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

and fucking ben carson for hud too hurts. goddamn it

Yeah almost like how a whole party is anti-government and pro-freedom yet strives to run the government so they can restrict freedoms.

xposts

otm man alive

I think it would be a mistake to abandon fact-checking and whatnot, but it's also a mistake to think "Oh the voters are just misinformed and if only we could get them the right facts..."

As long as 50+ million people think your facts are merely YOURS, and they have THEIRS (which they are perfectly happy with), the effort may be depressingly futile.

xxxp yeah that pick really stings, the idea that you could nominate someone who spent their career fighting the EPA as the god damn head of the agency is just mind-blowingly evil

― frogs

check this out: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3418-2004Jul21.html

As long as 50+ million people think your facts are merely YOURS, and they have THEIRS (which they are perfectly happy with), the effort may be depressingly futile.

― troops in djibouti (Ye Mad Puffin), Thursday, December 8, 2016 11:52 AM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And while I don't want to draw false equivalencies, I see plenty of people on the democrat side running with unverified stories that *feel* right to them, e.g. a lot of the stuff that went around about russian interference with the election. Not saying this didn't happen, but some of the stories were pretty shaky and people just ran with them.

the idea that you could nominate someone who spent their career fighting the EPA as the god damn head of the agency is just mind-blowingly evil

Pretty sure I've told the story before of how I was working for the HHS Office on Women's Health in 2001? Most Feds in most departments soldier on and do the jobs they set out to do; others get sidelined by wacky changed priorities from above.

re: agency heads opposed to the agencies, here's another one: http://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-expected-to-name-fast-food-executive-andy-puzder-as-labor-secretary-1481210445

stomach-turning.

check this out: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3418-2004Jul21.html

lol I did not know about this

Normally Linda McMahon would probably the most "lol, you're surely just trolling now" pick so far. Yet I know actual people who are likely going to have to struggle under the very real consequences, so I'm not yukking it up anymore.

xxxp yeah that pick really stings, the idea that you could nominate someone who spent their career fighting the EPA as the god damn head of the agency is just mind-blowingly evil

― frogs

check this out: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3418-2004Jul21.html

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, December 8, 2016 11:52 AM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thanks for posting that -- it is hardly comforting in any way but apart from the truly wacko general flynn and ben carson are there any appointees that wouldn't be just be typical shitty GOP ones?

betsy devos sounds like someone GWB would nominate

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yeah, she was obviously kind of legendary among the old school at EPA. when i first started i would ask about how shitty it was under stephen johnson, and often the answer would eventually turn to something like "well of course it was nothing compared to Gorsuch". it's interesting that even reagan was human enough to put William Ruckelshaus (the first EPA administrator, back in 70-73) back in charge after the Gorsuch debacle. he was actually pretty good. it's strange to think of a time when republicans weren't necessarily enemies of human health and the environment

Debilitating brain drain from the federal government is still probably a couple of years off; as YMP states, people soldier on for the most part. The non-political leadership positions, like career folks in policy offices and career staff positions close to the appointees, and executives who directly report to the appointees - those will probably turn over fast.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/12/liberal-civil-servants-horrified-at-trump.html

i know this is not the party line on this but...all this guy seems to be calling for is spin. which, ok, if you're a linguist (as this guy is) and not a journalist, i can see why that would be attractive

I don't think so; spin operates at a more superficial level than the deeper idea architecture

His response seems more an effort to change how your bog-standard reporter reports this stuff, to change it from the lazy-ass received wisdom practitces they get from their colleagues

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/12/6/1606610/-With-Biden-in-the-chair-on-Jan-3-the-Senate-can-confirm-a-renominated-Merrick-Garland-Here-s-how

a thought from overseas: Americans abroad are frequently thought of by locals as big and bumbling, rich but undiscerning, easily taken advantage of, in short, marks. "Not all Americans abroad": but enough. They're easy money.

the US president-elect and his advisors all seem to be tangled in various foreign intrigues presumably in order to get rich quick. With Turkey, Russia, Ukraine, Taiwan, etc. Are they marks too? does the US government become a mark?

Throwing the entire preamble about expats out as being goofy and a little offensive, you are OTM on the second part hoo boy and how.

Trump is sitting pretty now because he's indisputably King Con of the US but I can see him (and by extension us) getting played pretty hard by confidence men of other nations, yep.

i thought the preamble was common knowledge or at least a very widely held view

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The aforementioned liberal civil servants should become well versed in intentional incompetence and foot-dragging. Maybe just by doing a bad job they can keep Trump from doing a worse job.

they've been doing it since January 1981

the problem is that incompetence and foot-dragging in the federal government is the goal of the trump administration, and really just republicans in general. their vision is realized by federal employees doing less, not by them doing more.

xpost

it's not like january 21 is going to be filled with grand sweeping initiatives in every little program office across all the federal agencies. most feds are mired in the day-to-day slog of implementing statutes that are decades old and long forgotten by nearly everyone that isn't directly working on them. trump's cronies won't infiltrate all these offices and give them orders to go murder innocent people. they'll just sit in the basement with the lights off like the guy in Office Space, hoping that they'll continue to get a minimally viable budget. or they'll just be asked to produce fact sheets. and then revise those fact sheets. and then update the website. redesigning the website takes YEARS.

the truly vile shit isn't implemented at the lowly staff level, it comes from a combo of endless meaningless timewasting directives to occupy the vast majority of feds on one hand, and the intentional surgical wrecking of more prominent policy shops (e.g., climate change regulations) on the other.

Karl otm

ive got to assume alot of the spy agencies out there have a decent sized file on trump already..

remember Russia has a sex tape of him with underaged prostitutes

i do wonder what kind of things might come up once people start breaking NDAs but sitting around waiting for that to happen was ultimately a waste of time during the election

no fucking way you can enforce an nda once the transition begins. theyre government employees now where they want to be or not.

opportunity dumps any day now

The aforementioned liberal civil servants should become well versed in intentional incompetence and foot-dragging. Maybe just by doing a bad job they can keep Trump from doing a worse job.

― Josh in Chicago

i'm assuming the declassified '44 oss sabotage manual has gotten around pretty thoroughly by now, right?

Yes but it's always worth another block quote or three

the thing that fascinates me about that manual is that to me it seems like a dual propaganda purpose, that it was written under the assumption that it would be confiscated and read and that doing so would further spread paranoia. leaders of the regime would start suspecting anybody who advocated for due diligence or quality control as possible saboteurs. you start cracking down on people you think are "foot-draggers" and all of a sudden your bombs start blowing up in the faces of your soldiers.

colbert did a pizzagate segment last night

the youtube landed today. it has 6,650 comments

i don't want to imagine the shit that would be found in that comment section .

It's not very imaginative

glad to see Colbert getting more righteous tbh

Imagine running a wildly profitable fast food chain. Every morning your dozens of franchises open up run smoothly; workers come in, keep things neat, provide quality customer service, keep the profits rolling in. Imagine this system allows you to become a multi millionaire.

Now imagine lobbying in order to repeal overtime pay provisions for these same employees, so that they can work 50, 60 hours a week without getting time and a half. Imagine penning an op ed for the walll street journal against any minimum wage increase, even though most of your franchises are in california, which has a high cost of living.

Imagine championing automation as a way to save money by putting your workers out of a job -- the same workers whose labor allows you to be a millionaire. Imagine making smug jokes on camera about how they machines are never rude and don't talk back and things to that effect.

Now imagine being named secretary of labor by a president elect who ran on a "populist" message.

This is too grotesque to even comprehend. Feels like Trump is going out of his way to spit in the faces of the working class people who voted for him. His appointees have long track records of trying to destroy these voters' livelihoods.

duh

time honored tradition going back to Reagan or maybe Nixon

now imagine none of trumps supporters actually giving a fuck about how this guy is terrible for them or why. they have no interest in lifting their heads out of their echo chambers, and no interest in ever considering that they might be wrong.

Also remember that a lot of Trump's voters -- most -- aren't working class. A lot of them live in the suburbs and when they go to fast-food restaurants it's to eat, not to clock in. They're people like the guy I heard today -- a guy who works in a profession that prides itself on being blue-collar, but still has health benefits and a pension -- talking dismissively about people who "think you should get paid 15 bucks an hour to flip burgers."

Now imagine that everything you imagined is real! Especially the flying piranha demons

That's true tipsy, but a good amount of trump's supporters still seemed to be under the impression that he's stick up for ordinary people against entrenched interests. The head of carl's jr is an enemy of ordinary people.

*he'd

Republican voters do not recognize fast food workers, or minimum-wage employees in general, as ''ordinary people'' though.

LOL what First Amendment?

The Lincoln Memorial has been the site for many of the United States’ most historic rallies, from the civil rights and anti-Vietnam protests of the 1960s to the Million Man March in 1995. However, for the thousands of women planning to march on Washington following Donald Trump’s inauguration, the D.C, landmark won’t be available for rallying.

According to The Guardian, the National Park Service, on behalf of the Presidential Inauguration Committee, has blocked access to the landmark by filing a “massive omnibus blocking permit.” This will bar protesters from most of the National Mall, Pennsylvania Avenue, the Washington Monument, and of course, the Lincoln Memorial for days and weeks before, during, and after the inauguration, which will take place on Jan. 20, 2017.

The Women’s March on Washington was organized for January 21, the day following the inauguration and was set to be held at the Lincoln Memorial. According to a Facebook event, over 136,000 people are due to attend. Now, with the blocking of access to many of the spaces commonly used to protest, participants will have to find space elsewhere—no easy feat considering how few public spaces to gather will be free during the time period surrounding the inauguration.

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, said in a press conference for the Answer (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Coalition, said that she’s worked on court battles for protest access on inauguration before, but this instance is “extremely unique” in that it banned access to public land (which Answer Coalition’s press release notes, are “historic spaces for dissent”) for protesters days after the inauguration.

“It hasn’t come up in any way previously, where you’ve had a groundswell of people trying to have access on the Saturday, January 21, and thousands of people want to come, and the government is saying we won’t give you a permit,” she said. “What they’ve done is take all of these spaces out of action.”

Mark Litters, a Park Service spokesman, told The Guardian that the blocked-off spaces are “construction zones, effectively.”

mark litters of the park service? c'mon that can't be a real person, it's too perfect