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

i want to rule it out because i hate conspiracy theories but somehow it seems possible to me

whatever happened to oppo dump

xpost

that, and actually makes me start wondering about brexit

Not convinced by any conspiracy talk so far, but it did occur to me in the last few days before the election that if there were indeed plans to somehow rig the election, Trump's repeatedly hinting that he might dispute the results thus forcing Democrats to strongly defend the democratic process and the legitimacy of the results would have been a pretty smart move.

never attribute to malice what can be explained by systemic racism and the electoral college

my faith is democracy is already pretty rocked by the loser of this election getting 2.5 million more votes than the winner

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/11/activists-urge-hillary-clinton-to-challenge-election-results.html

Hillary Clinton is being urged by a group of prominent computer scientists and election lawyers to call for a recount in three swing states won by Donald Trump, New York has learned. The group, which includes voting-rights attorney John Bonifaz and J. Alex Halderman, the director of the University of Michigan Center for Computer Security and Society, believes they’ve found persuasive evidence that results in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania may have been manipulated or hacked. The group is so far not speaking on the record about their findings and is focused on lobbying the Clinton team in private.

Last Thursday, the activists held a conference call with Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and campaign general counsel Marc Elias to make their case, according to a source briefed on the call. The academics presented findings showing that in Wisconsin, Clinton received 7 percent fewer votes in counties that relied on electronic-voting machines compared with counties that used optical scanners and paper ballots. Based on this statistical analysis, Clinton may have been denied as many as 30,000 votes; she lost Wisconsin by 27,000. While it’s important to note the group has not found proof of hacking or manipulation, they are arguing to the campaign that the suspicious pattern merits an independent review — especially in light of the fact that the Obama White House has accused the Russian government of hacking the Democratic National Committee.

i'm not an expert in the field but apparently halderman is a serious person whose opinion should have weight

each election should be independently verified imo.

i'm pretty sure any attempt to audit the vote would be a total shitshow - immediately politicized, trump voters claiming "they're trying to steal the election" -- there's already such a void of legitimacy in the govt (for v good reasons) that it would be impossible to reach a conclusion that would not leave a substantial portion of the country feeling cheated

the only way this would succeed without, ah, conflict is if it triggered any constitutional reconsiderations, but that ain't happening. This is one of the few shoe-is-on-the-the-other foot scenarios: according to the rules, Clinton lost, and I sure as hell wouldn't want Trump contesting results if he had won the popular vote.

otm

there'd have to be some kind of smoking gun. supposedly WI is already doing its own recount. if they announced that they found evidence of tampering - like let's say after inauguration day - that would presumably trigger a huge crisis

ghosts in the data is not enough - you need a smoking gun

though i would have thought digital only counties would be urban counties given the higher cost, and urban counties would have skewed blue, not the other way around

there's no good solution to this mess apart from maybe going back in time and stopping donald trump from existing

or going back in time and grabbing Madison, Hamilton, and Morris by the lapels.

She won't do it

sad

!

fwiw 538 crew thinks fraud claims are spurious cf nate's twitter feed

there's already such a void of legitimacy in the govt (for v good reasons) that it would be impossible to reach a conclusion that would not leave a substantial portion of the country feeling cheated

― Mordy, Wednesday, November 23, 2016 12:04 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The electoral college system does this already, also only having two parties

is it better to have the republic destroyed by constitutional crisis or nazis

Reichstag firesale

Ana Navarro going off on Kayleigh McEnany

Lawmakers in Erie, PA have introduced a bill to ban "conversion therapy." http://www.wkbw.com/news/law-introduced-to-ban-conversion-therapy-in-erie-county

In a demonstration of A+ trolling, check out the acronym:

Erie County Legislator Patrick Burke introduced "Prevention of Emotional Neglect and Childhood Endangerment," which will be debated in December and into the New Year.

@mitchellvii
When Trump looks at an apple, he doesn't just see the apple, he sees the soil and the tree and the farmer and the rain.

Trust him.

Bill Mitchell is the drummer in Gay Dad.

The only curiosity he has about that apple is what it might've said about him behind his back.

we don't even know who these apples are, in some cases

Trump is Mao now

In a demonstration of A+ trolling, check out the acronym:

This is a good start.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/22/politics/hillary-clinton-challenge-results/index.html

not gonna happen

well yeah

talked about upthread a bit

oh!

so have all the votes been counted yet or is that something we have to wait till 2017 for

halderman:

https://medium.com/@jhalderm/want-to-know-if-the-election-was-hacked-look-at-the-ballots-c61a6113b0ba#.19ly1ivsg

reading this thing make my head hurt

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/23/us/politics/trump-new-york-times-interview-transcript.html?smid=tw-share

his tendency to just be an empty vessel repeating random things people said to him is so pronounced there. 4 years of the big lebowski.

there was a Dubya advisor on NPR this morning saying there should be no presidential press conferences for the first 6 months; the risk of spontaneity is too great.

there should be no presidential press conferences for the first 6 months; the risk of spontaneity is too great.

it was speechwriter Mike Gerson, actaully:

http://www.npr.org/2016/11/23/503108932/former-bush-speechwriter-weighs-in-trumps-message-post-election

also, supershit Leon Panetta has a nice chuckle here over our possible Defense Secretary:

http://www.npr.org/2016/11/23/503108883/leon-panetta-weighs-in-on-the-shaping-of-trumps-security-team

lol @ him attempting to appoint Ben Carson to *something* (despite Carson's insistence that he doesn't have the experience) just to have a black guy in his Cabinet

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/donald-trump-waterboarding-change-mind

now thinks waterboarding is "not going to make the kind of a difference that a lot of people are thinking."

got to the climate change part of that NYT transcript and almost threw my phone across the room. also fuck everyone in that room for apparently just chuckling and moving on at his vapid handwaving around the alt-right and why they might seem energized by his candidacy.

rrrrrgggggh. fuck everybody because hey, we are all fucked anyway.

the NY Times leadership needs to save their phoney-baloney jobs

harrumph

So much money, so little oversight, we're going to get stuff like this every day, and he's not even president yet:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/trump-adviser-received-salary-from-charity-while-steering-breitbart-news/2016/11/22/75340778-af8a-11e6-8616-52b15787add0_story.html

Donald Trump’s chief White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon accepted $376,000 in pay over four years for working 30 hours a week at a tiny tax-exempt charity in Tallahassee while also serving as the hands-on executive chairman of Breitbart News Network.

During the same four-year period, the charity paid about $1.3 million in salaries to two other journalists who said they put in 40 hours a week there while also working for the politically conservative news outlet, according to publicly available documents filed with the Internal Revenue Service.

The salary payments are one part of a close relationship between the nonprofit Government Accountability Institute, a conservative investigative research organization, and for-profit Breitbart News.

Under Bannon’s leadership, Breitbart has become the clarion of the alt-right, a term embraced by conservatives estranged from mainstream Republicans and decried by those on the left as racist and xenophobic.

The news site has produced a torrent of incendiary articles about race, immigration, liberals and moderate Republicans. It has been one of the most prominent supporters of Trump and a leading critic of Hillary Clinton.

“We think of ourselves as virulently anti-establishment, particularly ‘anti-’ the permanent political class,” Bannon told The Washington Post in January.

Trump’s selection of Bannon as a senior adviser has drawn widespread criticism from Democrats and others.

The ties between the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) and Breitbart call into question the assertions the institute made in filings to the IRS that it is an independent, nonpartisan operation, according to philanthropic specialists and former IRS officials.

Bannon launched the institute in 2012, shortly after taking the helm of Breitbart. He sought tax-exempt status from the IRS by describing the institute as an education group to help the United States and other countries maintain a “higher quality of life” through “promotion of economic freedom,” according to IRS filings.

yeah it is seriously insane the amount of corruption and conflicts of interest that apparently are just going to go unchecked

double lol that Hillary lost because people had doubts about her "ethics"