would have to haul away a lot of terrific people, and terrorize many more, to hit that mark. This would require a vast conscription of state and local law enforcement against people who pose no threat. It would mean a surge in home and workplace raids, investigations and traffic stops.

It took the Obama administration eight years to deport 2.5 million immigrants. The threat of Mr. Trump chasing that number right off the bat is the reason immigrant communities are so terrified. But the damage won’t be immediate: He can’t just load two million people onto buses and planes and ship them out. He’ll first have to stuff them into the bottleneck of the immigration courts, where there are too few judges and lawyers for a swollen caseload, and fill detention cells to bursting. Mr. Trump may be unaware of due process, or in denial about it, but it exists.

Scalzi/TPM "Trump's Razor" remains in full effect, that when in doubt, stupid prevails. Which obviously does not mean Trump can't continue to fail forward, but short of changing laws just getting anything done legal takes time once he's in office. It is just inconceivable that a man whose selfish life has been about nothing but paying for shortcuts and finding ways to hide and move money to get his way will be able to tolerate true bureaucracy. I can't even see how Trump will smoothly make the transition from private figure to public servant.

Jeff Sessions is AG.

Times bullet-points:

President-elect Donald J. Trump has offered Jeff Sessions the post of attorney general, according to officials close to the transition.
Mr. Sessions was denied a federal judgeship by the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1986 because of racially charged comments.

He is no doubt a piece of shit.

On CBS News this morning, they said the Secret Service is working on making the glass in the Trump Tower penthouse bulletproof. That's right, folks...the glass in Trump Tower is currently not bulletproof. And this was announced on the news.

jeff sessions is bad news for marijuana legalization. This is a guy that said “Good People Don’t Smoke Marijuana” and that the only problem with the KKK was that they smoked weed.

"racially charged"

he's a firebrand!

controversial too!

The bulletproof glass thing got me thinking. Apart from the problem of having tons of branded properties all over the world that are now suddenly juicy targets for nefarious baddies, isn't Trump probably one of the most blackmailable people on earth? All the stuff that HASN'T come out.. All the financial shenanigans, all the hookers, all the sexual assault victims. People like that don't get security clearances right? Except he will.

In a sense yes, otoh he may be the least blackmailable in an effective sense, in that he ends up getting a pass on everything

yeah a tape is going to come out with him and two underage hookers and I'm sure we'll all just laugh it off

The American public won't even blink when Trump's spirit cooking tapes are released.

Hm. Guys, I'm beginning to think Trump might not make such a good president after all?

I wonder when the post-Brexit buyer's remorse will start to kick in on this one.

The bulletproof glass thing got me thinking. Apart from the problem of having tons of branded properties all over the world that are now suddenly juicy targets for nefarious baddies, isn't Trump probably one of the most blackmailable people on earth? All the stuff that HASN'T come out.. All the financial shenanigans, all the hookers, all the sexual assault victims. People like that don't get security clearances right? Except he will.

actually he's kinda unblackmailable since he's impervious to scandals!

The American public won't even blink when Trump's spirit cooking tapes are released.

just a healthy display of his alpha male dominance

xp err looks like everyone else pointed that out

Jeff Sessions is AG.

I don't really understand why people take these cabinet positions. is being AG a better gig than being a senator? it's not more prestigious, it doesn't make it easier to run for another office and it's a job with a fixed end date. being a senator in a safe state seems like a pretty good job.

Depends on what you want to achieve, I guess. AG has the power to get things done alone that a Senator can't do.

Kanye has unsurprisingly Kanye-esque thoughts about the election

It's a safe bet Kanye will win the presidency in 2020.

I wonder when the post-Brexit buyer's remorse will start to kick in on this one.

kinda getting irritated by all the people praising him for doing some not-horrible things - meeting with Romney, for example. just saw a surrogate say something like "he doesn't care about personal grudges, he just wants the best person for the job" like...oh really?

now this lobbyist ban actually looks like something useful, though I'm sure Trump himself won't abide by it, and I think that goodwill is undone by his position on campaign finance laws, which would essentially let one filthy rich person bankroll a campaign by themselves

I mean, seriously

“It goes back to Trump’s goal to make sure people aren’t using government to enrich themselves,” transition spokesman Sean Spicer said on a call with reporters.

are we not talking about the guy who funneled a ton of donor money through his own businesses? the guy who jacked up his own campaign office's rent fivefold?

They guy who charged the Secret Service $1.6 million to fly on his private 747.

I think we should look to Brazil as instructive -- when corruption is endemic, it's very easy for a corrupt party in power to use it against a corrupt party not in power. I don't think democrats are exactly free of corruption, and it will make them vulnerable.

btw if you follow him on Twitter he's been talking about "saving" a Ford plant which uh...wasn't going anywhere

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/us/politics/donald-trump-takes-credit-for-helping-to-save-a-ford-plant-that-wasnt-closing.html?_r=0

This is one of his strangest and most disgusting qualities - how many times during the debates did he say "nobody talked about this before I brought it up"? Same mentality which sees the birther crusade as a favor to Barack Obama. Dude is nuts.

he's just shameless. his supporters are certifiable though.

A useful thing in general that I'm trying to remind myself: Trump, his campaign and his supporters rely heavily on trolling. They may or may not believe what they/he says at all times. But they definitely want to rile us up to the point of paralysis and unclear thinking, and I'm trying to avoid that.

kanye is so fucking dumb