One Month After the Election...

As of right now, Hillary Clinton has received 65.4 million votes. Donald Trump has received 62.8 million votes. And yet 80,000 people in only three states decided this election. What does that tell you?

It tells me a few things

1. The math has officially become absurd.

2. People that whine about the tyranny of the elite are hypocrites if they think that 80,000 people in three states can decide what is best for the rest of us. 

3. Trump has no mandate. There was no Brexit style rebuke of the establishment. More people in this country voted against him or are ambivalent.

4. Vladimir Putin is laughing his ass off  at how easily the right wing in this country has been duped by fake news and propaganda designed to bring out the worse aspects of nationalism and authoritarianism (racism, xenophobia etc). And they call the left "useful idiots?" Keep an eye on what Putin does in the next four years.

Weather Channel To Brietbart: Shut The Fuck Up

The Weather Channel issued the following statement today.


And, because several readers have requested it, here is the list of all the bullshit arguments climate deniers make fully and completely refuted by peer reviewed science.

If You Are a Right Wing Blogger or Right Wing Blog Commenter...

Anyone that has frequented right wing blogs as I have knows that their news sources are largely full of crap. Considering that they are being utilized in a "Lenin-useful idiot" sort of way by Russian companies (and Vladimir Putin) working to undermine the United States takes the bullshit to a whole new level.

Of course, it's entirely possible that they aren't really being scammed and are doing all of this willfully. If this is indeed the case, then my previous thoughts on the liberals with a little "l" are confirmed. They, not the liberals they foam at the mouth about, are the authoritarians. It's not really all that surprising given their predilection for bombast, hysteria, and out and out bullying.

The recent shooting at the pizzeria in Washington DC illustrates just how serious this issue has become. Making the matters worse is President Elect Trump's choice for national security adviser, Michael G Flynn. Apparently, Flynn and his son are quite the purveyors of fake news.

The elder Flynn, who served as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency before he was pushed out by the Obama administration in 2014, called attention to the phony story just days before the election last month with a breathless posting on Twitter: “U decide - NYPD Blows Whistle on New Hillary Emails: Money Laundering, Sex Crimes w Children, etc...MUST READ!” Hours after the gunman was apprehended, the younger Flynn renewed his support for the lie. “Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it’ll remain a story,” Michael G. Flynn said on Twitter late Sunday evening. “The left seems to forget #PodestaEmails and the many ‘coincidences’ tied to it.”

Well, that's just great. Everything that we hear is true until proven otherwise. I've said many, many times that this ideology is a national security threat and now they are in charge of national security? Worse, supporters are cheering this on as if this a blog comments section that they so desperately need to "win." I'm wondering what goes through their heads when they read this:

The son traveled with his father to Moscow last year, according to family associates, where his father was seated beside Russian President Vladi­mir Putin at a gala thrown by RT, the Kremlin-controlled propaganda news outlet.

Could this BE any more obvious?

If you are a right wing blogger or right wing blog commenter who has warned us all about the boiling pit of sewage that is communism and are now ignoring this...blaming the liberal media for this...downplaying this as nothing...or secretly embracing this because you are a closet authoritarian...

a). kindly go fuck yourself
b). see someone in the mental health profession because your mind isn't right
c). stop trying to throw our country into the shitter just because you are afraid of progress and aren't getting your way.

This isn't a game anymore, folks.

Great Response!

11h

Donald J. Trump 

✔ @realDonaldTrump

Just tried watching Saturday Night Live - unwatchable! Totally biased, not funny and the Baldwin impersonation just can't get any worse. Sad

 Follow

ABFoundation 

✔@ABFalecbaldwin

...@realDonaldTrump

Release your tax returns and I'll stop.
Ha

11:34 PM - 3 Dec 2016

 
•  12,88412,884 Retweets
 
•  31,47831,478 likes

A Liberal Elitist Speaks

As a member of the liberal elite in the US, why am I responsible for the poor life choices and willful ignorance of other people? As a teacher and highly educated person, I've been told in this election by voters, pundits and the right wing media that I am a smug liberal who has been taught a lesson now that Trump has won. Apparently it's my know it all ness and desire for progression that offends them.

At the core of this issue is the concept of responsibility. Far too many people don’t want to take responsibility for their lot in life and want to blame others for their choices. The factory worker in the Rust Belt who voted for Trump and is angry about the liberal elites would serve him or her self better by accepting that the computer chip, not the faux boogieman of media/Democrats/Progressives/academics.

It’s not their fault that he/her chose their path in life. People who are filled with anger, hate and fear need to scapegoat and are incapable of taking responsibility for themselves. It always has to be the fault of someone else and why not someone who is more accomplished and intelligent? In the final analysis, this kind of stuff (seen in the OP’s link) is petty jealousy and insecurity.

Of course, the bigger issue of the coming Trump presidency is not so much the man himself but the masses that will believe when he refuses to accept the responsibility of his actions. They will cheer him because they too always love to blame others, specifically the media and liberals, for their actions not really working out in reality.

We live in a post truth world. and when the reality of the 21st century starts to sink in, the authoritarians like Trump and his supporters will do what their ilk always do: find a scapegoat. Some would argue that they already have…

Ten Days After: Harassment and Intimidation in the Aftermath of the Election

Oh, The Irony...

Right wing bloggers love to haul out H. L. Mencken and use his writings as some sort of prophecy towards the doom that liberal are all leading us towards. How fitting that this cartoon has recently been making the rounds...

At What Point Does The Math Become Absurd?

Clinton Lead Tops 2.5 Million as Trump Popular Vote Lie Spreads

And that's not even the worst part of this piece...

The apparent origin of the 3 million figure and that false claim that Trump would have won the popular vote had it not been for illegal voters—cited by both the Trump supporter and the candidate himself—is the conspiracy theory web site Infowars. Trump, by the way, called Infowars founder Alex Jones to thank him for his support after the election and has appeared on his show.

I wonder if Alex Jones is up for a cabinet post.

Twenty Five

In the season four finale of The West Wing, terrorists kidnap the president's daughter. President Bartlett, played by Martin Sheen, invokes section three of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, temporarily ceding the presidency to the speaker of the House (there is no vice president). Bartlett (correctly) believes he is incapable of making decisions in the best interest of the country while his daughter is being held hostage.

Now imagine that the president has dozens of unguarded children scattered around the globe, susceptible to kidnapping, murder and extortion. Could any decision he makes ever be considered in the best interests of the country, when his babies are constantly under threat?

That scenario will come to pass when Donald Trump assumes the presidency in January. The targets won't be Trump's actual children, but his office buildings, golf courses, hotels and resorts, which terrorism experts call "soft targets." I alluded to this problem in an earlier post, and now security analysts are voicing the same concerns.

Trump has now acknowledged as much, and claims that he'll be separating himself from "business operations" to avoid conflicts of interest. This is totally bogus. He will still own the properties. He will still derive income from them. They will still have his name on them. He will still know and communicate with the cronies who will control them. They will still be his babies.

This vast network of mostly unprofitable properties (i.e., tax dodges) will be a drag on Trump's presidency, making him vulnerable to terrorism, bribery, blackmail and extortion. His ego will never allow him to truly let go of his babies.

He could, of course, ameliorate these concerns by actually selling these properties on the condition that they be renamed, and by releasing all his tax returns from the last 20 years so that we can see that he really has divested himself of these conflicts of interest. But what are the odds he'll do that?

After the first couple of terrorist attacks on Trump properties questions will arise about whether Trump is caving in to terrorist demands. Will the vast majority of Republicans in congress that Trump insulted throughout the election have the balls to invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment and install their dream guy Mike Pence as president?

Donald Trump's paranoia is going to make Dick Nixon look like Pollyanna.

New Name, New Package!

Trump Supporter On Airplane

What am I not supposed to think about Trump supporters again?

Memo To Media: Shut the Fuck Up About Rural White Voters

At this point, the media really needs to shut the fuck up about rural white voters. Let's see...some people have lost their jobs because of globalization (along with a steadfast refusal to retrain in a different field) and technology versus hundreds of years of systemic oppression which still continues to this day.

If I were a person of color in the US today, I'd be way past sick over this hyper obsession with people who have honestly enjoyed privilege their entire lives and refuse to accept it.

Not Compromised

The Obama administration effectively threw cold water on the idea that the Russians were involved in hacking voting machines in the 2016 election.

In its statement, the administration said, “The Kremlin probably expected that publicity surrounding the disclosures that followed the Russian government-directed compromises of emails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations, would raise questions about the integrity of the election process that could have undermined the legitimacy of the president-elect.”

I think it's a good idea to do a recount in the states where the margin was so close but at this point, I do not think the election was rigged or hacked. Donald Trump won the electoral college.

Of course, the fact that he lost the popular vote by over 2,000,000 votes is a whole other story. At what point does the electoral college become absurd?

Five Ways To Disrupt Racism

Own It, Bitches

Being Liberal has asked Trump voters to own their vote.

It is your right to vote for an extremist racist, sexist, ableist, xenophobic, homophobic, transphobic candidate unconcerned with consent, let alone reproductive rights. It is your right to vote for someone who literally built a campaign on a "great wall" and a promise to profile people based on their religion. It is your right to vote for a candidate who actively incites violence and got the loudest cheers at his rallies for vowing to "carpet bomb" other countries (and then to say that he does not want war). It is your right to cite "due process" on multiple sexual assault and rape charges for your candidate and vote for him anyway. 

It is psychological warfare/gaslighting to do that and then say that you do not intend to silence those who disagreed, those who will be affected by the radical changes you signed on for.

Amen!

Of course, being the adolescents that they are, they won't take responsibility for it.

As Long As I Live...

Trump's Unspoken Deal for Not Prosecuting Clinton

Donald Trump and his mouthpieces have now said that he won't call for Hillary Clinton to be prosecuted for the phony email server and Clinton Foundation scandals.

Trump is making the "I'm such a nice guy" excuse for stopping the persecution: “It’s just not something that I feel very strongly about. I don’t want to hurt the Clintons, I really don’t. She went through a lot and suffered greatly in many different ways.”

Rush Limbaugh is making the "It's just not done" excuse: “I never expected Trump to actually prosecute her. And the reason is…I’m falling back on what some of the standard protocols for politics are after victory and this just, we in America do not prosecute defeated political enemies...If he did it, it was going to be icing on the cake for me. But I never expected him to do it.”

In other words, Limbaugh knew Trump was just blowing smoke when he said that. Many of Trump's supporters seem to believe this about his other promises as well: the ban on Muslims, the deportation of immigrants, draining the swamp, firing lobbyists, starting a trade war, bringing back jobs, and on and on. It was all just red meat to fire up the crowds.

Trump's more delusional supporters are fervently hoping that Trump is lying now rather than lying back then: by saying he'll stop persecuting Clinton, Trump will give Obama a false sense of security so that he doesn't preemptively pardon Clinton before he leaves office. That's what Republicans Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush did when they preemptively pardoned Dick Nixon and the Iran-Contra conspirators. They nobly pardoned their cronies to "heal the nation."

But the most logical reason Trump won't push this is that there's no chance that it would actually result in a conviction: after literally years of congressional and FBI investigations into the email server, Benghazi and the Clinton Foundation, it's obvious that there's nothing there. Trump was just throwing out tired, disproved allegations to fire up the know-nothings at his rallies, giving them something mindless to chant and rant about.

It is these nitwits who are outraged that Trump is breaking his promise to "trump the bitch."

But the real reason he's calling off the dogs is that Trump is making an unspoken deal with the Democrats. And that has to do with Trump's own foundation.

The Clinton Foundation is a legitimate charity that has served tens of millions of the poorest people in the world, helping to prevent malaria and unwanted pregnancies, treat HIV, pneumonia and diarrhea, as well as sponsor midwife and childhood nutrition programs. It does real charity work.

The Donald J. Trump Foundation, however, doesn't do anything of the sort. Trump doesn't even contribute to it. It's basically a slush fund that Trump uses to buy things like a portrait of himself and a Tim Tebow helmet. He also used the foundation's money -- donated by other people -- to pay off hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal settlements incurred by his businesses.

Going after the Clinton Foundation would almost certainly invite retaliatory investigations into the Trump Foundation, which is clearly just a money-laundering and tax avoidance scheme. The most damning evidence is the fact that Trump's foundation paid an IRS fine for making an illegal $25,000 donation to Pam Bondi's reelection campaign for the attorney general of Florida.

This looks like a quid pro quo: it appears that in exchange for the donation and a fund raiser Trump hosted that raised $150K for her campaign, Bondi dropped the Florida Trump University fraud investigation. Just last week Trump settled three other fraud cases for $25 million. Buying Bondi off for $25K probably saved Trump another $10 or $20 million. What an investment!

This is why just yesterday Trump was forced to announce that foundation money wouldn't be used to pay off the $25 million fraud settlement.

No, by letting Clinton off the hook Trump is clearly angling to pressure Democratic attorneys general in New York and California to ease up on the Trump Foundation. He can always change his mind and go after Clinton if the Democrats don't play ball.

On the other hand, investigations into the Trump Foundation could be a blessing in disguise for Republicans. A lot of them still despise Trump, and would love to see him go down. They may quietly urge New York A.G. Eric Schneiderman to go ahead with his investigation. Then they can use whatever Schneiderman digs up at Trump's impeachment trial.

And then they can install the man they really want to be president: Mike Pence.

Heil Trump!

Tell me again about how references to Nazis and Trump supporters is overblown, Godwin's law, nonsense and just like what liberals did with Bush...

And the go fuck yourself. It's morons like you that have helped shit like this happen over and over again throughout history...

Trump's Businesses Make Him Vulnerable to Extortion

One of the biggest concerns over Donald Trump's presidency has been his conflicts of interest and the potential for influence peddling.

Republicans tried to cast Hillary Clinton as corrupt for talking to foreign diplomats whose countries had made donations to the Clinton Foundation, which does things like fight malaria in poor countries.

With Trump it'll be much worse: foreigners are reportedly flocking to the Trump International Hotel in Washington DC to curry favor with the president-elect. When they rent rooms at Trump hotels, play golf at Trump golf courses, buy jewelry from Trump's daughter, they're not helping cure malaria. They're putting money directly into Trump's pockets.

This is what bribery looks like in the age of Trump: naked money grubbing.

Trump was "too busy" preparing to assume the presidency to defend himself in court against the Trump University fraud suits, so he settled for $25 million. This was after he claimed he would never settle because only losers settle.

Trump, however, had plenty of time to meet with business partners from India and Nigel Farage to lobby against wind turbines near his golf courses in Britain. And ask the Argentinian president for a building permit for an office tower in Buenos Aires.

Trump argues that everyone knew that he owned these properties. So it's okay that foreigners would be forking over millions of dollars to Trump businesses to get on his good side.

But there's a darker side to this: Trump is vulnerable to threats against his business interests. Any country could threaten to shut down his businesses unless they get the special treatment from the United States that they want. Trump would be hard-pressed to retaliate diplomatically against such threats because it would underline how vulnerable he is to blackmail.

Worse, criminal gangs have a lot more power over Trump than over past presidents. Mexican drug lords could threaten to burn down a few of his hotels unless he calls off the DEA. Unlike a country, he can't sanction them diplomatically. And once he buckled under these threats, they'd have him forever, pulling him in deeper and deeper by threatening to expose the deal.

The worst, though, is how a Trump presidency empowers and encourages terrorists.

His businesses depend on people having free and easy access. But Trump has already cost high-end restaurants and stores in and near Trump Tower a lot of business due to beefed-up security. Every time he's in residence they shut down Fifth Avenue. Anyone going into the building is searched. Wherever Trump goes, the Secret Service will follow, and that means everyone will be hassled endlessly.

That can't be good for business.

In the past terrorists have targeted U.S. embassies and consulates: the Iranians took over the U.S. embassy in 1979, Al Qaeda bombed our embassies in Africa, and then there was Benghazi. Terrorists targeted the World Trade Center in New York twice.

With Trump the terrorists' job will get a whole lot easier.

Trump's (unprofitable) real estate holdings make him extremely vulnerable to terrorist extortion. Hotels, golf courses and office buildings are soft targets: not only do they have to accommodate lots of customers and visitors who want easy access, they also employ a lot of poorly-paid staff.

How will Trump be able to ensure guests at his properties across the world that every minimum-wage janitor, security guard, maid, busboy and masseuse who has total access to a Trump property has been totally vetted and isn't a member of ISIS?

Trump's Mar-a-Lago club, where he'll be spending Thanksgiving, hires foreigners from countries like Romania in preference to Americans. How can Trump be sure that his Romanian masseuse isn't  really a Moldovan of Russian extraction planted by the Russian FSB, or a Chechen ISIS sympathizer? How can he reliably vet hundreds of employees from former Soviet bloc countries?

Terrorists won't have to fight their way past American marines to invade the walled compounds of our embassies. They can waltz into the lobby of any Trump hotel or office building with a machine gun and start shooting. They can hold the new president hostage with a bombing at a Trump resort, or just by doing doughnuts on the greens at his golf courses.

How many of the ultra-wealthy crowd are going to patronize Trump businesses after a few dozen of them are gunned down by radical Islamic terrorists?

With all these vulnerable interests worldwide Trump is totally exposed to blackmail by anyone with an axe to grind. All they need to do is phone in a threat against a Trump property and suddenly they have the ear of the president.

Trump's businesses aren't just conflicts of interest and fetid cesspools of bribery. They are pressure points that enemies of the United States can use to force the new president into decisions that benefit him personally, but aren't in the best interests of the United States of America.

How will we know whether anything Trump does is for the good of the American people, or is part of some scam to profit him or protect one of his interests?

Given Trump's history of deal-making and bankruptcies that make him rich and screwed everyone else involved, the answer is already clear.

More Than Any White Man In History

An Optimistic Note

I have to admit that I've been pretty bummed since Donald Trump won the presidency. How can someone with such an ugly personality be representing our country? Further, consider how he would do, minus his celebrity, if he was applying for a job. His background check? Fail, due to poor credit and the bankruptcies. And most companies look at social media activity which would be a giant red flag. The video of him bragging about sexual assault would be an automatic disqualifier.

Yet I am optimistic about a couple of things. With the Republicans controlling all three branches of government, they are going to be held accountable for what they do. No more bitching about the Democrats ruining everything. Sure, they will try to blame the liberal media but they are the ones running the show so they have to do a good job. No doubt they will try to dodge the responsibility but the people that voted them in likely won't let them.

It's also nice to see that Trump is nominating old guard Republicans, going back on his promise to "drain the swamp," to key posts in his administration. Bannon by himself can likely be handled. Thankfully, there won't be a cabinet filled with Bannons, although ol' Steve-O is also going to see just how fun it is to be the responsible one. I'm going to be very interested to see a right wing blogger try to spin away mistakes.

If Trump ends up nominating Mitt Romney as Secretary of State, that would be his first good move. It would also be a sign that his cozying up to Russia was all an act. We'll see...