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

Although if I were to make a prediction, I'll bet he tries to find an equivalent of the carrier deal in deportations -- something showy and headline grabbing that will please the base but not move the needle much.

I think every time Trump does something that presidents have not previously done, or doesn't do something that previous presidents have done, why those things have typically not been done or done becomes pretty obvious.

@ZaidJilani
Chuck Schumer congratulates Trump's pick for Secretary of the Army, who is also a Schumer donor

https://twitter.com/ZaidJilani/status/810914918409048068

lolol

the kinda guy who gets Chuck's respect

"Viola joined the New York Mercantile Exchange in 1982 and was its chairman from 2001 to 2004. But he owes his fortune to Virtu Financial, the electronic-trading outfit he founded in 2008. The company — which uses powerful computers to make large numbers of transactions at very high speeds — turned a profit on 1,484 of its first 1,485 days in operation. Michael Lewis, in 2014 his book “Flash Boys,” pointed to Virtu’s winning streak as evidence that high-frequency traders have a huge informational advantage over other investors. Viola took the company public in April 2015."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2016/12/19/five-things-to-know-about-vincent-viola-trumps-billionaire-pick-for-army-secretary/#5eefd44f6547

ty Morbs for the new display name

that is a good one

Should I start a thread that is just like "put your direst predictions/conjectures for the Trump years here"? Because I have a million of em but I don't want to just gum up this thread with my panicky mental chess game.

keep it in here imo

we already have a lot of dire trump/right wing emergence/facism threads

Ok, here's my newest fear: Executive branch, via chamber of commerce, controls the Census Bureau. I'm sure there are currently some safeguards/layers of independence in place, but wouldn't it be nice if the GOP could further entrench its gerrymandered majority by fucking with the census itself?

BTW GOP raised fears about Obama doing the same when he tried to take more control of the census in 2009, so it's on their radar.

Then after that the GOP will rid our drinking water of fluoride.

yeah that or a "what is your religion" question xxp

The Census is always a political football under best of circumstances -- historic tendency to undercount minorities, immigrants, urban populations in general. Not that anyone would want to do that on purpose for electoral advantage...

so, faithless electors are defecting on...Hillary? what the hell is going on here?

of course they are

Link?

ugh smh

i just see one elector doing that - in maine, switching from clinton to sanders

https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2016/12/19/maine-elector-says-vote-for-sanders-maine-elector-says-vote-for-sanders/rzVD3ijtgKObvn5dbvzddN/story.html

I mean the idea of defecting is dumb and dangerous but Trump's complete failure to divest himself or even divulge ANYTHING about his businesses or investments is (IMO) sort of the exact reason this system exists? So dumb.

http://komonews.com/news/local/wash-states-electoral-college-prepares-to-vote-as-protesters-gather-in-olympia

OLYMPIA, Wash. - Members of the Electoral College in Washington state cast their votes for president as protesters gathered at the Capitol on Monday.

Eight of the 12 members voted for Hillary Clinton, three voted for former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and one voted for Faith Spotted Eagle, a Native-American elder from South Dakota.

eh no it's not

i've seen reports from washington and minnesota too but i can't c/p right now

xpost
then his vote was ruled out of order and he switched his vote to clinton.
i guess there was a similar situation in minnesota, too:

Update: 2:55 p.m. ET: Another elector in Minnesota tried to defect from Clinton. Muhammad Abdurrahman, a former Sanders DNC delegate, cast a ballot for the Vermont senator but was removed from his office and replaced by an alternate who voted for Clinton as per Minnesota law before the state’s official totals were submitted.

http://www.salon.com/2016/12/19/maine-electoral-college-voter-defects-from-hillary-clinton-to-bernie-sanders/

so, faithless electors are defecting on...Hillary? what the hell is going on here?

Ha ha

this owns

someone was chaning from clinton to kasich

whatever, fuck all those people. looks like WW3 is breaking out. do we choose erdogan or putin? why not just eat a cyanide tablet

The people defecting from Clinton to Colin Powell or Kasich are doing so under the misguided belief that there are Republican electors with enough moxie to dump Trump, throwing the election to the House, and giving them a moderate Republican in third electoral place they can vote for. It's like throwing a bunch of laterals as time runs out. Everybody who thinks this situation is funny can fuck right off btw.

Why why why why

tbf most of them announced their attentions ahead of time, this is not surprising

@newtgingrich
Watch the alligators lose today as the electors vote. Draining the swamp begins in January.

@jeremyscahill
I feel like this is a coded message to some sleeper cell

the sharks are in the jacuzzi

the silver lining of this electoral college news is that at least the EC will be irrelevant within a decade

kev can you explain (or are u zinging tombot)

interesting proposal: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/can-we-fire-the-electoral-college-probably-not-but-we-can-put-it-under-new-management_us_585849dce4b08debb78a8b95?otapetwizw2v2huxr

pave the electoral college put up a parking lot

Hendrik Hertzberg has been proselytizing for several plans since 2001.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/03/06/count-em-2

it's time the electoral college

( •_•)
( •_•)>⌐■-■
(⌐■_■)

went on spring break

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CR8eagnU8AAuYFm.jpg

"several plans?" imho Hertzberg is a NPVIC convert like yours truly

in unimportant correction news I meant iirc not imho

I'm thinking the scenarios he used to which he used to devote early '00s New Yorker columns before settling on the NPVIC.

if the EC continues to benefit republicans and republican states is there any reason to believe something like the NPVIC will succeed?

Fuck these stupid electors.

Sometimes i feel like I must be hallucinating. The Trump I am seeing cannot be the same guy who was elected president.

i keep seeing 'npvic' and thinking it means 'new posts very much in character'

damn ilx

https://thinkprogress.org/under-political-pressure-kuwait-cancels-major-event-at-four-seasons-switches-to-trumps-d-c-1f204315d513#.th4grt63c

geez it's almost as if there oughta be something in the Constitution saying you aren't allowed to do that

"look, i don't know what kind of midwesterns you guys have met. on the whole they seem like nice people with a reputation for being overly polite.

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau)"

lol

i may possibly have met one or two midwesterners in my life :)

"rushomancy puts it best but got there too soon, should have sat on that post imho

― a Warren Beatty film about Earth (El Tomboto)"

oh, god, i can't time my zings, i have no life and even i can't keep up with this fucking thread :)

"i don't have any "ideas", and neither does anyone itt. i'm pretty pessimistic about the future and i just find the straw-grasping ("trump will be impeached, just watch", "the electoral college will be gone in 10 years", etc) laughable. finding humor in our shared doom is merely an ego defense

― k3vin k."

great, thanks for sharing, it's not like any of us are dealing with deep existential depression/dread ourselves, so it's really good to have somebody like you here to stan for nihilism.

"I want someone to run for Congress in one of these midwestern Trump districts with "kill all rich people" as their campaign slogan as a kind of test balloon.If anti elitism is what the people crave the Left shouldn't have a problem leveraging that. They invented it.

― Treeship"

'eat the rich' is catchier

"I've often thought of making a thread 'does your ilx posting history ensure that you can never run for public office'

― iatee"

i destroyed my prospects for public office way back in the usenet days. and also by not being born rich.

I think the extent to which people become fundamentally unserious about acting in a way that at least trends toward the common good is a fairly good barometer for the extent to which 'civilization' becomes a word with no meaningful referent. So, y'now, thanks, electors, for doing your part in nudging us just that little bit closer to the precipice.

(None of this is really unexpected by me, btw. I maintain a stupid flicker of hope even though I'm pretty sure I can see where the maniacal minority is steering this bus.)

eephus, i recommend developing respect for gallows humor as a survival mechanism, now more than ever as Hollywood usta say.