Month: November 2016

Confessions of the media overlords

by digby

Just a little reminder:

[CBS Chairman]Leslie Moonves can appreciate a Donald Trump candidacy.

“It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,” he said of the presidential race.

Moonves called the campaign for president a “circus” full of “bomb throwing,” and he hopes it continues.

“Most of the ads are not about issues. They’re sort of like the debates,” he said.

“Man, who would have expected the ride we’re all having right now? … The money’s rolling in and this is fun,” he said.

“I’ve never seen anything like this, and this going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It’s a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going,” said Moonves.

“Donald’s place in this election is a good thing,” he said Monday at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in San Francisco.

MSNBC’s Andrew Lack:

“As reasonable as that [discarded liberal] programming was for when it was created, we’re in a long game now … This is may be the most interesting election of my lifetime … The world has never been more dangerous in my lifetime.”

“I think it’s a helluva story — and I like big stories,” Lack said, rejecting the notion that his and other news outlets are simply providing the reality TV mogul-turned-politician a free forum to reach and attract supporters.

“Donald Trump is leading our news coverage, and everybody else’s, because Donald Trump has cut a path through the Republican party that is profound right now … The coverage we’re giving to Trump is arguably 24-7 because he’s got 40 percent in the polls.”

And then there’s Jeff Zucker of CNN who pretty much created Donald Trump’s TV persona when he was at NBC and then pumped him (and Clinton’s email “scandal”) relentlessly during the campaign:

Does CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker feel responsible for the rise of Donald Trump?

“I don’t, because he has been the front-runner of the Republican party since he announced last June,” said Zucker during an intimate lunch meeting with reporters today. Just as Hillary Clinton got the lion’s share of attention in the Democratic race early on, “the front-runner of the party is always going to get a disproportionate amount of attention,” he said.

Zucker also says Trump “has been much more available than many of the others who have been or are still in the race. Just because he says ‘yes’ and has subjected himself to those interviews, and [other candidates] don’t, I’m not going to penalize him for saying ‘yes.’”

He later stopped doing those phone in interviews but it didn’t stop the many hours of Trump focused coverage including uninterrupted Nuremburg rallies. CNN did very well in the ratings. Very well.

In summation, Zucker argued, “I actually reject that premise that we’ve given too much attention to him.”

They are, by the way, social friends as well as business associates

The Washington Posts’ Margaret Sullivan wrote about this phenomenon a while back:

Can you blame a TV executive such as Zucker for doing his job — striving for the highest possible ratings and profits?

Maybe not at NBC, where as the head of the entertainment division, Zucker bore no responsibility to the public interest when he made Trump a reality-show star.

But when it comes to CNN’s news coverage — its journalism — that’s a different matter. Decisions about covering a presidential campaign should consider what’s best for citizens as well as what’s best for Time Warner’s shareholders.

Some would say that CNN merely held up the mirror to Trump, and voters freely chose him over his Republican competitors. And now, voters may freely choose him over Hillary Clinton, who has made the coverage problem worse by being the anti-Trump — failing to connect emotionally with voters and even at the basic political task of making news. Partly by being so guarded, she’s ceded the near-monopoly on news to her more charismatic rival.

But it is, after all, the responsibility of the press to hold candidates accountable, not to provide publicity.

Twice, Zucker made Trump a winner. And twice, Trump made Zucker a winner.

But what about the rest of us?

Good question.

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Forgiveness, Compassion and Generosity
By Batocchio

Some thoughts for Armistice Day (or Veterans Day, or Remembrance Day).

How does one deal with a tragedy? Or a great injustice? Or persistent unfairness for years? How does one face violence, or conflict or hatred?

One of the most striking stories I’ve encountered this year is that of Terri Roberts and her Amish neighbors. Both The Washington Post and StoryCorps did excellent pieces about them. From The Post:

The simple, quiet rural life [Terri Roberts] knew shattered on Oct. 2, 2006, when her oldest son, Charles Carl Roberts IV, walked into a one-room Amish schoolhouse on a clear, unseasonably warm Monday morning. The 32-year-old husband and father of three young children ordered the boys and adults to leave, tied up 10 little girls between the ages of 6 and 13 and shot them, killing five and injuring the others, before killing himself.

Terri Roberts’s husband thought they’d have to move far away. He knew what people thought of parents of mass murderers. He believed they would be ostracized in their community, blamed for not knowing the evil their child was capable of.

But in the hours after the massacre, as Amish parents still waited in a nearby barn for word about whether their daughters had survived, an Amish man named Henry arrived at the Robertses’ home with a message: The families did not see the couple as an enemy. Rather, they saw them as parents who were grieving the loss of their child, too. Henry put his hand on the shoulder of Terri Roberts’s husband and called him a friend.

The world watched in amazement as, on the day of their son’s funeral, nearly 30 Amish men and women, some the parents of the victims, came to the cemetery and formed a wall to block out media cameras. Parents, whose daughters had died at the hand of their son, approached the couple after the burial and offered condolences for their loss.

Then, just four weeks after the shooting, the couple was invited to meet with all the families in a local fire hall. One mother held Roberts’s gaze as both women’s eyes blurred with tears, she said. They were all grieving; they were all struggling to make sense of the senseless.

Steven Nolt, a professor of Amish studies at Elizabethtown College, said that for most people, forgiveness and acceptance come at the end of a long emotional process. But the Amish forgive first and then every day work through the emotions of it. This “decisional forgiveness” opened a space for Roberts to offer her friendship, which normally in their situation would be uncomfortable, he said.

But the Amish did more than forgive the couple. They embraced them as part of their community. When Roberts underwent treatment for Stage 4 breast cancer in December, one of the girls who survived the massacre helped clean her home before she returned from the hospital. A large yellow bus arrived at her home around Christmas, and Amish children piled inside to sing her Christmas carols.

“The forgiveness is there; there’s no doubt they forgive,” Roberts said.

The relationship hasn’t been one-sided; Terri Roberts began to spend time taking care of Rosanna, the most severely wounded survivor of her son’s attack:

Several months later, Roberts had all the women back to her home for a tea — a gathering that’s now become an annual tradition. As she played again with Rosanna, she asked the girl’s mother if she might help care for her. In the intervening years, Roberts spent nearly every Thursday evening at the King family’s farm, bathing, reading and attending to Rosanna until her bedtime. After the first couple of visits, Roberts said, she would cry uncontrollably the entire drive home, overwhelmed by the reality that this little girl was severely handicapped because of her son.

This has been a rough path for all involved:

For [Rosanna’s father, Christ] King, forgiveness has not come easy. Some parents have mourned the death of their daughters. Others have seen their daughters fully heal. His daughter survived, but he also lost her. Every day, he fights back his anger. Every day, he has to forgive again.

Sitting in a folding chair, with Rosanna’s hospital bed in view behind him, King speaks slowly, methodically, measuring each word. There are joy-filled moments with their daughter, like when she seems to perk up when he comes in from work. But then there are days when she has seizures or she’s up in the night and can’t be comforted.

“I’ve always said and continue to say we have a lot of hard work to be what the people brag about us to be,” he said.

Honestly, I’m not sure I’d be capable of that level of forgiveness – some people might call it emotional maturity or spiritual maturity or perhaps grace – but I admire the people who are capable, who work to achieve it and practice it.

I generally think that true forgiveness is impossible – or at least undeserved – unless the offending party regrets the offense. I also don’t believe in enabling or excusing destructive, abusive behavior. I definitely don’t believe true forgiveness can be commanded or cajoled, and that it’s obnoxious to try. Some people prefer the framing, “Forgive but not forget,” but it’s really just a semantic difference from “not forgiving or condoning, but not stewing on things to a self-destructive degree, either.” (Although in some cases such stewing may be perfectly understandable.)

I’m still in partial shock from this week’s events. Donald Trump explicitly ran on bigotry and spite, was judged unqualified and temperamentally unfit for office by significant portions of the population, yet still was narrowly elected. There’s plenty of analysis left to be done. But hate crimes over the past days reveal the escalation of a disturbing trend this year. I fear we’re entering an era threatening the ascent of gleeful bullying, shameless hatred, cruel and reckless policies at home and belligerence abroad. It won’t matter if people are wrong or even know they’re wrong, because they’ll have the power to enforce their will, and they’re eager to use it. I hope I’m incorrect. I fear we already possess plenty of evidence (and too many people forget the Bush years and older history), but the coming months and years will provide plenty of opportunities for the Republican Party and conservatives to show their true character.

(Perhaps the worst won’t happen – and we can hope for that – but if there’s one thing our most recent election shows, it’s that it’s folly to count on a decent outcome and that things can always get worse.)

So how can one respond?

One way is with strength and resolve. In a political context, or maybe just a personal one, civil disobedience is nonviolent, but it is not passive. It is often confrontational – not aggressive, but steadfast. Conscientious dissent is crucial, especially against bullies.

Another way is with compassion and generosity. I can’t pretend I’ll reach the level of forgiveness Roberts and King have achieved in the story above. But I can make an increased effort to be kind to others, especially the most vulnerable, most especially those targeted and scapegoated by Trump and his supporters. People make worse decisions when they’re scared. Every generous deed and act of connection helps ameliorate the effects of hatred and just might diminish the hatred itself a bit. (I’m also reminded of a story told by Arun Manilal Gandhi about his grandfather, Mahatma Gandhi, winning over with sheer kindness a white South African who had supported apartheid.)

I’ve seen some memes and personal offers of aid this week that give me hope. Several schools have posted some version of this:

Dear undocumented students, in this classroom, there are no walls.

Dear black students, in this classroom, your life matters.

Dear Mexican students, you are not rapists or drug dealers.

Dear female students, men cannot grab you.

Dear Muslim students, you are not terrorists.

I’ve also seen this one:

If you wear a hijab, I’ll sit with you on the train.

If you’re trans, I’ll go to the bathroom with you.

If you’re a person of color, I’ll stand with you if the cops stop you.

If you’re a person with disabilities, I’ll hand you my megaphone.

If you’re an immigrant, I’ll help you find resources..

If you’re a survivor, I’ll believe you.

If you’re a refugee, I’ll make sure you’re welcome.

If you’re a veteran, I’ll take up your fight.

If you’re LGBTQ, I won’t let anyone tell you you’re broken.

If you’re a woman, I’ll make sure you get home ok.

If you’re tired, me too.

If you need a hug, I’ve got an infinite supply.

If you need me, I’ll be with you. All I ask is that you be with me, too.

These might seem a bit hokey, but not to someone in genuine need. Facing discouragement is often draining, and confronting actual hatred all the more so. It’s easy to get burnt out as an activist, and finding a way to recuperate and support each other is important. Jared Bernstein has characterized conservatism as YOLO, “You’re on your own,” whereas liberalism is WITT, “We’re in this together.” This week, I’ve seen many people genuinely upset, or scared or grieving – and occasionally some nasty taunting in response – but also plenty of compassion, kindness and support. I’ll be making my annual food bank donation soon, and I’m reflecting on what else to do in the months ahead. Developing a long-term political strategy is crucial, and specific, concrete activism is as well, but another key way to face down inhumanity and make America better is simply to be better to one another.

(I normally focus more on war on 11/11, but violence certainly isn’t limited to war. My most relevant related posts are probably 2011’s “They Could Not Look Me in the Eye Again” and 2009’s “War and the Denial of Loss.” )

The curmudgeon was right

by digby

H.L. Mencken said this for real:

The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.

The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

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The winners

by digby

This is by the cartoonist David Horsey:

I’m sure thousands of bottles of Budweiser will be raised tonight in those white, working-class neighborhoods of the upper Midwest that put Donald Trump over the top in the electoral college. You folks should enjoy your moment and don’t trouble yourselves with the thought that plenty of celebratory champagne is being poured in corporate board rooms, country clubs and in the spacious mansions of hedge fund managers.

Thanks to your votes, Mr. and Mrs. White Working Class, all those rich people will soon get a massive tax cut and relief from the environmental regulations that have kept them from polluting your air and water and from the financial oversight that has restrained them from milking every last penny from their employees and the victims of their big-money schemes.

Yes, congratulations. At the same moment you elected a billionaire who claimed he would drain the special interest “swamp” in Washington, you kept in power insiders such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, one of the biggest snakes in the swamp, plus all the other Republicans in Congress who have fought to keep the mighty flow of corporate dollars streaming in.

You think you have struck a blow against the “elites” on the coasts who look down on “real Americans” in the heartland. You say you have been forgotten or misunderstood by the powers that be. That may be true. But I must say that those of you who act as if you are the only ones in the country who work hard, care for your families and love your country are pretty damn elitist, as well.

I look around at my friends and neighbors here on the West Coast and I see lots of patriotic people who put in long hours of labor to put food on the table and put their kids through school.

There is Keith, a guy with whom I recently got acquainted when we discovered our common affinity for good drinks, good ribs and good jazz. Keith is a muscular black man who would likely be subject to unfair and unfriendly scrutiny from the local sheriff if he showed up in a small Midwestern town, but forget the stereotype. Keith had a career in the Marines before taking a job managing security for Hollywood celebrities. In his free time, he works to help the homeless in downtown Los Angeles.

There is the Korean family that runs the laundry down the street from my apartment who never seem to take a vacation or even a day off. There are the Latino men I see laboring every day in the Southern California heat cutting lawns and repairing houses. There are the men of every race I pass by on my way to work who are hauling steel, handling jackhammers, driving trucks and raising girders as they build new subway lines and raise up towering skyscrapers.

And there are my colleagues in the newsroom, both the seasoned veterans of the news business and the charged-up millennials. There’s nothing elite about them, unless being able to spell and use proper grammar are now elite attributes. The men and women around me are working harder than ever for wages that are not rising in an industry threatened by rapid change. Sound familiar?

Most of us here do not live in Beverly Hills. We live in more modest places such as Pasadena, East Los Angeles, Inglewood and Long Beach. Of course, the working class here is a lot more brown than where you might live. They sweat just as hard, though, and put in long hours just like you — maybe longer, and maybe for less money. But you have not done them a favor by electing a guy who threatens to start a trade war based on an illusion. The illusion is that if America cuts itself off from the global market, all those manufacturing jobs your fathers once had will come flooding back. It won’t happen. The robots have taken over the assembly lines. But what a disruption in trade would do is shut down the West Coast ports and, according to expert estimates, kill more than 600,000 working-class jobs in California.

I know you didn’t think about that sort of effect when you cast your protest vote to Make America Great Again, but what exactly were you thinking? Whenever one of you was interviewed by a TV reporter all I heard was you parroting the vague generalities being spouted by your candidate: America doesn’t win anymore; we need a wall to keep out immigrants; political correctness sucks.

Trump’s careless ignorance could make him the world’s most dangerous man
I didn’t hear any of you say you were happy with the longer droughts, bigger storms and more vicious wildfires that are devastating farms, ranches and rural communities. But your new president has promised to rip up the international treaty that might mitigate some of the extreme weather caused by climate change.

I didn’t hear any of you say you were tired of the peace and order created by the NATO alliance and would rather have a cozier relationship with the Russians. But you just elected a man who has denigrated NATO and has warm and fuzzy feelings about Vladimir Putin.

I did hear plenty of you say you hated big government, but is that because you are someone who got fined by the EPA because your industrial plant was poisoning a river? Or because you are a rancher who doesn’t want to pay grazing fees when you exploit publicly owned land? Or because you are a farmer who doesn’t want to admit that government price supports are what keep your business viable?

Does your hatred of government mean you voted for more pollution? With your vote, were you demanding that big banks be set free to run the economy into the ground? Were you eager for less consumer protection? Did you insist that more of the tax burden be put on average Americans and less of it on the super-rich? I hope those are the things you wanted because that is what you will get from a Republican Congress and a Republican president.

Do I sound angry? That is because I am. I’m mad because your misguided hissy fit is messing with the country I love. I am as much a patriot as you are. I choke up when I visit the Lincoln Memorial or the graves of the Kennedys. I love the flag and do not cringe from the Pledge of Allegiance. When I ride a horse across open country, I feel a link with all my ancestors — the first of whom arrived on the Maryland shore in the 1640s. Those family members who came before me slowly made their way West, generation after generation, until they finally found a home within sight of the Pacific. I am about as “real” an American as you can get.

But I am fed up with those of you who think there is only one way to be American. Some of the truest Americans I have met are among those whose ancestors came here in slave ships. Some of the Americans who give me the most hope are the children of parents who slipped across the border in search of a better life; young dreamers working hard for an education and a chance to contribute to our society. Some of the Americans I admire the most are like my friend Jack who left the narrow-mindedness of his home state and came West to Los Angeles, where he met and married the man he loved. America is great because it has room for all these people and more.

If, ultimately, the real reason you voted for Trump was because he promised to start shutting doors that have been opened for people who do not fit a narrow definition of American, you should understand you are in for a fight. It’s now my turn to say it: I want my country back.

Nein/11
by Tom Sullivan

People don’t like having their assumptions challenged. Our Midwest family moved to the South when they were still taking down the signs off the water fountains. Moving to rural America and the South challenged a lot of ours about how the world worked. Everybody said Yes, sir and Yes, ma’am and with strange accents. They drank iced tea year-round and ate odd foods. They had only two televisions stations and the nearest McDonalds was 18 miles away. There were lots more black people. The stores closed downtown on Wednesday afternoon. It seemed both quaint and weird. It took a long time to get used to.

We took a “when in Rome” attitude, I guess. But we were called Yankees by some, and it wasn’t a compliment. My ancestors were still in Ireland during the Civil War, but cultural slurs aren’t about those fine distinctions. A bumper sticker you used to see read, “We Don’t Care How They Do It Up North.”

We had a smiliar experience when last year we bought a small farmhouse in the next county. It is an hour away in a narrow valley reached via a twisting mountain road that climbs over a tall ridge. The house and barn are surrounded by sheep. It might as well be in another country. People there have little use for the multicultural city. It is a foreign place, a place to go to buy groceries when needed, or building supplies. Even then, they don’t have to actually go into the town known for welcoming gay people and hipsters and tourists and microbreweries. They are content to be left alone in their valley with their sheep and farms, thank you very much. The local volunteer firefighters are rock stars. About the first question people ask is, “Where do you go to church?”

Many of us were shocked by the results on Tuesday. We may find it was a largely rural revolt against urban elites. My wife calls it “Nein/11.” People are asking the same questions we did then. How did this happen? Why do they hate us? What happens next? Many will fall into the trap of reducing the outcome to a single, emotionally satisfying cause: racism. There, done. Or economic insecurity or whatever.

But the election challenged our fundamental assumptions about how America worked the way the Civil Rights era challenged the Jim Crow South. We knew there were lots of angry people supporting Donald Trump for lots of reasons, many of them seated in prejudice and opposition to multiculturalism, but we didn’t think America as a country was crazy enough and mad enough to actually elect the man. It was.

As much as the people in that little, white valley like being left alone, they like being ignored and undervalued much less. And they don’t like the idea of having long-held assumptions challenged about what this country is about and whom it is for. “We Don’t Care How They Do It In The Cities.” Donald Trump took white resentment over shifting demographics and globalization, and reduced the issues to lost jobs and suspicious foreigners. He added resentments against wealthy, urban elites better able to weather the globalist storm they created than the shrinking middle class. They are corrupt, he told them, and focused more on minority issues than on the upsets of white people not just in the countryside, but in cities too.

Jamelle Bouie suspects “the United States has been a herrenvolk democracy, one in which whites have been favored citizens enjoying principal access to wealth and opportunity and presumptive status over nonwhites.” Those assumptions are being challenged and they don’t like it. “We’re voting with our middle finger,” a South Carolina car salesman told the L.A. Times in February. Almost half the country joined him on Tuesday. The fallout has not been pretty.

Bouie continues:

We assume that the relative lack of racial violence over the last generation is because of a change of heart and attitude. And surely that has happened to some extent. But to what degree does it also reflect an erstwhile political consensus wherein leaders refused to litigate the question of multiracial democracy? Absent organized opposition to the idea that nonwhites were equal partners in government, there was no activation in the broad electorate. It wasn’t an issue people voted on, because they couldn’t.

Donald Trump changed that. With his tirades against nonwhites and foreign others, he reopened the argument. In effect, he gave white voters a choice: They could continue down the path of multiracial democracy—which coincided with the end of an order in which white workers were the first priority of national leaders—or they could reject it in favor of someone who offered that presumptive treatment. Who promised to “make America great again,” to make it look like the America of Trump’s youth and their youths, where whites—and white men in particular—were the uncontested masters of the country.

Well that’s how they grew up, and that’s how it’s supposed to be. It’s in the constitution or something. Those resentments took a long time to come to a head. September 11, Barack Obama, the Great Recession (Wall Street walked and common folk got thrown into the street). Trump read the signs. Back in 2006, Digby wrote:

I watched the country music awards the other night and saw what looked like a typical bunch of glammed up pop stars like you’d see on any of these awards shows. Lots of cowboy hats, of course, but the haircuts, the clothes, the silicone bodies were not any different from any other Hollywood production. But the songs were not. There are plenty of Saturday night honky tonk fun and straightforward gospel style religious and patriotic tunes. But there is a strain of explicit cultural ID that wends through all of them.

Gretchen Wilson and Merle Haggard’s song “Politically Uncorrect” perfectly captures the sense of exceptionalism and specialness of southern culture:

I’m for the low man on the totem pole

And I’m for the underdog God bless his soul

And I’m for the guys still pulling third shift

And the single mom raisin’ her kids

I’m for the preachers who stay on their knees

And I’m for the sinner who finally believes

And I’m for the farmer with dirt on his hands

And the soldiers who fight for this land

Chorus:

And I’m for the Bible and I’m for the flag

And I’m for the working man, me and ol’ hag

I’m just one of many

Who can’t get no respect

Politically uncorrect

(Merle Haggard)

I guess my opinion is all out of style

(Gretchen Wilson)

Aw, but don’t get me started cause I can get riled

And I’ll make a fight for the forefathers plan

(Merle Haggard)

And the world already knows where I stand

Repeat Chorus

(Merle Haggard)

Nothing wrong with the Bible, nothing wrong with the flag

(Gretchen Wilson)

Nothing wrong with the working man me & ol’ hag

We’re just some of many who can’t get no respect

Politically uncorrect

(Merle Haggard)

Now that’s identity. I emphasized the “can’t get no respect” part because I think that’s key, as I have written many times before. The belief that these ideas are particular to this audience, that they stand alone as being politically incorrect and are “out of style” for holding them, is a huge cultural identifier. And it’s held in opposition to some “other” (presumably someone like me) who is believed not to care about any of those things — particularly the welfare of the common man.

Donald Trump just turned that ditty into a mega-hit. Democrats thought this election was about shattering glass ceilings. It was about shattering things, alright.

Nothing dies on the internet

by digby

Trump tweeted the following four years ago when he thought Obama was going to win the electoral college and Mitt Romney was going to win the popular vote. He’s deleted them, but every Donald Trump tweet has been preserved. 

They’ve got a window and they’re going to use it


by digby

Since Obamacare’s going to be repealed and replaced with fairy dust I’ve been thinking my best hope is to stay healthy until I get to Medicare. It’s a few years away but my husband and I have strong constitutions so maybe we’ll get lucky and the major illnesses won’t kick in until we hit 65.

I guess that plan isn’t really workable either:

During the campaign, coverage of the issues was blotted out by coverage of Hillary Clinton’s emails and Donald Trump’s broad suite of sociopathic tendencies. And of the issues that did receive any attention, a conspicuously missing one was Paul Ryan’s plan to push Medicare beneficiaries into private health insurance. Reporters just assumed that, since Trump never talked about it, it won’t happen. But Paul Ryan still wants it to happen. And in a Fox News interview with Bret Baier, Ryan said Medicare privatization is on.

He said “entitlements” were on the table too. It’s true that Trump promised that he wouldn’t touch them but he’s such an imbecile that Ryan can convince him that he hasn’t broken his promise and this election has shown that he can lie with impunity anyway. His older voters won’t be affected and the younger one’s think he’s going to make them rich so it’s all good.

This should be a lot of fun.

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The Misfit administration


by digby

I wrote about Trump’s shortlist for Salon this morning:

I think many of us are still walking around in a daze, unable to fully process what has happened. Yesterday offered the disorienting tableau of a President-elect Donald Trump sitting next to President Obama in the White House after the two had had their first meeting together. The president explained that they had had a wide-ranging discussion and that he and his team were committed to having a smooth transition and would do all they could to help. He said he wanted to help Trump succeed so the country could succeed.

Trump responded by saying that the meeting went on longer than he expected but as far as he was concerned he could have gone on longer. And then he concluded with this:

We really — we discussed a lot of different situations, some wonderful and some difficulties. I very much look forward to dealing with the President in the future, including counsel. He explained some of the difficulties, some of the high-flying assets and some of the really great things that have been achieved. So, Mr. President, it was a great honor being with you, and I look forward to being with you many, many more times in the future.

If you didn’t actually hear Trump say those words you’d have thought it was his 10-year-old son Barron speaking instead of him. Nonetheless, everyone acted as if it was perfectly normal that the president-elect sounded as if he’d never before thought about what the man he had called “the founder of ISIS” actually did. (They didn’t take questions from the press, so nobody got to ask him what he meant by “some of the high-flying assets.”)

That was followed by photo-ops on Capitol Hill featuring Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. It was all very, very surreal.

And then late last night it got even weirder. Trump tweeted this:

Considering the things Trump has said about protesters (and the press) in the past, this sounds very ominous now that he’s going to be the most powerful leader in the world. Recall that as far back as 1990 he’s made his views clear about what leaders should do in situations of turmoil.

When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak … as being spit on by the rest of the world—

It should probably come as no surprise, then, that one of the people he’s looking at to run the Department of Homeland Security is Sheriff David Clarke Jr., of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, who shares his views:

Both Clarke and Trump have called for protests themselves in the past, but apparently things are different now.

Aside from Sheriff Clarke, the administration Trump is apparently starting to pull together looks like it’s going to be staffed by his TV surrogates and campaign staff. As Salon’s Brendan Gauthier reported earlier, the top names floated so far are Newt Gingrich for secretary of state and Rudy Giuliani for attorney general, although the latter have to arm-wrestle Gov. Chris Christie for that job. (It’s fair to assume that FBI Director James Comey’s job is safe, and he will fulfill his 10-year term with no interference.)

It seems unbelievable, considering that so many people are convinced that Trump is really a populist, but he is also said to be considering two titans of Wall Street. First there was former foreclosure king and Goldman Sachs executive Steven Mnuchin, and on Thursday the campaign floated JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon as a potential secretary of the treasury. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

Trump tweeted a while back that his adviser Gen. Michael Flynn would make a great secretary of defense but apparently nobody told him at the time that Flynn is not eligible. Former officers are not allowed to run the Pentagon until they’ve been out of active duty for seven years. Flynn was fired from his post at the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014 for his hawkish views. So perhaps he’ll stay in the White House with Trump as his national security adviser. (He believes “Islam is a cancer,” so that should work out well.) Sen. Jeff Sessions’ name has been floated for Defense too, although it seems an unlikely post for him. His specialty is the law and his issue is immigration.

As for that all-important issue, Trump announced yesterday that he had named Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state and hardcore anti-immigration activist, to his transition team. Koback wrote S.B. 1070, the infamous Arizona “show me your papers” law, which was later overturned by the courts. He’s been informally advising the campaign about immigration and was supposedly the one who convinced Trump how the governmen could find some way to make Mexico pay for the mythical border wall.

You’ll notice a pattern: The only people named so far are those who supported Trump. Loyalty is his top priority, not experience, which explains why he is reportedly thinking about appointing Steve Bannon, his campaign “CEO” and former chairman of Breitbart Media, as his chief of staff. Other names floated have been his campaign manager Kellyanne Conway and deputy campaign manager David Bossie as well as Corey Lewandowski, the former campaign manager Trump fired last spring. Finally there’s Reince Priebus, the outgoing head of the Republican National Committee, who is said to be enthusiastic about the job. All in all, it looks like he’s keeping the band together one way or the other.

There’s also a climate change denier for the EPA, a fracking billionaire for the Department of Energy and another oil man for Department of the Interior, although he’s rumored to want to hire a woman for that job, so former governors Sarah Palin and Jan Brewer have come up. The Texas agriculture secretary who tweeted last week that Hillary Clinton is a “cunt” may be rewarded with the Agriculture Department. The first congressman to endorse Trump has apparently told friends that the incoming president has promised him the Commerce Department.

If people really believed that Trump would choose top-notch political and policy talent to make up for his own lack of experience and knowledge, that isn’t going to happen. He’s sticking with his motley crew, probably because he simply doesn’t know he needs serious people around him. But then, he may not have much of a choice. According to this article in the Daily Beast, the Trump team has been unable to get national-security professionals to sign up for the many second-tier and lower jobs that will come open in a new administration. It’s likely true in domestic areas as well. No actual professional will want the Trump administration on his or her résumé.

Trump voters sittin’ around talkin”

by digby

Last night our President-elect tweeted this inspiring message:

Just had a very open and successful presidential election. Now professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting. Very unfair!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 11, 2016

Via Raw Story this Trump voter talks about protesters too:

“It starts in the elementary schools where they’re just brainwashing kids,” Dan insisted. “Our history is really not our history, but they’re rewriting history.”

“What’s your message to them, people out protesting right now?” Huntsman asked.

“Grow up,” Dan shrugged. “It’s disrespect for the law, disrespect for authority.”

According to Dan, “things started going downhill” when President Obama won in 2008.

“Because he — he was himself a racist,” the Florida man declared. “And, I mean, that’s harsh but he was. I mean, he defended every black person that caused a crime.”

He’s very economically distressed you can tell.

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Harry Reid speaks for me