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

So how many actual billionaires has this chord appointed so far? Two? Three?

President-elect Donald Trump has received two classified intelligence briefings since his surprise election victory earlier this month, a frequency that is notably lower — at least so far — than that of his predecessors, current and former U.S. officials said.

A team of intelligence analysts has been prepared to deliver daily briefings on global developments and security threats to Trump in the two weeks since he won. Vice President-elect Mike Pence, by contrast, has set aside time for intelligence briefings almost every day since the election, officials said.

Officials involved in the Trump transition team cautioned against assigning any significance to the briefing schedule that the president-elect has set so far, noting that he has been immersed in the work of forming his administration, and has made filling key national security posts his top priority.

But others have interpreted Trump’s limited engagement with his briefing team as an additional sign of indifference from a president-elect who has no meaningful experience on national security issues and was dismissive of U.S. intelligence agencies’ capabilities and findings during the campaign.

A senior U.S. official who receives the same briefing delivered to President Obama each day said that devoting time to such sessions would help Trump get up to speed on world events.

“Trump has a lot of catching up to do,” the official said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-turning-away-intelligence-briefers-since-election-win/2016/11/23/5cc643c4-b1ae-11e6-be1c-8cec35b1ad25_story.html

his ineptitude plus the buyer's remorse that is likely to show itself in six months is the only silver lining, if it even is that.

mid-terms are going to be tough too, gotta put a lot of effort into getting at least one branch of Congress back.

xxp:
Needs to be mentioned (again and again), the Voting Rights Act, and in particular the 1982 amendments to it passed by a Democratic congress, were the best thing to happen to the Republican party. A legal mandate to create 50% minority districts gave a lot of minority legislators job security, but wiped out Democratic representation in the 'burbs. Add in the benefits of incumbency, and the general election hasn't been competitive in most of the country's legislative races for the past 26 years.

There's been discussions in the voting rights legal literature of that reducing the mandate (I've seen 30% minority), would expand the effective political power of minorities, but its up to the Federal judiciary, and that means we're screwed.

Yep. Read Ari Berman's Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America.

There is no chance the Dems is getting any branch of government back. Not unless they win the Louisiana runoff now. There are eight GOP seats up, and while Nevada should be doable, and perhaps Arizona with a lot of effort, which one out of Mississippi, Nebraska, Tennessee, Texas, Utah or Wyoming is even remotely plausible?

The Dems should mount a challenge against Ted Cruz, if only to build up a Democrat base in Texas for the future. There's also a distinct possibility that the longer the people of Texas get to know Ted Cruz, the more repulsed they are of him, like anyone else who has ever spent time with the guy.

Would Cecile Richards be interested?

x-post: I also imagine Orrin Hatch has to retire this time? If so, Utah should be without an incumbent, and should definitely be ripe for at least a stronger democratic state party building on distaste for Trump. So there's a lot to do, and a shitload of seats to be defended against, but realistically no hope of a senate takeover.

Cecile Richards would be a disaster and discouraging.

If anything, the Castro Twins should be looked at it.

as far as Democrats have no shot in 2018 yada yada yada - there's no telling what might befall the country before then. This is shaping up to be the most corrupt administration in history - two months before inauguration.

strike the 'it'

It will be a great test of our country, that is for sure. Like the commercial that determines whether a suitcase can survive being thrown around by a gorilla.

Cecile unfortunately would spend the entire campaign being called a racist baby-killer only to have her ass handed to her by the most hated man in DC

jill stein recount up to 3.3 mil.

what if she's doing this bc she knows that there will be evidence of russian vote tampering. even one smoking gun, even if there was no evidence that it changed the results, would throw the entire system into disarray.

milo, yeah, anything can happen, but again, the map is that D has 25 seats and R has 8 up for election in 2018, and D has to get three more, so... And the house... How to get over the gerrymandering? Perhaps state elections is the best way to go, if anyone wanted to do something useful, put a calendar together for the next state elections.

Most of those Dem seats are pretty safe unless the country has somehow gone full Triumph of the Will, in which case we're all painfully fucked anyway.

It looks bad but it's not as bad 25 to 8.

It's literally 25 to 8.

The popular vote total is going to wind up with about 2.5 million more for Clinton.

This is a Constitutional crisis. The electoral college should not vote Trump in.

And yet, if they don't, we will have a constitutional crisis.

Tbh neither scenario presents a constitutional crisis since in both cases the EC would be acting within its constitutional bounds. Getting faithless electors to throw the election to the House (which would be extremely extremely unlikely, tho easier if Stein's recounts ended up flipping a state or two) would maybe put a lot of congresspeople in awkward no-win positions politically, but constitutionally it's all accounted for. Whether disgruntled partisans see it that way is another story, obv.

Only state elections in 2017 are in Virginia and New Jersey. Can't imagine any R following Christie, but if anyone wants to prepare for midterms, there must be some seats in the Virginia house up for grabs. And D governor is term limited.

and mayor of Seattle! Our current democrat is pretty weaksauce, hopefully we'll elect a better democrat

This seems like a good place to start:

https://www.flippable.org

at least we have a president who understands the face is everything guide to the internet ! am i right

https://www.flippable.org/

can't hurt

and there's this guy
http://www.vice.com/read/house-of-cards-beau-willimon-call-to-action

Also, anyone joined that Sanders thing, Our Revolution? Does it do anything?

It sates my liberal self-satisfaction!

Saw a talk by Jenna Lowenstein (HRC campaign Digital Director) today - in addition to screening the intro video the campaign made for HRC's entrance, had she won on the night - spooky and sad alt history - [...]

― attention vampire (MatthewK), Thursday, November 24, 2016 7:26 AM (ten hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

whoa, i would love to see this - any chance it'll go public?

xp no idea - although she said we were the first to see it and it'll probably never be seen, I can't imagine they would release it. It was a mood piece tracking people going to vote, expressions of hope and excitement, leading to a statement about doing it together. Major emphasis was on diversity. Entirely predictable in mood / content, but I found it very poignant as you might expect. It was shown at a campaigner / organiser conference in Sydney, Australia and Lowenstein was here to speak in person. It visibly affected her to watch it as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCkmOCsI-hc

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-propaganda-effort-helped-spread-fake-news-during-election-experts-say/2016/11/24/793903b6-8a40-4ca9-b712-716af66098fe_story.html

this is a little light on evidence (the report comes out tomorrow) but is pretty scary

I guess the Chechen-backed Clinton fake news machine just didn't stand a chance.

I thought this was interesting, examining how stupid it would be to build an even bigger US Navy when the CIC doesn't care for the things that having near-total control of 71% of the Earth's surface is supposed to be good for:

http://thediplomat.com/2016/11/a-us-navy-with-350-ships-but-what-for/

But basically if you've had enough of pieces explaining why Trump's positions make no sense and are stupid, you can skip it

Basically at this point this is largely a phoney war - the people we can't get reliable information from about what Donald Trump will do are a)anyone who isn't him and b) anyone who is.

RT stories are really abundant through google searches. I've also seen high profile figures interviewed there, and it generally looks very official. Is that a propaganda outlet?

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/307521-report-trump-team-wants-romney-to-apologize

lol?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/11/22/we-dont-need-the-fcc-a-trump-advisers-proposal-to-dissolve-americas-telecom-watchdog/?wpisrc=nl_most-draw5&wpmm=1

good-bye net neutrality

black lols on a black friday: http://money.cnn.com/2016/11/25/news/trump-black-friday-sale/index.html

RT stories are really abundant through google searches. I've also seen high profile figures interviewed there, and it generally looks very official. Is that a propaganda outlet?

― Treeship, Friday, November 25, 2016 8:49 AM (yesterday)

AHAHAHAH

tbf it's probably too sophisticated to be called a "propaganda outlet" and some of its reporting is good, but it is 100% state-run media.

So anyone else feeling like recount is a massive waste of time and resources right now? Anything that doesn't have "2018" in it, other than maybe Foster Campbell's senate run, is not of interest to me.

This kinda throws it into sharp relief:

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-identity-politics-trump-election-20161123-story.html

"You can blame us self-absorbed Berkeley liberals for the election results — but not our identity politics"

― (rocketcat) (kingfish), Wednesday, November 23, 2016 9:25 PM (three days ago)

I have no idea where she's getting the things the left weren't saying to the "far left" because for over a month leading up to the election my fb feed was 75% back and forth arguing between people on the left and "far left" saying the things she says they weren't saying. Granted there were plenty of people that just avoided social media because they didn't want to deal with their friends having these arguments. But it's very WTF that this writer is saying that these arguments weren't happening.

So anyone else feeling like recount is a massive waste of time and resources right now? Anything that doesn't have "2018" in it, other than maybe Foster Campbell's senate run, is not of interest to me.

Are you kidding? The Clinton Coup has begun right on time. They've been gaming this since Team Hillary cancelled the fireworks 3 days before election night. With the recount, Jill gets her 5% and Hillary gets installed somehow. You think I'm wrong? Remember, I told y'all Hillary would lose. The only questions now are, how does Podesta pull it off and will we have a Civil War? Hope you're happy.

xx-post: Virginia state legislature. New Jersey gubernatorial election. Plenty more stuff to do before 2018!

Also, how the fuck did 'gubernatorial' become a word?

lmao Iago the recount will change nothing you massive idiot

Iago, the conspiracy theory my leftists have been circulating is that Stein called for the recount because she knows from Putin that there will for sure be a smoking gun that will demonstrate hacking and between trump voters protesting and hillary voters protesting and the massive discrediting of our electoral system it'll bring down american democracy

One of the major revelations of social media is how unintelligent a lot of people are.

honestly can't even tell if iago is just messing with us now