Whoa Babe Just a Little Bit R-E-S-P-E-C-T, and Why Trump Ain't Getting Any

If there is any joy to find this dismal winter of discontent, it's the malicious joy of watching Trump fumble his way to the podium. Not the growing and alarming revelations of just how nasty his ties to Russia are turning out to be - that's actually making me turn away in horror - but the fact that Trump is still historically, epically (yes, Stephen King will kill me for the adverb use) unpopular with the universe. Via Matthew Yglesias with Vox.com:

On January 10, Quinnipiac released the first big Donald Trump poll of 2017, and it showed that he retains some strengths as a politician. Most voters think he’s intelligent (gaakkkk) and that he’s a “strong person.” (headdesk) A plurality believe he has “good leadership skills.” (o.o)

But his job approval rating is a dismal 37 percent, with 51 percent saying they disapprove of the job he’s doing. Rather than being an effective political tactic, Trump’s habit of frequently saying untrue things has led Americans to conclude by a 53-39 margin that he is not honest. Fifty-two percent say that Trump “does not care about average Americans,” and 62 percent say that he is “not level-headed.”

Just remember kids: this asshole didn't win the Popular vote, he won a broken-down Electoral College.

Sure, Trump got 62 million voters, but as I pointed out a few posts ago our elections are now so partisan that a dead dog could have gotten 62 million votes for the Republicans. I can guarantee you millions of his own voters hated him (they just hated or mistrusted Hillary more).

How historic a disaster is this?

Gallup created a comparative chart of Trump's beginning numbers compared to his predecessors Obama and Bush II and Bill Clinton:

Each of these Presidents were divisive in some respects: Clinton's win in 1992 came from a contested three-candidate race that the Republicans could not abide; Bush the Lesser lost the Popular vote and only won the Electoral College over a contested vote count in Florida (and a 5-4 SCOTUS vote); Obama won the Popular and Electoral but was hated by a Republican party that viewed him as illegitimate and a threat.

Yet all three still had high approval ratings - at least over 60 percent - going into the White House.

There are two very good reasons for this.

First reason is that a majority of Americans - regardless of party or even if they voted - want to think that the incoming President will do well and they wish him well. After all, if he succeeds the nation succeeds. It's called the Honeymoon period. It can last a few months or almost a year during which voters will give him the benefit of the doubt.

The second reason is that all three President-Elects played the public image of a Uniter, giving speeches and presentations alongside both parties to demonstrate no ill-will and to invoke signs of humility and empathy to the electorate. A perfect example is Dubya: having won a bitter contest on questionable grounds, he made a public victory speech where he spoke in humble tones about working with Democrats, and made pointed efforts towards bipartisanship:

Tonight I chose to speak from the chamber of the Texas House of Representatives because it has been a home to bipartisan cooperation. Here in a place where Democrats have the majority, Republicans and Democrats have worked together to do what is right for the people we represent.

We've had spirited disagreements. And in the end, we found constructive consensus. It is an experience I will always carry with me, an example I will always follow...

Granted, once in office Bush and Cheney pursued their hard-core conservative tax cuts and policy initiatives. But he played the part of Uniter well and got his Honeymoon polling numbers in the mid-60s where his political capital had value.

So why is Trump failing at Reasons One AND Two? He's well below the 50 percent mark, and with the Quin poll at 37 percent he's slinking downward with the general public before he's done anything in office to make him even more unliked (which happens to every President, Reagan included).

Big point: Trump is no Uniter figure. His own personal nature as a bully makes that impossible. His history of vulgar and disruptive behavior is a major reason why he's been so unpopular this entire election process. And the stories about him have only gotten worse.

The final most damning part: Trump shows no respect to those he views his lessers. And that includes everyone among his own Republican ranks and his own damn voters (he's publicly admitted as much).

Machiavelli, I know I keep referring back to him, but his passage in The Prince about whether it's better to be Loved or Feared still makes a ton of sense in an electoral system like ours that runs on emotional and irrational decision-making.

Machiavelli noted it was difficult to be loved and feared at the same time, so it was preferred to be feared. He warned, however, that Fear could lead to Hate if you try to employ fear too often. And being Hated was the worst thing a Prince (leader) could become, because in that state the leader's opposition will have nothing to lose and everything to gain by driving you from power.

And Trump is coming into this role of President so very very HATED. Behaving like he's the greatest winner of all time when he really got Second Place, dismissing entire swaths of our population with insults and disdain... People hate him - myself included - with the fire of a thousand suns.

I honestly never saw - or felt - this level of animosity among my co-workers and friends towards an elected President before. Clinton never had this much hate (even after all the mud slung at him in 1992), Bush the Lesser didn't create massive protests against himself before his own tenure started, and Obama's haters were mostly contained to Rush Limbaugh's radio show and the Fox Not-News squad.

Once they hate you, it is hard to turn that emotion into something else.

The real prize for a Prince was to be Respected, a reputation that can co-exist with both Love and Fear. With Respect, a leader can be Feared as long as his subjects were convinced he knew what he was doing and capable at it. With Respect, a leader can be Loved as long as his subjects understood his Love for them was genuine, and borne of responsibility and care for their mutual well-being.

The thing about Respect, it's not given it is earned. As the saying goes, Respect Goes Both Ways. You have to show it towards others to have them respect you.

And Trump, mentioned above, does not respect you. Unless you happen to be Putin.

It shouldn't be any surprise that Trump doesn't get any respect back from the rest of us.

And without that respect, Trump is hated. And getting hundreds of thousands of protesters marching in the streets against him before Day One of his administration even starts.

It's a damn shame it took all these events and revelations after the election for more Americans to figure this out.

Things would be less dreadful and horrifying if 37 percent was his voting base on Election Night.

And we wouldn't have 62 million Americans to blame for the oncoming train wreck.

How Low Do You Think This Will Go?

There's still this sense of displacement and loss, definitely grief and anger, about what the hell happened to this nation since last November.

Just rounding up some of the other bloggers I read, about how they feel. For starters, Betty Cracker at Balloon Juice:

No, 2016 wasn’t just an electoral defeat. It was a revelation of the extent of the rot, a loss of faith as profound as any I’ve ever experienced. And the defeat of a highly qualified woman by a crude sexist bully sent a personal message to me, as a woman: You’re a second-class citizen at best, an object at worst.

Like many of you, I’ve responded in a variety of ways, becoming more involved in local politics, joining or forming groups to protect those most targeted by the racist, sexist, xenophobic demagogue who will be president in 15 days. Long term, I suspect these will be the most important responses...

Leaning over to repost thoughts from PM Carpenter:

The latter I have not jettisoned from my political sympathies; I doubt I ever will. It has, rather, either marooned itself or been marooned by more powerful forces. To speak of democratic socialism (or liberalism, leftism) in this brutal age of Trumpism is, it now seems to me, to speak from a pointless conceit. No longer does America possess any rough balance of ideological powers: There is the reigning, voracious, soul-killing neofascism of Trump, and then there's all that remains of human decency. This critical remainder -- in fact, the majority of American political sentiment -- is presently scattered throughout the ideological spectrum. Such scattering, it further seems to me, must be rectified. Opposition to Trumpian fascism will more successfully battle the impending evil under one ideological flag...

Found this article in GQ searching for "Trump" and "grief" as keywords:

...The election of a lazy autocrat who traffics in Islamophobia has been a crushing blow to America’s collective psyche. Before Nov. 8, more than half of Americans had already reported that the 2016 cycle was a significant source of stress. In the month since, therapists I spoke to in New York, Chicago, and Washington have been inundated with Trump-related concerns. People already in therapy have struggled to grapple with the new reality. But those who had long felt freed of anxiety were relapsing, too, caught off guard by what nobody saw coming, and others who had never seen a therapist before called to secure an appointment...

For myself, there is little I can say except various forms of rage and regret. Like Betty Cracker, the election turnout for Trump was an eye-opening shock, that there were 62 million voters still willing to back such an openly sexist and racist business failure all because he was the Republican on their ticket. I know not all of those voters are sexists and racists themselves, but they had no problem voting for someone like that. All because they couldn't even conceive of voting for a woman candidate they were taught to despise or make a choice for a third party alternative, or at the least leave that choice blank.

And it bothers me that for all the talk about higher turnout, the actual number - when accounting for population growth and shifts in the voter registration - remained almost consistent with the previous election. The dire risk of a President Trump did not occur to more people who COULD turn out, and that to me remains inexcusable. (It is also a problem that voter suppression in key battleground states like Wisconsin and Ohio caused part of the damage done, and that remains a sin of a Republican Party and their Jurist enablers desperate to maintain a demographic stranglehold on voting)

It still bothers me that Hillary earned nearly 3 million more votes than Trump, and still lost because of an archaic Electoral College system that hasn't been truly representative of our nation's voters since 1929. I do view that as a failure of both parties refusing to fix a system they want all because the College's format ensures a two-party dominance (Gods forbid the Libertarians or Greens ever get a single Elector).

In the process of coping with despair and depression, one has to find a means to fight back, to express the outrage and to stand with the convictions of what can be made right. Calling Congress early and often is one thing. I've made a few calls to the Senators of my state to express my concerns, and I'm not the only one (lines have been busy the last week or so). There are marches and public protests to join. The Women's March is out there, organizing for nationwide rallies (and yes, guys can attend). There's a ton of positive, life-affirming things you can do.

But we can't ignore the oncoming train wreck, can we. The Senate already started Phase One of their "Kill Obamacare" agenda in the dead of night (cowards!) and did so going after EVERY bit of health care coverage they could including the popular stuff like CHIP (that helped KIDS for God's sake) and protecting people with pre-existing conditions. And they did this with fucking grins on their faces. It's as though they know getting rid of Obamacare will honestly KILL people when those people lose their healthcare, and they're reveling in other people's misery all because their ideology against regulations and federalism tell them to.

We're facing a massive tax cut for the rich that will kill whatever semblance of a budget we could expect from the federal government. The party that proclaims itself fiscally responsible is about to cause more debt and deficits than drunken teenagers using up their parents' credit cards.

And then there's Trump. Russian puppet, tax-dodging, media-bullying, Emoluments violating sonofabitch that he is. The second he puts his hand to that Bible is the second he breaks every law in the US Code. And it worries me that's there nobody in position to call him to account.

I'm having nightmares now about what Trump is going to do at the podium on Inauguration Day itself. Calling for people's arrests then and there is the least of it.

We are entering an American Dark Ages, at a time when we're supposed to be entering an era of technological wonder and social diversity.

What the hell happened, America. What the hell.

Killing the Gerrymander: A Season of Hope

Update: Hello again to the Crooks & Liars audience coming here via Mike's Blog Round-Up! Thank you as always to Batocchio for inviting onto the list, and again to everyone here please visit, I have other rants and rampages to read at this blog.


For all my ranting on the sidelines about getting rid of the gerrymander, there is someone else out there - Hi, Paul! - doing the heavy lifting, and GOD BLESS HIM FOR IT.

Via Slate.com:

Both Democrats and Republicans deploy partisan gerrymandering to dilute votes for their opponents, creating one-party rule and, arguably, greater polarization. That’s bad for the body politic and a clear contravention of the Constitution. But as long as the courts refuse to step in, gerrymandering will continue to plague the country...

Now Paul Smith, one of the greatest legal minds in the country, is asking the Supreme Court to finally put a stop to it. And here’s the exciting part: He might actually succeed...

KEEL IT! KEEL THE GERRYMANDER!!!

Ahem.

...The difficulty in curbing partisan gerrymandering has not been in convincing judges that the practice is unconstitutional—the Supreme Court has found that it is—it’s convincing judges that they can fix it.

In 2004’s Vieth v. Jubelirer, which Smith argued, five justices agreed that partisan gerrymandering likely violated the Constitution. But one of these justices, Anthony Kennedy, wasn’t sure quite how to fix the problem, and so he voted with the conservative justices to toss out a challenge to a Pennsylvania gerrymander - without closing the door to future lawsuits. In a concurring opinion, Kennedy wrote that partisan gerrymandering seems to unconstitutionally “burden representational rights” by “penalizing citizens” because of their “association with a political party” or their “expression of political views.” Still, Kennedy insisted, courts should not intervene until they could articulate “principles of fairness in districting” - specifically, a formula to decide when the burden placed on representational rights crosses the line into unconstitutionality. Otherwise, he argued, the results from one gerrymandering case to the next would likely be disparate and inconsistent...

So Smith and his people figured out a formula:

This formula - called the “efficiency gap” - cites two types of “wasted votes” in the redistricting process: “lost votes” cast in favor of a defeated candidate, and “surplus votes” cast in favor of a winning candidate that weren’t actually necessary for the candidate’s victory. The efficiency gap is, in Stephanopoulos’ words, “the difference between the parties’ respective wasted votes in an election, divided by the total number of votes cast.”

When both Democrats and Republican waste roughly the same number of votes, the efficiency gap is near zero. That means voters on both sides had a fair shot at securing their desired representation. When a party gerrymanders its opponents into the minority, however, it will “waste” fewer votes than its opponents, causing the efficiency gap to rise. A historical analysis of elections across from the country since 1972 suggests that an efficiency gap of 7 percent will entrench the majority party’s power until new maps are drawn. Wisconsin’s Republican-drawn gerrymander has an efficiency gap of 13 percent, meaning a huge number of Wisconsinites are currently deprived of their representational rights solely because they are Democrats.

This formula may sound like an oddly technical method for ensuring basic representational equality. But the justices have waded into algebraic waters before. The court has long held that the Constitution enshrines the principle of “one person, one vote,” meaning districts should contain about the same number of people so that no vote counts more or less than others. But over several decades, it has had to decide what amount of deviation from the “one person, one vote” principle was constitutionally permissible. Ultimately, the court found that the deviation between the population of the largest and smallest districts in a state cannot exceed 10 percent...

So based on this efficiency gap formula, the Wisconsin gerrymanders at 13 percent goes well beyond the historical skewing, and can well violate the "one person one vote" axiom that judicial review relies on.

As the article noted, the district court already sided with Smith and the Efficiency Gap. There is demonstrated evidence of gerrymandering affecting the voters' ability to choose their representatives, and given the legal arguments against gerrymandering there's a solid chance that the Supreme Court - even this conservative one - would accept the evidence and rule in Smith's favor.

Getting this formula set to reconfigure electoral districting at a state and federal level would go a long way towards ensuring a more accurate representation of the voters across the nation. It would certainly force the political parties to be more responsive to the voters and less towards the mapmakers.

Here's hoping Paul Smith gets the Supreme Court to agree with him.

Here's hoping the gerrymander dies a quick death before 2018 (or at least 2020).

It's 2017 And I Need New Blogging Victims for My Links

Exactly what it says on the title!

Check out my Links page - tag above or click here - and see whom I've already sacrificed on the Altar of Doom. Post a comment here or email me about what other blogs I can add to the lists.

Criteria should be:

1) Blog Language should be Galactic Basic standard (i.e. Hollywood English)

2) Political leanings should be Center-Left. That is, anything to the Left of National Review (I know, that's gonna be a broad range). Pretty much anything morally and spiritually opposed to Donald Trump and the goddamn greedhead wingnuts that have taken over the Republican Party.

2a) Or... Anything that leans towards a rational, pragmatic world-view with kitty/puppy videos.

3) Blog must be originally written stuff, no cloning/copying of other people's works. They can quote other works (and provide citation), but no reposting of entire stuff, just snippets or points of argument that stand out.

4) Geekery - a love of comic books, science fiction / fantasy, Monty Python, and 80s rock music will help.

5) NO RANDIAN OBJECTIVISTS. We're all PATRIOTIC Adam Smith Regulatory Capitalists with a side of Pragmatism and of a Utilitarian mindset here.

Get to it.

Article Two Section Four, or The Twenty-Fifth...

So I keep seeing all this talk about impeachment. Donald Trump's not even sworn in yet and there's people gaming out how removing Trump for his ongoing unethical behavior (via Digby):

There are some creative strategic thinkers out there, however, who are looking at the big picture and coming up with some exciting propositions. For instance, Robert Kuttner wrote this provocative piece for the Huffington Post, advocating for a group of experts, preferably bipartisan, to begin seriously putting together the case for impeachment...

He goes on to enumerate the high crimes and misdemeanors in which Trump is already implicated, beginning with the massive corruption inherent in his continued ownership of a privately held international company, the details of which he refuses to divulge. There are also his strange and uncharacteristic fondness for Vladimir Putin and his untrammeled nepotism, just for starters...

I have to admit, I dreaded the I-Word during the Obama years because I've seen the use of impeachment as a political, partisan tool in my lifetime (Clinton) and I was too young to witness impeachment under honest circumstances (Nixon's crimes in office, not just the Watergate cover-up but several others). I feared with each passing year - especially after 2010 and 2014 Midterms - that the Republicans would just break out the Impeach hammer and cudgel Obama with it until they drew blood.

But even Obama didn't get this kind of treatment back in 2009 - the Republicans preferred their Obstructionist gameplan instead - so I'm a little bothered that the Democrats and the Progressive Left are reaching for this tool before Day One even gets here.

Then again, Obama was never this big a goddamn glitch in the political Matrix.

Trump is coming in with so many conflicts of interest with his business holdings that he's honestly violating the Emoluments Clause the second he puts his hand to a Bible (which will likely burst into flames when he does).

Trump's alliance with Russian political and business figures - and his open devotion to autocrat Putin - is where he's valuing their friendship over the national security of the United States he's supposed to uphold and defend. Using the word "treason" describing this behavior isn't hyperbole or partisan wishful thinking...

Trump's ignorance and refusal to learn the rules and protocols of the Office of the President - especially in dealing with foreign powers - is 100 percent certain to cause a Constitutional Crisis. It's only a question of When and How it happens.

Just any ONE of those three points would be legitimate grounds - treason, bribery, other high crimes and misdemeanors as mentioned in Article II Section 4 - for impeaching...

It just comes down to a question of political will.

Like it or not impeachment is a political tool, not a legal one. For impeachment to happen, your political party in charge of Congress has to find it in themselves to go against their own party's leadership AND voting base. This is what happened to Nixon: as his crimes became more public, his Republican allies in the Senate had more reason to turn against him.

Trump, for all his unpopularity with the nation, still has his fans among the voting base of the GOP... and they've made it clear more than once they'll side with him instead of the party. The party leadership also has learned their lessons from the Watergate fallout (and it's the wrong lesson): stick together to defend the party at all hazards...

Trump is going to have to do something so vulgar, so crass, so criminal an act while President that the partisans in the House have no choice but to vote to impeach. And even then, there may not be enough practical or pragmatic Republicans in the House to pull it off: the wingnut Freedom Caucus could well split with the party on any situation, leaving the leadership without enough in-party votes. The numbers for this get worse when any impeachment moves to the Senate: To actually remove the impeached Trump requires a two-thirds vote of all Senators, and depending on the quorum rules that's 68 Senators. Right now, there's 52 Republican Senators.

What this means for both the House and the Senate to vote for impeachment: The Republican leadership in both wings of Congress are going to have to ask Democrats to join in the effort.

The Republicans might not want to go that far, even if they HAVE to. The Democrats may also be offended by whatever Trump does, and they will have every sane reason to kick a racist, sexist bankrupt fraud like Trump off the face of the Earth. Thing is, the Democrats are not going to do the Republicans in Congress any favors. They won't do this out of the goodness of their hearts (nor should they).

The Democrats - both in the House and in the Senate - are bound to insist on deals. They'll likely insist on protecting whatever's left of Obamacare (or bringing parts of it back). They'll likely insist on protecting Planned Parenthood. They'll likely insist on business regulations be put back into place. If the Dems were being sadistic, they'll likely insist on McConnell wearing a chicken suit on the floor of the Senate and publicly apologize to Obama for being an Obstructionist Asshole. Hell, the Dems will likely call for tax hikes on the rich - THE deal-breaker that no Republican will accept, so the Dems will only be asking for THIS trade-off if Trump does something really really evil...

This is why I don't think impeachment will ever happen. The Republicans would rather live with the horror and shame of whatever sins Trump does in office, if only because they'd rather never trade-off their wingnut agenda to get the Democrats to side with them on any real honest reason to impeach.

The Republicans would rather live with the low disapproval ratings and with their reputations for corruption and venality that will inflame the nation in the wake of Trump's disasters, if only because they're living with that terrible reputation now and are still in power. They'll gamble that they won't lose in 2018 or 2020 like they did in 2006 and 2008...

No, if there is any serious attempt to remove Trump from office, it's going to have to involve the 25th Amendment. Specifically, Section 4 of the 25th:

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

This is also known as the political coup option. It's where a faction within your own office can turn against you and remove your political authority as President. This can, granted, happen under any circumstance. Which is why it's a scary provision of the Amendment.

It hasn't happened yet because pulling it off is a great risk and a Constitutional crisis all its own. A Vice President has to be willing to sign off on taking power away from his/her boss, someone who has more political connections and has more popularity with your own party's base. Every member of the Cabinet (executive departments) and heads of intelligence agencies who signs off on this knows their political futures (and their lives) ride on a successful outcome. A move like this also has to involve the Joint Chiefs (Chair, Vice Chair, the heads of all four branches of the military plus the National Guard) otherwise you've got a military in chaos over who the Commander In Chief's gonna be. And both the Senate and the House has to accept what's happening.

Given the variances of party control throughout the decades since the 25th Amendment passed, there's never been a perfect alignment of factors to allow a Section 4 to take place. (When you come at the king, you best not miss)

Except Trump.

Given how dangerous Trump is regarding foreign affairs, his haphazard views on military use in global hotspots, his misunderstanding of our nation's nuclear weapon policies, and his coziness to Russia... if you asked the Joint Chiefs and the heads of the CIA, FBI and NSA to sign off on a Section 4 for Trump, they've probably already printed up engraved pens for this.

While Vice-President Elect Pence is only there because Trump picked him for the job, he doesn't owe Trump on this. Pence is a creature of the Republican Party, and has clear differences from Trump when it comes to World-View. (Given Trump's personal vulgar habits, a serious Far Right Christian like Pence likely abhors him in private) If it came down to invoking the 25th through Section 4, Pence will view it as a duty to the Party (and then... maybe the nation).

The one sticking point would be the Cabinet: enough of them have to sign off on this move. And I think - I am not sure, so if someone has the answer please confirm - there's a limit needed, like a simple majority of them. That means 8 out of 15 Secretaries have to concur with VP Pence and the Joint Chiefs/Intel heads. Which might explain why Trump has been selecting people with little or no political experience for those positions: He'll want people who owe him more than they owe the Party to be on his side if a Section 4 has to be invoked.

If the 25th Amendment removal does take place it only removes Trump from the day-to-day stuff, prevents him from signing or vetoing legislation, and it takes him out of the chain of command for any decisions that need making. Trump will still technically be President, and Pence will only be serving as Acting President (I doubt Pence could choose his own Veep during this, by the by). Trump might actually LIKE this arrangement, because then he doesn't get any of the headaches while believing he'll still get enough of the perks (and the media attention he thrives on).

He'll turn into the political equivalent of Thing That Would Not Leave.

Trump will then get a ton of pressure to "take the hint" and resign from office altogether. If he gets cut off from power via the 25th Amendment, it's likely going to be over something so egregious that nobody in Congress or the Executive branch (military) will trust him with that power again. Meaning they will never send that letter to Congress saying "all is well back to normal". But knowing Trump, he'll just as likely keep the title and remain a nuisance for Pence and the Republicans who "clearly betrayed" him, sticking around in the office not physically but spiritually, haunting the Pence regime that rises up, mocking anything and everything to keep his own voter base within the GOP angry towards their leadership as always.

This is also why the 25th Amendment scenario might not play out: The Republican leadership is well aware that if they boot Trump from power, their own party voting base will declare it an "unlawful coup" and turn against them. And the leadership has seen - hi, Eric Castor! - what happens when they do.

Again, it all depends on how serious a problem Trump becomes. It all depends on how DANGEROUS in office Trump becomes.

And this train wreck is oncoming. Nothing is stopping it. We all know it's going to happen.

It's just a question of When and How.

Key and Peele Keeping the Farewell Address Real

So, yeah, this may be the last time we'll get this - unless Obama comes back as Superman to save us from Trump:

Y'all fleeing to Sweden?!

TAKE US WITH YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!

/cries

Just Another Junkie For Fame

Get rich get high get drunk on your desire/
Stand back relax now watch me start a fire/
I don't think they take me serious/
Normal life makes me delirious - "Junkies for Fame" Shinedown

So what exactly does the recent declassified report on the possible involvement of Russian hackers and other agents on the United States 2016 General Election mean?

Russia carried out a comprehensive cyber campaign to sabotage the U.S. presidential election, an operation that was ordered by Russian President Vladi­mir Putin and ultimately sought to help elect Donald Trump, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in a remarkably blunt assessment released Friday.

The report depicts Russian interference as unprecedented in scale, saying that Moscow’s role represented “a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort” beyond previous election-related espionage.

And we're talking going well back before the Cold War of the 1950s, when the spy stuff was edge-of-war serious.

The campaign initially sought to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, “denigrate” Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and damage her expected presidency. But in time, Russia “developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump” and repeatedly sought to artificially boost his election chances.

It means Trump, the incoming President-Elect, is in debt to a foreign power in more ways than one.

The 14-page document made public also serves as an explicit rebuttal to Trump’s repeated assertions that U.S. spy agencies cannot determine who was responsible for a hacking operation that extracted thousands of emails from Democratic Party computer networks and dumped them into public view via the WikiLeaks website.

Trump's been spending far too much time on Twitter - so so eager for the views, don't you know - trying to downplay the story, trying to claim it's just the Democrats being sore losers, but it's not the Dems, it's our own federal government saying this shit is real:

In the report, the CIA, FBI and Office of the Director of National Intelligence concluded with “high confidence” that Russian intelligence services penetrated numerous computer systems tied to U.S. political parties and then “relayed” the email troves to WikiLeaks.

So one thing that has to happen is, you gotta make up your mind: can you trust the CIA and the FBI and the Director of National Intelligence of being correct on this? There's always been the skepticism with those agencies, questionable intel, the possibility of partisanship (esp. with the FBI), all that. Thing is, for the most part these agencies try to do their jobs the best they can. There may be a conservative bent to those intel offices (and rogue agents - "cowboys" - running their own agendas), but those agencies have to exist in a world where they have to answer to either political party at any given time. That means they don't try to play favorites or pick a side (usually). What they try to focus on - and what you can at least trust them on - is being as accurate and informed on national security issues that are a direct threat to our nation's borders and its citizenry.

If each of these agencies - and the FBI and CIA have a history of being at odds over jurisdiction - are saying there's a "high confidence" that Russia was meddling in our elections, and if they're publishing this much information in a declassified report within MONTHS of it happening, then there is something serious and legit about these allegations.

This brings up troubling issues. Trump profited from Russia's involvement. Considering the number of people on Trump's payroll with connections to Russia, and considering Trump's own public stances on Putin, is there a possibility Trump was involved in tampering with the elections? Because if there is...

That is, of course, speculation. But the question, and the trouble behind it, needs asking.

But Trump doesn't want to answer that question. He's acting as though these reports are meaningless. Even though as President one of the things he's got to learn is that he DARE NOT ignore these reports. The intelligence agencies exist for a reason, and are actually trying to do their jobs.

And the more these reports get out, the more Trump defends his BFF Putin, and the more Trump tries to underplay the seriousness, and the more Trump makes it clear he's hostile to our own intelligence agencies. He's pretty much down to his only defense being "Trust me on this."

But we can't trust you on your word, Trump. You lie far too often to ever be trusted.

And we've seen your act for the last 40 years, Trump. You've never been about public service, or the civic good. You've always been about YOURSELF and your goddamn Brand Name Trump (tm), hogging the spotlight and desperate for love and respect you've NEVER earned.

I doubt Trump openly worked with Russia to upend our elections. But I'm certain he knows he benefited from it, and he views Putin and Russia as more his friends and allies than his own nation. It's all about getting his ego stroked, never mind how he gets it done. He's getting hooked on Love From Russia, and the risk becomes how much he'll give away to keep it coming.

You're betraying your nation for an attention addict's fix, Trump, with Putin as your dealer and narcissism as the high.

You damn junkie, selling out the USA for an arm's worth of Ego.

Gods help us.

The Far Right Wants the Glory, Never the Blame

What happens when you get a political party that obsesses with image over action, that wants to win all the time and ignore every loss? What happens when you get a Congress that wants to destroy everything the federal government stands for in order to fulfill their Randian/Racist Utopian dreams?

You get a bunch of idiots ready to rev up their chainsaws but finding out they have neither the gas to rev them nor the trees they'd like to cut down.

Just to note what Brian Beutler is saying over at New Republic:

For seven years now, the mantra “repeal Obamacare” has been both a spasm of revanchist rage and a cynical ploy to keep a segment of the electorate motivated to vote for Republicans. It was also frequently deployed in the belief that the GOP would not be unexpectedly thrust into a position where their voters could expect them to make good on the promise.

But Donald Trump’s Republican Congress convened only three days ago, and members are already finding that eliminating Obamacare will be far messier, politically, than devising and implementing it was for Democrats.

As Republicans hurry to repeal the law, “they’re not even close to agreement about what comes next - or even when the repeal should take effect,” Politico reported late Wednesday. “Republicans are reckoning with the reality that dismantling a nearly seven-year-old law that reshaped a $3 trillion health sector and covers millions of Americans is more daunting than simply campaigning against it.”

Republicans got themselves into this mess at least in part because of a broad, conservative failure to treat Obamacare on its true terms rather than as an evil abstraction conjured by a political foe. In an important sense, there is no Obamacare anymore; there’s just the health care system Republicans are inheriting, and the one they will leave behind.

When Democrats controlled the government in 2009, they could have theoretically passed legislation that opened an existing public insurance system like Medicare or Medicaid to working-age people. But that would have unspooled existing insurance markets, creating significant disruption for consumers and relentless opposition from carriers and other powerful interests.

Democrats instead struck bargains with stakeholders across the health industry, which created political and economic space for a major coverage expansion but left most existing arrangements untouched. They subjected insurers to more regulation, but guaranteed them millions of new customers; they cut reimbursement rates to hospitals, but with the understanding that a spike in insured patients would help them recoup lost revenues. Most of those patients were expected to be poor people who would be added to state Medicaid rolls, in an expansion paid for almost entirely by the federal government.

The political downsides to this approach were fairly obvious at the time, and have become more clear as the law’s been implemented. It’s complex and inequitable; it doesn’t cover everyone; it turns people into customers in an amoral and unpopular market, rather than into users of a simple public utility. But the upside was that it could be slowly blended into the existing fabric of the health system without rending the whole thing and starting over. It’s not a single patch in a strange patchwork. Removing the stitching won’t just re-create a hole, but leave the rest of the quilt more tattered than it was before.

Eliminating a program that covers 20 million people will create a backlash on obvious humanitarian grounds, but that’s far from the only challenge Republicans now face. Repealing the Medicaid expansion will confront hospitals with an uncompensated care crisis; repealing private insurance subsidies will collapse the individual marketplaces; repealing the coverage guarantee will allow insurers to again discriminate against sick people. Delaying these repeal measures with no promise that they will be replaced with an alternative that makes providers and patients whole, will create major disruptions in the health care system anyhow. This is a stickier wicket than many strident Republicans in Washington realized, and the ones who did know were cynical enough to over-promise anyhow.

See, it was all fun and games using Obamacare as a dartboard to take shots at. Now that the Republicans have to, you know, live up to their threat of killing off Obamacare they're realizing this shit is real for 20-30 million Americans, that any hit to the health care system will cost jobs, and people who otherwise are angry at the Dirty Librul Dems could turn around and get angry at the Evil Greedhead Rethugs.

It doesn't help that a lot of professional organizations and businesses reliant on Obamacare are in a position to punch back:

The American Medical Association (a powerful doctors association), and the even more powerful hospital lobby have warned Republicans not to repeal Obamacare unless an alternative is enacted in tandem. When GOP repeal plans are described to them, Trump-supporting Obamacare beneficiaries in key swing states are rightly horrified. This week, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway told CNBC, “we don’t want anyone who currently has insurance to not have insurance,” but according to Politico, “Republicans are now realizing how hard it will be to replace the law, and many of them have plainly settled on the fact that they will never be able to craft a plan to insure as many people as Obamacare does.”

I mentioned this before back in 2015:

Which leads me to wonder about how much of this Obama knew about ahead of time when he pushed for the ACA "Obamacare" package in the first place all those years ago. True, by 2009 our Health Care system was facing utter collapse without any substantive reforms. With a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress, Obama could have pushed for a more liberal - read: single-payer - package. But he insisted on pushing an agenda modeled on the conservative reform alternative that the Republicans offered and never followed up on back in 1993 to oppose Clinton's ultimately doomed plan.

At the time, it looked like Obama jumped out too early for a compromise package in an attempt to secure Republican votes for a bipartisan "victory" bill. It seemingly backfired because the Republicans decided in toto to deny Obama any "victory" at all, sticking to an obstructionist position that painted themselves into a corner...

Because by going for a "compromise" bill like the ACA - based on market-based reforms that Republicans themselves argued for in 1993 - Obama took away the one real alternative Republicans today could offer. They've got nothing else, other than basically eliminating the reforms altogether... which basically brings back the out-of-control costs and lack of health care for far too many Americans. Republicans keep saying they can "Replace" Obamacare after the "Repeal", but when pressed on what the replacement can be the Republicans can't offer a legitimate plan.

This is 2017, two years later. The Republicans practically had six-seven years to come up with an alternative plan, an honest-to-God Replacement package to placate the medical/health care industry and the nation as a whole. SIX YEARS. They still can't, because Obamacare WAS the plan they had.

The Republicans are reportedly still arguing among themselves about what to do, and the Replace part hasn't gotten any specifics confirmed. This is insane. You'd think after SIX YEARS and fifty-odd REPEAL votes that they'd HAVE a REPLACE plan figured out. But they never put their asses on the line to come up with one (either they were never really serious about it when they knew Obama would stop them, or they didn't want to offer something that would outrage the wingnuts).

All we have for the LAST SIX YEARS is that Republicans hate it. They hate it because it doesn't have their name on it. But they can't get rid of it because they don't have anything else that works. 

Back to Beutler:

Republicans must now choose between walking onto what they acknowledge is a political minefield and reneging on the political promise that has defined them—that became their organizing principle as an opposition party—during the Obama years. In a more sane environment, they would accept Democrats’ offer to improve Obamacare in ways that Trump voters say they want, and then claim victory in the repeal fight...

What's really at play here is that the Republicans want the Democrats to jump in with a Replacement package for them, or somehow give them some political cover from the fallout that's bound to happen. If there's any good news right now for the Progressive Left, it's that Obama and the Democratic Senate Leadership isn't giving the Republicans any safety nets (via Washington Post):

The president, who was accompanied by Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Rep. Frederica S. Wilson (D-Fla.) as he entered the Capitol, took no questions from reporters before or after the nearly two-hour meeting. But participants said he told members of his party that they did not have to “rescue” Republicans and that they should “stay strong” as the GOP strives to replace the law...

Schumer and other Democrats echoed Obama, saying they did not feel any responsibility to craft a substitute health-care bill...

The Democrats' position should be this: Obamacare works to cover most Americans. Obamacare works to improve access to health care to most Americans. Obamacare works. And stick to that message.

The Democrats need to remember that the Republicans sold a fearmongering campaign, demonizing the health care reforms even as those reforms kicked into gear and made our nation's existing health care system function at better value (lower costs, more coverage for people who NEEDED it). Now that the Republicans can't campaign on that fear anymore - now that THEY are the ones responsible for what happens to our nation's health care - it's their own damn fault that too many people believe the wrong things about it.

David Frum wrote about this years ago when he called Obamacare the Republicans' Waterloo. It wasn't going to doom Obama or the Democrats, he noted, it was going to doom a Republican party whose reflexive opposition to ANYTHING was going to leave them unable to lead or fix this issue any time soon (and that time is NOW):

We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.

There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother? Or – more exactly – with somebody whom your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their grandmother?

I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters – but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead. The real leaders are on TV and radio, and they have very different imperatives from people in government. Talk radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination. When Rush Limbaugh said that he wanted President Obama to fail, he was intelligently explaining his own interests. What he omitted to say – but what is equally true – is that he also wants Republicans to fail. If Republicans succeed – if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office – Rush’s listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleepnumber beds.

So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it’s mission accomplished. For the cause they purport to represent, it’s Waterloo all right: ours.

The Republicans in Congress are now flailing with few sound options. They WANT to kill Obamacare but can't completely because 1) the legislative rules can only allow them to kill portions of it, 2) there ARE popular parts of Obamacare that even the wingnuts would be stupid to kill off, and 3) there are signs that ANY tampering with Obamacare will kill jobs and hurt an economy already doomed by a slash-and-burn Republican budget guaranteed to raise deficits and the national debt.

There's no glory in what the Republicans realize the position they've put themselves into.

Screw them. They asked for this.

They got 62 million Americans to buy their bullsh-t. Now the bill's come due, and nobody else should be forced to pay it.

Resisting the Oncoming Train Wreck: an Indivisible Guide

I'm linking this PDF page to you about what you can do to force the Far Right wingnuts in Congress and the White House to NOT destroy the whole planet like they hope to.

Indivisible: A Practical Guide to Resisting the Trump Agenda

The key takeaways:

• SHOW UP. At the local office or even spend the time to trek over to DC and bang on the office door there. Show up at every public event. Make yourself seen.
• SIT-IN. Get physical about your space being in their space. Do put bail money aside for this one.
• CALL YOUR CONGRESSCRITTER'S OFFICE. OFTEN. But make it about a specific issue, just don't call and rant in general. It's gotta be something being debated on the floor of the House (and not Senate, you CALL YOUR SENATECRITTER for that) at the moment. And be polite. Rude callers get ignored.
• GET INVOLVED. Join local organizations fighting for your rights. Even look into joining the Democratic Party and running for local - school board, county seats, state legislative - offices.
• DON'T GET INTO AGENDAS. Arguing over a 50-point plan gets messy, distracting, and tossed aside. Play DEFENSE. Just Say NO.

And if all else fails, for the Love of GOD Do NOT Vote Republican ever again and get 500 people around you to do the same.

Headfirst Into a Political Abyss

What’d I miss?/
What’d I miss?/
Headfirst into a political abyss! - Thomas Jefferson, Hamilton the musical

Considering how much respect Trump has for both our long-standing alliances and the very concept of effective foreign policy - that is, none at all - this move shouldn't be surprising (via the New York Times):

President-elect Donald J. Trump’s transition staff has issued a blanket edict requiring politically appointed ambassadors to leave their overseas posts by Inauguration Day, according to several American diplomats familiar with the plan, breaking with decades of precedent by declining to provide even the briefest of grace periods.

The mandate — issued “without exceptions,” according to a terse State Department cable sent on Dec. 23, diplomats who saw it said — threatens to leave the United States without Senate-confirmed envoys for months in critical nations like Germany, Canada and Britain. In the past, administrations of both parties have often granted extensions on a case-by-case basis to allow a handful of ambassadors, particularly those with school-age children, to remain in place for weeks or months...

W. Robert Pearson, a former ambassador to Turkey and a scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington, said the rule was “quite extraordinary,” adding that it could undermine American interests and signal a hasty change in direction that exacerbates jitters among allies about their relationships with the new administration...

Basically, Trump wants to prove a point: He's boss, and everybody dances to his tune.

With regards to the personal issues for ambassadors - suddenly booted out of their residencies - this is minor: they should have been making arrangements to clear out the day after the universe imploded on itself on November 9th. But like Pearson noted, and what everyone else has to see, what this move does is destabilize our nation's ability to perform any kind of smooth transaction between one administration and the next.

This move can possibly leave us without envoys with key allies - or worse, with unhappy rival nations like China - during a chaotic global situation. We're already knee-deep into the sixth year of a Syrian Civil War with nations like Turkey, Russia, Iran, and nearly every other Middle Eastern player drawn into that firestorm. We've got a NATO alliance on edge with Russia still pushing a Ukrainian border war. China's already pissed about Trump and Taiwan, and has got the South China Sea - affecting everybody from Japan to Australia (which brings in the UK Commonwealth) - on its mind.

And we already know how bad Trump has got it for his BFF Putin.

We're talking about a foreign policy situation already in chaos before Trump is even swearing an oath to a Constitution he's bound to break the second he puts hand to a Bible (which will likely burst into flames the second he touches it).

And yes, 62 million of you voted for this train wreck on arrival.

Everything You Need To Know About Republican Priorities: Day One 2017 (w/ Update)

See the Updates below:

So, the Republicans have full control of Congress, and incoming control of the Presidency, and pretty soon control of the Supreme Court.

So what's the first thing they do in 2017? On the Monday before their session of Congress is set to start?

Do the Republicans repeal Obamacare as they've threatened to do for the past six years? No.

Do the Republicans appeal to their pro-fetus voting base by defunding Planned Parenthood or outlawing abortion? No.

Do the Republicans gleefully pass a resolution slashing taxes on the rich, such an easy no-brainer thing they've been itching to do to fulfill their Randian Drown-Government-in-Grover's-Bathtub dreams? No.

Do the Republicans do something sensible like issue a confirmation of Obama's sanctions on a Russian government that directly meddled in our own nation's elections? No.

This is the first thing the Republicans did in full awareness that they were in charge of the whole circus (via Washington Post):

Defying the wishes of their top leaders, House Republicans voted behind closed doors Monday night to rein in the independent ethics office created eight years ago in the wake of a series of embarrassing congressional scandals.

The 119-to-74 vote during a GOP conference meeting means that the House rules package expected to be adopted Tuesday, the first day of the 115th Congress, would rename the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) as the Office of Congressional Complaint Review and place it under the oversight of the House Ethics Committee.

Under the proposed new rules, the office could not employ a spokesperson, investigate anonymous tips or refer criminal wrongdoing to prosecutors without the express consent of the Ethics Committee, which would gain the power to summarily end any OCE probe.

Not only does the Ethics Committee, made up of the Congresscritters that should be under scruntiny, gain control to shut down any inquiry, they can force people to shut up about it. Hush-hush, keep it on the down low, as it were.

The OCE was created in 2008 to address concerns that the Ethics Committee had been too timid in pursuing allegations of wrongdoing by House members. Under the current House ethics regime, the OCE is empowered to release a public report of its findings even if the Ethics Committee chooses not to take further action against a member.

That was back when Democrats were in charge of Congress (2006-2010), in response to a number of Congressional scandals - remember Jack Abramoff? remember Duke Cunningham? - that were exposing how intertwined with lobbyists that the then-GOP Congress had become (K Street Project, anyone?).

An OCE spokeswoman declined to comment Monday. Because Monday’s vote was taken in a private party meeting, there is no public tally of how members voted on the proposal.

That's because these Republicans know that what they're going to do is not going to sit too well with the general population. It will, of course, mean nothing to the Republican voters who keep sending these corrupt incumbents back to the WORST. CONGRESS. EVER, over and over and over, all because these incumbents say the pretty and angry things those Republican voters love to hear. They'll turn a blind eye to the corruption because it's THEIR Party being corrupt and they'll never believe a word of it.

This was their top priority, America. This Republican Congress is driven not to serve the needs of The People but to serve their own corruption.

To the 62 million Americans who voted for this party, this is what you gave us. With all the gerrymandering, with all the partisan appeals, with all the blind self-serving rage that drives you to back these crooks again and again because they're your crooks. This is all on you.

Update: Norm Ornstein, who worked on the creation of this office, is livid:

I have rarely been more angry or dismayed at the conduct of Congress than I was Monday night with the unconscionable, deplorable, underhanded move by Representative Bob Goodlatte to eviscerate and undermine the Office of Congressional Ethics. When House Speaker Paul Ryan and his counterpart Nancy Pelosi indicated weeks ago that they would continue OCE, the reform community—left and right—breathed a sigh of relief. Ryan, like his predecessor John Boehner, had seen the value to the integrity of the House of the office, which has been a stalwart of bipartisan and nonpartisan comity and independence. That makes this bait-and-switch action even more outrageous...

...For more than two decades, I had pushed to create an independent office, with involvement from former members who understand the nature of ethics in a political body, to be the first step in judging the conduct of members...

...But the years leading up to 2008 were anything but the best of times. First came the ethics wars, led by Newt Gingrich in the years leading up to 1994, using the ethics process for partisan leverage, criminalizing policy differences. After Gingrich became speaker, the backlash hit him directly, in a tit for tat. Under Speaker Dennis Hastert and his henchman Tom DeLay, it got worse. The nadir came in 2004 when an honest ethics panel, chaired by conservative Republican Joel Hefley of Colorado did its duty and recommended sanctions against DeLay for unethical conduct. Hastert responded by firing Hefley and removing two standup Republican members, Kenny Hulshof of Missouri and the late Steve LaTourette of Ohio...

When Democrats recaptured the House in 2006, the new speaker, Nancy Pelosi, began a process to clean the House, choosing Massachusetts Democrat Michael Capuano to lead the effort via a bipartisan select panel.  Through a lengthy, arduous process, with deep opposition from nearly all Republicans and real reluctance on the part of many Democrats, Capuano, working closely with me and Tom Mann and a small group of other reformers, pieced together a balanced plan that respected and preserved the constitutional requirement that the House be the judge of its own members, kept intact the ethics committee, but created a way to build larger credibility that the ethics process would be honest and fair whatever the political currents or partisan pressures...

The OCE members spanned the political spectrum, and had a thankless task, but responded just the way we had hoped—every decision they made was balanced, careful, and importantly, unanimous. The body took plenty of potshots, from aggrieved members of both parties, which have continued since its creation.  Reformers have feared at the beginning of each Congress since then that the leadership would try to remove it or weaken it. But Pelosi stood firm and Boehner, to his great credit, did so as well. Now this...

Rules packages get up or down votes, and are top priority for the majority leadership. They are not rejected by the majority party. The package is put together by the leadership; nothing gets included or excluded without the say-so of the speaker. Make no mistake about it: Despite public reports loudly proclaiming his opposition, it’s hard to believe this would have happened had Paul Ryan really tried to stop it. And do not believe Goodlatte’s risable assurance that this strengthens OCE. It has been muzzled and hamstrung, defenestrated and castrated...

Ornstein is rightly pissed. We all should be. But I doubt it. The Far Right is going to pretend they're the heroes of this Narrative and look away from the graft, kickbacks, and brutality of their own party. The rest of us are just going to have to suffer for their sins.

Revision to the Update 1/3/2017: Word now out that the Congresscritters' phone lines were jammed with angry people this morning and that the House GOP has decided to shelve the Goodlatte amendment (for now).

This is only encouraging in that the people are actually paying attention to this shit and holding their representatives accountable. But don't rest just yet: these crooks are going to try and kill every oversight in the rulebook. This is how the House Republicans roll, son...

Just How Bad Is 2017 Going To Get?

I gotta admit, this is the first day where I am waking up to the dread of a new year.

I'm no optimist, but every other January 1st I've lived through has been a "hey, okay, this is the year all the good things come my way." I had hopes, I had good intentions, we all had the promise that things were turning up.

And then 62 million morans went and voted for Trump last November.

We're entering into a new Presidential administration led by the most ill-informed, proudly ignorant, vulgar, corrupt, bankrupt, dishonest, untrained and unqualified human being this nation could ever produce.

I'm not the only one thinking this. Even the audience for the Far Right Noise Machine thinks so:

And this is a month after his Electoral College "win". The "One of the Worst" category at 31 percent beats out "Above Average". You'd think the Fox audience would have biased themselves to AT LEAST give Trump an "Average" support (after all, 25 percent forced themselves to support "Above Average").

How bad is this year going to get?

Trump's very existence could well become an impeachable offense the moment he swears the oath of office. Via the Washington Post:

Until now, we have never had one for whom it was legitimate to question at the onset of his presidency whether he could fulfill his oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

As things stand now, President-elect Donald Trump has suggested he will not divest himself of a myriad of businesses around the globe that pose serious conflicts of interest, nor will he liquidate even foreign holdings, the proceeds of which would put him in violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution.

Jennifer Rubin cites a Brookings Review of the Emoluments Clause and what it found:

While much has changed since 1789, certain premises of politics and human nature have held steady.  One of those truths is that private financial interests can subtly sway even the most virtuous leaders.  As careful students of history, the Framers were painfully aware that entanglements between American officials and foreign powers could pose a creeping, insidious risk to the Republic.  The Emoluments Clause was forged of their hard-won wisdom.  It is no relic of a bygone era, but rather an expression of insight into the nature of the human condition and the preconditions of self-governance.

Now in 2016, when there is overwhelming evidence that a foreign power has indeed meddled in our political system, adherence to the strict prohibition on foreign government presents and emoluments “of any kind whatever” is even more important for our national security and independence.

Never in American history has a president-elect presented more conflict of interest questions and foreign entanglements than Donald Trump. Given the vast and global scope of Trump’s business interests, many of which remain shrouded in secrecy, we cannot predict the full gamut of legal and constitutional challenges that lie ahead.  But one violation, of constitutional magnitude, will run from the instant that Mr. Trump swears he will “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” While holding office, Mr. Trump will receive—by virtue of his continued interest in the Trump Organization and his stake in hundreds of other entities—a steady stream of monetary and other benefits from foreign powers and their agents.

In the attached brief, we examine the Emoluments Clause in detail and conclude that Donald Trump’s diverse dealings violate both the spirit and the letter of this critical piece of the U.S. Constitution...

By some arguments, Trump can't even place his holdings into a Blind Trust because he'll still be in a position to know what profits him (and having his children run that "Trust" still violates ethics). Thing is, Trump will not even do that: he keeps "promising" he'll provide a solution but never does.

Trump is a walking Impeachment, but this Republican-controlled Congress will never go for it: not enough of their own wingnuts will turn against Trump, meaning a serious Impeachment effort requires support from Democrats... and the Democrats are not going to be charitable out of the kindness of their hearts, they are going to want concessions on key issues - Obamacare, Planned Parenthood, voting rights, Medicare and Social Security protections - that Paul Ryan and the Budget Slashers could never accept.

And in the time that Trump will be in office, disasters will abound. If Trump and the Congressional wingnuts have their say, we'll be in the middle of a tariff trade war by April, rising costs on commodities by June, and double-digit unemployment by November.

Think I'm exaggerating? We're facing nearly the same economic conditions as 1929.

It's not going to help that Paul Ryan is hell-bent to implement his Randian Utopian budget of social safety nets and massive tax cuts for the uber-rich. This is going to do nothing to solve the income inequality problem that truly threatens a majority of Americans.

And it's really not helping that Trump is playing into Putin's hands, leading the Republicans into a foreign policy crisis where they're placing Party Loyalty over the national security needs of the United States.

And it's really really not helping that Trump is convinced he can restart a nuclear arms race and that he can use nuclear arms at a whim.

It's kind of nice that 2016 is finally over and that our celebrities may be safe for now... but 2017 is already an Excedrin Headache in dire need of trepanning relief.

Other New Year's Resolutions

Things to focus on for 2017:

Getting a fiction novel finished - finally - for physical print.

Getting this damn weight down - 300 lbs - down to something more respectable - somewhere in the 270s range - so I might actually look more human.

Getting some damn social skills to, you know, get a life.

Saving up money for a trip to this year's ALA annual conference in Chicago.

Surviving the oncoming train wreck of the Trump regime.

The way things are going, I think the weight loss resolution is the most likely. /sigh

It's 2017. Time To Fight

New Year Resolution:

Keep telling Trump and the Republican Party you won't accept their incoming regime of misrule, corruption, and destruction.

Always tell them NO.

How the Electoral College Failed

For starters, the wrong candidate won.

Our system of the Electoral College - where the Popular Vote doesn't win it, it's where you win enough states with enough Electors - for what I can tell is the only one where the runner-up can secure a victory. Nearly every other elective government out there - from the parliamentary forms to other federal-based setups - seems to go with "whoever gets the most votes wins." Even the parliaments - where multiparty systems mean a plurality-winner can form a coalition government with other minor runner-ups - has it as a given that the largest vote-getting party gets the Prime Minister spot and sets all the rules.

All because our electoral system doesn't go by Popular vote for the Presidency. It goes by a complex system where each state determines their Electors, who then decide who they want for President. Granted, the Electors still go by who won their state, but that could create a situation - like we just had this year 2016 - where states with minimal populations all team up for one candidate who barely wins their states (Trump) while the states with larger populations all went for the other candidate who garners more voters (Hillary) but not enough Electors.

But no. For the office of the Presidency, the guy who gets second place among the actual voters can still end up in the White House. This is like having a seven-game World Series where the Cubs win 4 games but the baseball commissioner gives the trophy to the Indians because they had a better ERA during the series. It defies logic.

The biggest problem is that the Elector count is skewed, distorted in favor of small-population states - where few people live - and against the large-population states where, you know, everybody really lives.

Wyoming is the smallest population state at 585,000 or so. California is the largest at 39,250,000 or so. Simple math has California roughly 67 times the population of Wyoming.

Because the Electoral College is required by the Constitution to equal the number of representatives and senators in Congress, Wyoming gets 3 Electors because of the sole minimum representative plus two senators. Due to a cap of representatives (435 members, set in 1929), the disbursement of representatives makes it 55 Electors for California (53 reps, two senators). Let's divide 55 by 3... it shows California getting 18 times the number of Electors. Even though Wyoming has fewer Electors, those Electors carry more value. If California gets the number of Electors that their population actually warrants - 67 times - we should be giving California nearly 202 Electors.

But we don't.

If the Elector count is still tied to Congressional representation, we'll never see this fixed. There's a reason why the number of representatives in the House is capped: any expansion of more seats would increase the costs of the bureaucracy. The number of representatives - not just for California but all the other states that would see an increase in seats - would likely triple the existing number into the thousands. Organization chaos would kick in: there's not enough committees to seat them all, and the lack of office space for all those new staffs would make things worse.

Granted, there are solid arguments for increasing the number of representatives - our nation's population has tripled since 1929, we do need more effective representation if there were more Congresspeople to serve their districts, and more seats would make it harder for large/midsized states to gerrymander - but the arguments are for moderate increases, not outright doubling/tripling of seats.

If we did something to make the Electoral College equal in value between the states, we'd need to separate the College from the Congress. Make it so that the number of Electors is based on the Voters-to-Elector ratio in the smallest state (Wyoming) and then divide Voters-to-Elector across all the other states.

The argument FOR the Electoral College is "oh, the smaller states need representation." But that flies against the needs - and the rights - of the voters who live in larger population states. Why should voters in California or New York or even Texas suffer all because of where they live? Why does Wyoming or Vermont or Rhode Island get more of a say of who wins the Presidency?

In one of those tone-deaf things, a number of Far Right pundits are crowing that "oh if you don't count California, then Trump won the popular vote." Here's the thing: YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO IGNORE CALIFORNIA. CALIFORNIA COUNTS JUST LIKE ALL THE OTHER STATES. Maybe even more than that, because CALIFORNIA IS WHERE MOST OF THE PEOPLE LIVE.

The President of the United States is the office that represents the entire nation, that should mean every voter in the nation should have a say on who the President should be. Does that include the voters in Wyoming and Vermont and Montana? Sure. But it should also include the voters in Texas and New York and Illinois and Florida and all the other large-population states. And California.

If you're worried about the small states, they still get equal representation in the U.S. Senate - where the rules of Holds and Cloture make it easy for small states to block anything they don't like - and those states still have their own Governors to fight for them at the federal level. Not to mention the fact that the Constitution still has safeguards like the 10th Amendment and the 14th Amendment - silly little thing called DUE PROCESS that makes it so that things have to be equal to all before the law - to keep states reasonably protected and represented.

This is for the President of the United States. This is for everybody. And everybody should get an equal say regardless of which state they're in.

The other big problem with the Electoral College is how it handles the state results as Winner Take All.

California's Electoral count of 55 all went in for Hillary who got 8 million votes, while Trump got zilch even though 4 million voters showed up for him there. Do you think those 4 million enjoy the idea that they live in a "Solid Blue" state when the truth is it's all jumbled? Texas Electoral count of 38 all went to Trump who won 4 million voters over Hillary's 3 million. Do those 3 million Hillary voters enjoy being stuck in a "Solid Red" state that's close to 45 percent Blue?

If we did increase the Electors to reflect actual voter numbers, say California goes up to 202 EV and Texas goes up to 139 EV and so on, we're setting up the viability to have the Electors sorted out by percentage of voters. That way, no one candidate wins all, they win the portion of the voters that sided with them.

The Electors that reflect the Senate seats go to the candidate who gets the majority (or plurality if there's multiple candidates) of the votes in that state. So that's two off the plate. Let's go with California set with 202 Electors. Set aside 2 for Hillary winning the state: out of the 200 left, Hillary got 61.5 percent to Trump's 31.5 percent and Gary Johnson's 3.4 percent as the third-place Libertarian. 200 times .615 = 123 EV and .315 = 63 and .034 = 6.8 okay round up to 7 for Gary Johnson. 123+63+8 = 194, okay so there's 6 Electors to partition out to the other runner-ups, but that's the beauty of this: Now the minor third parties have Electors for them. Granted, they're close to zero compared to the numbers the Big Two get, but it's better than the actual zeroes they were getting... and if they perform better in other states, those Electors add up.

In the percentages matchup, Hillary gets 125 (plus the 2 Senate EV, remember) out of Cali, Trump gets 63 EV he didn't have before, Johnson gets 8 EV, the others get one or two, and then you start spreading that out among the other states. Republicans now have a reason to fight for voters in what were once Solid Blue states: Democrats now have a reason to fight voters in Solid Red states. And the Electoral College will more accurately reflect the Popular Vote.

I've gotten arguments in the social media - Twitter, natch - that we "don't live in a democracy, we live in a republic." That is, we're not a direct vote system like the classic democracies of the Greeks: we're supposed to be modeled after the Roman Republic system. Thing is, even republics are more responsive than the current Electoral system. I don't recall from my studies - in both World History and Latin classes - a single Roman election for Consul where the runner-ups got the victory parade. Psst: what made the Romans a Republic was the system of Checks and Balances within the government itself.

The Electoral College was designed to be a Check, goes the argument: The Founders didn't trust the direct vote of the people and so set up the College to get the states to determine which candidates won. The Founders actually wanted the results to be a mess: They wanted the College to determine the "best qualified" candidate - to filter out the crazy or the ill-suited - regardless of the Popular vote. And if the Electors couldn't decide, the Founders wanted the House to determine who served as President, as another Check to make the President more "accountable" to Congress.

It's a sick joke that in the few times that the Electoral College has been in question - 1800, 1824, 1876, 1884, 2000, 2016 - it's never worked the way the Founders intended. The results of 1800, 1876 and 2000 in particular created constitutional crises. In 1824 the clear popular choice - Jackson - got screwed over by a House of Representatives that preferred Adams, and it created a toxic political environment of the following Jacksonian era - the Spoils system in particular - that tainted politics until the civil service reforms of the Progressive era of the late 19th Century.

And the Electoral College never voted their consciences: The Electors (mostly) voted the way their states went Winner-Take-All. The few Faithless Electors who voted their mind only did so as a protest vote where the result (just one guy for Reagan in 1976, for example) had no impact.

Only one of the Presidents who won the Electoral in spite of the Popular won re-election (Dubya the noted exception), and few of them left behind any notable legacy. So there's that to consider.

At some point, the Presidential elections are going to have to respect the right of the People to vote as a nation for the office that represents the nation. We can keep the Electoral College as a stop-gap or a braking mechanism to ensure the "Mob Rule" that the Founders feared would not rise up to claim a powerful seat in the federal government. But it's got to reflect what the people want a lot better than the mess we've got now.

Drowned In Moonlight: RIP Carrie Fisher

“Anyway, George comes up to me the first day of filming and he takes on look at the dress and says, 'You can't wear a bra under that dress.'

So, I say, 'Okay, I'll bite. Why?'

And he says, 'Because... there's no underwear in space.'

I promise you this is true, and he says it with such conviction too! Like he had been to space and looked around and he didn't see any bras or panties or briefs anywhere.

Now, George came to my show when it was in Berkeley. He came backstage and explained why you can't wear your brassiere in other galaxies, and I have a sense you will be going to outer space very soon, so here's why you cannot wear your brassiere, per George. So, what happens is you go to space and you become weightless. So far so good, right? But then your body expands??? But your bra doesn't- so you get strangled by your own bra. Now I think that this would make a fantastic obit- so I tell my younger friends that no matter how I go, I want it reported that I drowned in moonlight, strangled by my own bra.”

- Carrie Fisher

"Somebody has to save our skins!"

I wrote this bit for TV Tropes' Awesome page for A New Hope: "In that one moment, she utterly demolishes the Damsel In Distress image in favor of being an Action Girl equally participating in her own rescue." Someone's added to it since then, but this part is still up and I'm particularly proud of it.

I already wrote about how bad this year's been for celebrity deaths - oh man, I don't even have time or room to cry over the loss of Richard Adams, author of Watership Down - but I swear to the Old Gods and the New that 2016 should crawl off into a dumpster and fucking set itself on fire. If this year were truly anthropomorphized as a human being, I would be repeatedly punching him in the balls without mercy or regret.

My nephews and I got to see Carrie Fisher speak at the Tampa Bay Comic Con in 2015. She was witty, acerbic, doting over her puppy that she took everywhere with her.

I know that we can't associate the character with the actor, that Leia is fictional to where Carrie Fisher was real. But I'm a sci-fi geek. I grew up to Star Wars, associated to that franchise in a way I haven't related to anything else (maybe X-Files, but not with this level of love or sincerity). In a way, this is Leia dying, at a time when the full epic is still under production and we're waiting on Episode VIII (oh GOD is THAT going to create a wave of tears) and we just saw Leia show up in CGI (kinda painfully, because you could tell it was CGI and not Carrie in excellent de-aging makeup) in Rogue One (and I am tempted to write about that given its cultural and political immediacy).

Princess, Senator, General... Leia was the Rebellion against the Empire, against the darkness of the Sith and the galactic fascism it all represented.

And now she's gone. Leia's gone. Carrie Fisher died today.

/stands up

The Fight Continues. This war isn't over until every soul is free.

I Am One With the Force, And the Force Is With Me.

"Hope." - the final line in Rogue One

Addendum: posting again some of the photos I got of Carrie Fisher at the comic con. I apologize but three of them were shaky thus blurry.

Io Saturnalia... Winter Is Coming 2016 Edition

This may be the last time any of us heathens get a chance to go all pagan for the winter solstice, when you consider the ascendancy of Fox Not-News and how they'll fight long and hard to make MERRY CHRISTMAS the de facto salute across the globe...

It seems like only yesterday that General Bill O'Reilly drew the first battle lines, declaring with pantomime outrage that a sign that once read, "Merry Christmas!" now had the audacity to say, "Happy Holidays!" This, of course, was an outright assault on Traditional Values and The American Way of Life. Fox News wouldn't stand for it then and they won't stand for it now.

Except, it seems, when sending their own holiday cards:

Hypocrisy, thy name is Bill O'Reilly.