Month: January 2017

What could go wrong? Everything …

by digby

Yeah, it’s a very risky time. And it isn’t just us silly old liberals who think so:

U.S. unilateralism under Donald Trump, China’s growing assertiveness and a weakened German Chancellor Angela Merkel are helping make 2017 the “most volatile” year for political risk since World War II, according to Eurasia Group. 

“In 2017 we enter a period of geopolitical recession,” the New York-based company said in its outlook. International war or “the breakdown of major central government institutions” isn’t inevitable, though “such an outcome is now thinkable.” 

With Trump’s ascent to the presidency on an America-first platform, the global economy can’t count on the U.S. to provide “guardrails” anymore, according to Eurasia, which advises investors on political risk. Trump’s signals of a thaw with Russia, skepticism toward the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and his “alignment” with European anti-establishment parties such as France’s National Front could weaken the main postwar alliance protecting the global order, according to the report released Tuesday.

The warning is a reminder of the range of threats to stability in 2017, from elections in Germany, France and the Netherlands and Britain’s planned exit from the European Union to the transition of power in the U.S., setbacks in emerging nations such as Brazil and Europe’s refugee crisis.
In China, a scheduled leadership transition makes it likely that President Xi Jinping will be “more likely than ever to respond forcefully to foreign policy challenges,” potentially leading to spikes in U.S.-China tensions, according to Eurasia. To maintain domestic stability, Xi might “overreact” to any sign of economic trouble, leading to a risk of new asset bubbles or capital controls, Eurasia said. 

Merkel, who is seeking re-election in the fall, faces likely disputes over Brexit, Greece’s simmering debt crisis and an “increasingly authoritarian” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, threatening a refugee accord between the EU and Turkey. France’s presidential election in April could lead to the National Front taking power, according to Eurasia. 

“Despite just how wrong the polls have been in recent major electoral contests across the developed world, Merkel will win a fourth consecutive term,” the report said. “But the need to appease domestic critics this year will leave her a diminished figure, impacting the quality of her leadership both at home and in the EU.” 

Other risks cited by Eurasia include: 

• Lack of economic reforms, with only China on a “positive trajectory” among 14 major nations and Italy, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey and the U.K. declining. 
• Politicians blaming central banks, including the Federal Reserve, for economic woes. Such attacks mark “a risk to global markets in 2017 by threatening to upend central banks’ roles as technocratic institutions that provide financial and economic stability.” 
• A “witch hunt” against parts of the opposition in Turkey, even tighter control over government and the media by Erdogan, and pressure on the Turkish central bank to keep rates low and rely increasingly on fiscal stimulus to offset slowing growth. 
• North Korea’s nuclear program, which may yield some 20 nuclear weapons, combined with technological advances allowing strikes at the U.S. west coast in the future.

If you believed in US exceptionalism it’s long past time to rethink it. We’re just running with the lemmings. Unfortunately, we are a big clumsy giant who is likely to stomp all over everybody as we race over the cliff.

Things were already unstable. So it was an especially bad idea to put an unfit, unqualified, cretinous moron in charge of the most powerful nation in the world. Good work America.

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And so it begins 

by digby

Senate Republicans just introduced an Obamacare repeal plan Democrats can’t stop

Senate Budget Committee Chair Michael Enzi (R-WY) introduced a budget resolution Tuesday that includes “reconciliation instructions” that enable Congress to repeal Obamacare with a simple Senate majority. Passing a budget resolution that includes those instructions will mean that the legislation can pass through the budget reconciliation process, in which bills cannot be filibustered.

That means Republicans will only need 50 of their 52 members in the Senate, and a bare majority in the House, to pass legislation repealing the Affordable Care Act. According to the Wall Street Journal, the budget resolution could be passed by both houses as early as next week.

To be clear, passing the budget resolutions does not itself repeal Obamacare. But it’s the necessary first step if Republicans are to do that this year, and unless three or more Republican senators defect (or 24 House members do), it’ll be smooth sailing for the repeal effort from there on out.

Donald Trump has not yet taken office. But make no mistake: Congress is already starting to enact his, and the Republican Party’s, agenda, and Democrats don’t have the votes to stop it.

When Trump’s own voters lose their health insurance will they be happy to sacrifice their own lives in order that their enemies will lose theirs? And by enemies, I mean me. And maybe you. Because that’s what they’re trying to do. They care more about cutting taxes for rich people than middle class people who don’t get their insurance at work.

Recall their replacement  “plans” during the Obamacare wars:

On CSPAN’s Washington Journal yesterday, former Republican congressman Tom Davis received a call from an elderly woman named Dorothy, who said that because she has diabetes, health insurance companies “reject” her. “They don’t even want to accept me,” said Dorothy. “Is that, is that possible they could get away with that? That seems like discriminating.”

Davis responded by saying that he understood her “dilemma” and that she probably wouldn’t be able to retire by 62 as she desires. Advising her that she’d be alright if she found “a job with a major employer,” Davis said it would be “difficult” on her own:

DAVIS: I don’t think you’ll find, probably be able to find some health insurance but if its with a small business or you’re going out on your own, it’s difficult at this point. There may be a government plan or private plans that are mandated coming out of this that are maybe able to help you. … I don’t know any reason why you shouldn’t be able to find something out there, but you want to look for an employer that has a health care plan. Good luck.

And if that doesn’t work, beg for help from you neighbors:

WOMAN: “Senator Coburn, we need help (crying) my husband has traumatic brain injury, and his health insurance would not cover him to even drink, (Crying) and, what I need to know is are you gonna help him, where he could eat and drink, we left the Nursing Home and they told us we’re on our own.

He left with a feeding tube, I’ve been working with him but I’m not a speech pathologist, a profession though that take six years for a Masters, and I try to get him to eat and drink again and this means so much to me (crying). “

COBURN: “Well I think, first of all yeah, we’ll help, uh, the first thing we’ll do is see what we can do individually to help you, uh, through our office.

Uhm, but the other thing that’s missing in this debate is us as neighbors. Helping people that need our help, uh, you know, we tend to, (clapping) the idea that the government is the solution to our problem is an inaccurate, a very inaccurate statement, (clapping) Government, government…”

Oh, and by the way, they don’t think employers should be required to offer health insurance either. So, if they decide it’s too expensive, it’s really it’s all about begging from your neighbors.  After all, if you get sick when you aren’t rich, it’s really your fault right? 

This is immoral. But then so are they.

And don’t tell me to feel compassion for them. This is their definition compassion:

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by digby

Rick Perlstein:

Donald Trump and Richard Nixon have at least one thing in common: They are the two most paranoid and vindictive men ever to win the presidency. Both came to power armed with enemies lists, vowing to seek revenge against those who stood in their way. Both roamed the mansions of power late at night, raving against every perceived slight. Both were caught on tape describing the ways they enjoyed bending others to their will. 

But Nixon, unlike Trump, was an introspective man. In one particularly fascinating moment of self-reflection following his resignation, he described to a former aide the habits that had enabled him to rise to the top of Washington’s greasy pole. When you’re on your way, he explained, it pays to be crazy. 

“In your own mind you have nothing to lose, so you take plenty of chances,” Nixon said. “It is then you understand, for the first time, that you have the advantage—because your competitors can’t risk what they have already.” That’s an insight that Trump put to good use during the Republican primaries, when he was willing to place high-stakes bets that his more experienced rivals were unwilling or unable to match.
But then you win, and your problems begin. “It’s a piece of cake until you get to the top,” Nixon confessed. “You find you can’t stop playing the game the way you’ve always played it, because it is a part of you and you need it as much as an arm and a leg. You continue to walk on the edge of the precipice, because over the years you have become fascinated by how close to the edge you can walk without losing your balance.” 

What Nixon was describing sounds like nothing so much as a seasoned heroin addict chasing the next high: It takes bigger and bigger doses to get there, until too much is not nearly enough. And a little thing like being elected the leader of the free world isn’t nearly enough to jolt a man like Nixon or Trump into rehab. 

The ways Richard Nixon chased that high are now a matter of voluminous historical record. None is more harrowing than his exploitation of the vast powers of his office to spy on those he perceived as threats to his power, and then seek to use the results of that surveillance to neutralize or destroy them. 

The first phone tap on one of his own officials came in the fourth month of his presidency. That same year, federal agents snared a gay, closeted antiwar organizer named David Mixner in a “honey trap,” and threatened to release photographs of his assignation unless he ratted out his comrades. By the second year, an entire unit of the Internal Revenue Service was chartered in a locked, soundproof room to harass a blacklist of antiwar activists. Nixon personally approved a plan to break into the offices of his opponents, even though the young White House staffer who devised the scheme described it as “clearly illegal.” The following year, Nixon ordered aides to come up with a plan to break into a safe in the Brookings Institution, which he imagined as a Kennedy government in exile. His enforcer, Chuck Colson, drew up “enemies lists” that included such fearsome figures as actress Carol Channing and Vikings quarterback Fran Tarkenton. The IRS was deployed to audit their taxes or take away the nonprofit status of their organizations. “What we cannot do in a courtroom via criminal prosecutions to curtail the activities of some of these groups,” a White House memo explained, “IRS could do by administrative action.”
All that, mind you, came before the simultaneous operations to bug George McGovern’s campaign headquarters and the Democratic National Committee’s suite at the Watergate hotel. 

Donald Trump assembles enemies lists, too; his organs of cognition appear to be structured around the idea of revenge. There are Republicans who voted against him, like Senator Lindsey Graham. (“It’s so great our enemies are making themselves clear,” Trump surrogate Omarosa Manigault exulted, “so that when we get to the White House, we know where we stand.”) There are media organizations he claims have covered him unfairly, like The Washington Post. (Just as Nixon threatened to take away the broadcast licenses of television stations owned by the Post, Trump has vowed to prosecute Post owner Jeff Bezos for antitrust violations.) And it’s not hard to imagine that Trump’s list of targets will only grow longer as his power expands. Like Nixon, he has spent his entire life chasing the narcotic rush afforded by dominating others, the better to fill the void where a functioning soul ought to be. 

But there are two key differences that set Trump apart from his predecessor in paranoia. First, his soul is sicker by miles than Nixon’s. And second, the surveillance apparatus he is about to inherit is far scarier than the one available to Nixon.

Here’s video of a young Donald Trump talking about his enemies:

“I have some very very good friends and I guess I have some very good enemies. And I like it that way, somehow, and I really believe in trashing your enemies.”

As with everything else, he has not changed over he years:

Trump went to Liberty University back in 2012 for the first time and gave a speech. And his advice was to “get even.”

“I always say, don’t let people take advantage of you. This goes for a country too, by the way. Don’t let people take advantage. Get even. And you know, if nothing else, other people will see that and say ‘I’m gonna let Jim Smith or Sally Malone, I’m gonna let ’em alone because they’re tough customers.’

So, I always say it. But I won’t say it to you. Because this is a different audience. You don’t want to get even do you? … Yeah, I think you do.”

As he said, in 2011:

“Get even with people. If they screw you, screw them back 10 times as hard. I really believe it.”

There’s this one:

One of the things you should do in terms of success: If somebody hits you, you’ve got to hit ’em back five times harder than they ever thought possible. You’ve got to get even. Get even. And the reason, the reason you do, is so important…The reason you do, you have to do it, because if they do that to you, you have to leave a telltale sign that they just can’t take advantage of you. It’s not so much for the person, which does make you feel good, to be honest with you, I’ve done it many times. But other people watch and you know they say, “Well, let’s leave Trump alone,” or “Let’s leave this one,” or “Doris, let’s leave her alone. They fight too hard.” I say it, and it’s so important. You have to, you have to hit back. You have to hit back.

Another one:

It’s called “Get Even.” Get even. This isn’t your typical business speech. Get even. What this is a real business speech. You know in all fairness to Wharton, I love ’em, but they teach you some stuff that’s a lot of bullshit. When you’re in business, you get even with people that screw you. And you screw them 15 times harder. And the reason is, the reason is, the reason is, not only, not only, because of the person that you’re after, but other people watch what’s happening. Other people see you or see you or see and they see how you react.

And this to Erin Burnett:

“There are a lot of bad people out there. And you really have to go…If you have a problem, if you have a problem with someone, you have to go after them. And it’s not necessarily to teach that person a lesson. It’s to teach all of the people that are watching a lesson. That you don’t take crap. And if you take crap, you’re just not going to do well…But you can’t take a lot of nonsense from people, you have to go after them.”

Back to Perlstein:

But there are two key differences that set Trump apart from his predecessor in paranoia. First, his soul is sicker by miles than Nixon’s. And second, the surveillance apparatus he is about to inherit is far scarier than the one available to Nixon.

“Over the past two decades, we’ve witnessed the building of the greatest, most pervasive surveillance apparatus and security state that humanity has ever seen,” says Jon Stokes, co-founder of the news site Ars Technica and author of Inside the Machine. “Now we are about to hand over that entire apparatus to a paranoid, score-settling sociopath whose primary obsession seems to be with crushing his personal enemies.”

Yeah. Its not a good idea to ever make such a security state even if you think it will help catch “bad guys.” Somebody like Trump will inevitably think you are a “bad guy” and try to use it for his own purposes.

“Always get even. When you are in business, you need to get even with people who screw you.” – Think Big

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 3, 2013

He does ‘t yet know the power he has. But  this is one of the ways he’s going to test it. And it appears he has some high placed friends at the FBI, at least, who will be happy to help him.

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Chart O’ the Day

by digby

Clinton’s counties are where the people are. Trump’s counties add up to more political clout.

The economic recovery from the epic 2007/8 recession is real but it has not hit these more rural and exurban areas at the same pace. Hence, Trump.

According to this article by Annie Lowry, the divide was buried in the numbers the whole time and it appears that the Democrats, for all their sophistication with data, didn’t really dig deeply enough to fully grasp these regional disparities. (Or if they did, they didn’t see that the message of morning in America wouldn’t resonate there.)

These economies are improving as well, however, just a slower pace than in the metropolitan areas where the majority of people live and work. So, Trump will likely get the credit for something that would have happened anyway.

The man is lucky, I’ll give him that.

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How We Fight 

By Spocko

After watching Rogue One I said to the crowd of people in the lobby, “This movie has nothing to do with our current political system.” Because that would just be too easy.

One phrase from the movie actually seemed to fit our time, “Rebellions are built on hope.”

If there is one thing people need now, it’s hope. Here’s another scene about hope from Supergirl.

There is a great scene in Trading Places where the good guys win, and the bad guys are defeated. This shows the results of fighting back.

What makes this clip satisfying are four parts.

1) A comeuppance that REALLY hurts them. The Dukes lost status in the eyes of their peers, they lost all their monetary assets as well as their symbolic asset–their families’ inherited seat at the stock exchange. One brother loses his health with a heart attack.

2) The brothers turn on each other. Instead of figuring out how to game the system or keep their money, they attack each other. The Dukes could have had healing power of forgiveness and love of family, but that was also destroyed.

3) The rules set up by the Dukes were used against them. The Dukes created the rules to use against others and didn’t expect the rule to apply to themselves.

4) The people who defeated them profited. It was great to take down the Dukes AND profit.

Just defeating them would be great, but what a sweet deal it was to profit from the Dukes destruction. The question now is, will Valentine and Lewis become just like the Dukes? Hopefully not, because they have learned a lesson.

A lot of people talk about fighting back “The Chicago Way.” What people forget about that method is that when you go after someone powerful like Capone, he and his organization won’t sit back and let it happen.

Even when you think you are all clever by thinking you’ve ‘brought a gun to a knife fight,’ they bring a machine gun. (Me, I like to bring a phaser to a gunfight)

But if you believe in what you are doing you have to keep thinking, fighting and organizing.

Speaking of organizing, I’m tired of the “herding cats” metaphor, so I’ll bust it. You want a herd of cats? Bring 9 flavors of cat food to the location with multiple can opener sounds. Want them to go nuts? Catnip appetisers. There are very clever people out there organizing. The question now is, what do you do with that herd of cats?

If your first fight plan doesn’t work, for example the bad guys can’t get legitimately busted in an area they control, find an area they don’t, just like the Feds did with Capone on taxes. But you also need to know that they won’t just roll over with one punch.

Adult bullies have lots of tools. The right wing bully have no problem screaming foul at any action they don’t like and crying to authorities who actually do their job. The logic of ignoring over big crimes vs. little crimes is bizarre. “Sure I killed people, but nobody expects me to follow the law! But the good guys are supposed to follow the law!” Then, when it’s shown the law was followed, “Okay, he did it legally, but I was tricked, so it’s not fair!”

When the bad guys are out-maneuvered, like Capone is here in this clip, they go into denial, they demand justice. They present themselves as victims, but it’s yet another way to try and bend the system to their will.

We are looking at failures after losing, but what about our failures after winning? It’s great when you’ve won. It should also bring up questions: Who did you fight for? Was it worth it to stop the bad guy? Or will someone else worse take his place? And importantly, how do you build on a win?

In this case part of the win is to let the other lesser Capone-types know they aren’t safe. Then it’s changing laws to make it harder to game the system.

Part of winning is acknowledging the corrupting power of money, and setting up systems to monitor it that aren’t easily captured. This is all part of the fight. It’s not as exciting as epic battles, but it is crucial for future success.

I was hoping to get an invitation to a meeting with a bunch of power brokers explaining “The Spocko Way” but apparently my email invitation got intercepted by Russian hackers. I was going to tell them there are lots of good fights and fighters out there. Great battles are coming. We will win some.  We will also lose some. Activists who are taking on powerful interests need powerful friends during the losses and the wins.

I’m encouraged and excited by reading about re-energized activist groups and new ones. We need lots people to understand the system we are in now vs. previous systems.

We need to learn how to fight to make an impact. And we need to be reminded of the importance of persistence.  We can never stop fighting until the fight is done.

They want to rule
by Tom Sullivan

Photo by Bill Ebbesen, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

This came over the transom last night. It seems a Florida Republican last week filed a measure with this description:

… urging Congress to propose to the states an amendment to the United States Constitution that allows Congress to deem a law that has been declared void by certain federal courts active and operational.

For all the hands-over-hearts posturing, it seems the “may the Founders be praised” party wants to jettison the Founders’ theory of judicial review and all that separation of powers crap. They don’t want to govern. They want to rule.

I’ve said it before. Time to say it again:

At the end of the Revolutionary War, there were an estimated half million Tories in this country. Royalists by temperament, loyal to the King and England, predisposed to government by hereditary royalty and landed nobility, men dedicated to the proposition that all men are not created equal.

After the Treaty of Paris, you know where they went? Nowhere. A few moved back to England, or to Florida or to Canada. But most stayed right here.

Their heirs are still with us.

The real Boss on the phony one

Somebody known for writing songs about the American spirit is afraid for what Donald Trump is doing to it:

“Whether it’s a rise in hate crimes, people feeling they have license to speak and behave in ways that previously were considered un-American and are un-American. That’s what he’s appealing to. My fears are that those things find a place in ordinary, civil society.”

Bruce Springsteen won’t be performing for the inaugural. He will be fighting back:

America is still America. I’m still believe in its ideals, and I’m going to do my best to play my very, very small part in maintaining those things.”

No retreat, baby, no surrender

That’s why he’s the Boss.

(h/t S. Smith)

Silly bots

by digby

I have to assume this decision wasn’t made by any sentient being:

A virile, muscled statue of the sea god Neptune has fallen foul of Facebook’s prudish policies on nudity after an Italian art historian was told to remove it from her web page.

The sixteenth century Renaissance statue dominates Piazza del Nettuno, a grand square in the heart of Bologna.

A symbol of the prosperous northern Italy city, it was chosen by Elisa Barbari, a local writer, to illustrate her Facebook page, called “Stories, curiosities and views of Bologna”.
The statue was deemed too risque by Facebook, despite being photographed by hundreds of thousands of tourists each year.

But the social media giant objected to the image, which shows a naked Neptune – Nettuno in Italian – holding a large trident. “I wanted to promote my page but it seems that for Facebook the statue is a sexually explicit image that shows off too much flesh. Really, Neptune? This is crazy!” Ms Barbari said.

In a statement, Facebook told her: “The use of the image was not approved because it violates Facebook’s guide lines on advertising.

“It presents an image with content that is explicitly sexual and which shows to an excessive degree the body, concentrating unnecessarily on body parts.

“The use of images or video of nude bodies or plunging necklines is not allowed, even if the use is for artistic or educational reasons.”

Ms Barbari said she was astounded by Facebook’s censorship of the photograph. “Back in the 1950s, during celebrations for school children graduating, they used to cover up Neptune. Maybe Facebook would prefer the statue to be dressed again,” she wrote. She subsequently posted on her Facebook page a message in large letters: “Yes to Neptune, no to censorship.”

She said she was “indignant and irritated”, and asked “How can a work of art, our very own statue of Neptune, be the object of censorship?”

The statue was created in the 1560s by a Flemish sculptor called Jean de Boulogne, nicknamed by the Italians Giambologna. Dominating the piazza, it overlooks a nearby wall that is lined with photographs of partisans who died in the Second World War and a memorial to 84 people who were killed when Fascist terrorists bombed Bologna train station in 1980, in Italy’s worst post-war atrocity.

Facebook is cool with the confederate flag though, so that’s good.

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Projection so yuge

by digby

It boggles the mind that this man won the election (with a little help from his friends in high places) by calling his rival “crooked.” And the reason, of course, was that she was supposedly corrupt because people who had donated to her family charity would call her up at the state department sometimes. He said he would put her in jail.

On New Years Eve he held a party where people paid for the privilege of spending time with him. It wasn’t a charity or a fundraiser. It was for Mar-a-lago his own club. The money went into his own pockets. People are paying to be in his presence. Like he’s Kim Kardashian.

And some of his “guests” were foreign business partners. They are undoubtedly very excited to have the president of the United States doing business with them. It’s likely going to be quite profitable for all concerned:

Donald Trump gave a lengthy description of his electoral victory, and lavished praise upon a Dubai business partner, during a ten-minute speech to 800 paying guests at his Florida estate Saturday night.

At points throughout his address, Trump name-checked prominent attendees, including “Hussain and the whole family,” an apparent reference to his billionaire business partner in Dubai, Hussain Sajwani.

DAMAC Properties, Sajwani’s company, has built the Trump International Course Dubai. They are currently working on a second course, designed by Tiger Woods, which is set to open in 2018.

“Hussain and the whole family, the most beautiful people, are here from Dubai tonight. And they’re seeing it and they’re loving it,” Trump said, referring to the ornate Grand Ballroom that he built at Mar-a-Lago.
Video of the speech was provided to CNN by a person who attended the party.

Trump’s comments highlight the complications he faces separating himself from his existing business relationships. Even if Trump creates a wall between himself and his children running his company, he still will know the identity of his pre-existing business partners.

“President-elect Trump is using his largesse as President-elect to enhance his existing business relationships,” political law attorney Ken Gross told CNN. “Apparently, in his view, this practice does not run afoul of the representations he has made to date regarding the disentanglement of his business and official functions. It remains to be seen if this will ever get sorted out.”

Trump’s transition team said the President-elect and Sajwani didn’t discuss their business partnership in Florida. 

“They had no formal meetings or professional discussions. Their interactions were social,” said Hope Hicks, Trump’s spokeswoman.

Sajwani’s son Abbas posted a photo over the weekend from Mar-a-Lago. “Scenic,” was how he captioned a picture from the private club’s pool. Photos provided to CNN also show Sajwani and his family attending Mar-a-Lago’s Christmas Eve dinner and interacting with Trump.

Trump and Sanjwani’s relationship began in 2005. They originally had plans to build a tower in Dubai, but canceled the idea after the global financial crisis.

Trump scrapped a December news conference in which he was set to announce his plans to address his conflicts of interests. Trump has said he will make an announcement sometime before the inauguration. Speaking this weekend at Mar-A-Lago, the first billionaire President-Elect seemed unfazed by the conflicts.

“It is not a big deal. You people are making that a big deal, the business,” Trump said. “It’s actually a very simple situation.”

In his 10-minute speech Saturday, Trump described in detail his electoral victory, providing a state-by-state recap of places most expected him to loose. He claimed his wife Melania’s late campaign speech in Pennsylvania helped turn the state in his favor.

He told the well-heeled crowd he was planning an aggressive beginning to his administration, vowing to loosen regulations and end President Barack Obama’s signature health care law.

“Regulations are coming off, we’re going to get rid of Obamacare,” he said, also vowing again to construct a border wall between the United States and Mexico.

Trump also provided more detail about his bid to reduce the costs of the new Air Force One. He said that when he met with US military brass following the election, they informed him that a new aircraft would cost in the $4 billion range — a price he deemed unacceptable. Trump had made the claim previously, though hadn’t identified where the price figures came from.

US officials, including at the White House, have suggested the $4 billion is inflated. During his speech, Trump claimed to have cut $1 billion from the price tag for the new presidential aircraft.

Trump called the generals who he met with “beautiful,” and alleged they made “Tom Cruise look like dirt.” 

Trump praised the members of his Mar-a-Lago club in attendance, who each paid $525 for a ticket to the annual New Years Eve party in the Grand Ballroom. He was less enthusiastic about their guests.

“I don’t really care too much about the guests. I don’t give a s*** about their guests,” Trump said.

And he repeated his harsh criticism of the media, claiming they were in the back of the room. (The press assigned to cover Trump’s movements was not present in the ballroom during Trump’s speech).

“They’re really garbage,” Trump said of the press.

I don’t know what he meant about the “guests” but I assume it had something to do with the press, too. His insistence they were in the back of the room suggests that he just said it for effect. Because he’s a lunatic.

He is going to be running the business out of the white house. That is completely obvious. He’s simply unable to extricate himself from it and the temptation to swing his clout around as president to “do deals” for the family business is much to great for him to resist.

And, short of impeachment, I don’t think there’s anything to be done. The Republicans are fine with it, his own voters think it’s terrific for the president to pillage the country as long as it’s their president and the people who are normally up in arms about “elite” corruption seem to be rather blase about this. Lord knows, the FBI couldn’t care less. So here we are. Just making note of it and moving on.

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by digby

One of the men who hit a protester at one of Trump’s rallies. He makes belts. 

At times he has looked at the belts that some people wear, noticing the cheap buckles, the fraying ends, the fake leather, and wondered how someone could buy a belt like that. And lately, it has not just been that question, but a lot of questions he has been having about the changes in the country. Gay marriage. How is that now legal? Baltimore and Ferguson. How could people burn down those buildings and shut down the roads? A Trump rally. How could someone think it was okay to shout obscenities and boo a man running for ­president? Decency. What happened to decency? And on the night of March 9, when he saw Jones shouting at Trump and others, he got up from his chair as Jones was passing, threw an elbow, and now he was regretting it not only because he was arrested the next day, but because the other person acting indecently was him. 

He looked at his flip phone, saw he hadn’t missed any calls from his attorney, and finished the first belt. 

Why, he has often asked himself, did he act the way he did? How could he have suspected Jones was a terrorist? He had never considered himself a bigot or a hateful person — far from it — and now, thinking about what happened, as he does every day, he clenched his jaw and shook his head. He said he had never been so humiliated in his life. All the newspaper articles, television clips and political ads suggesting he was a racist. But sometimes he felt he was the one who was actually the victim of racism. This wouldn’t have been news, he thought, if Jones had been white or he had been black. His case wouldn’t have dragged on for nine months. He wouldn’t have been kicked out of his fast-draw shooting club because he didn’t reflect its values. People wouldn’t be baiting him into racial arguments at the flea market. 

He finished the second belt, placed it in a plastic bag and zipped it closed. 

“Maybe I’m too defensive. Maybe I’ve lived too long,” he said. “Years back, maybe I should have just been put down like a trained dog you can’t have in public.” 

Since the rally, a friend of his named Ed Hood had tried many times to talk to McGraw about his defensiveness. 

“We’ve been talking about this since March,” Hood told him one time when McGraw was again talking about why he had elbowed Jones. “There’s somebody with an attitude that can make you angry enough that you might want to fight them. But don’t do it. You got to let the talk go by you.” 

“Eddie, I had a fear of what might happen next,” McGraw said. “I didn’t know what would mushroom. I didn’t know where it would go.”

“Yeah, that was your interpretation,” Hood said. 

“If I had run into Jones on the street, I would have said, ‘Go on home, boy, before you get yourself hurt.’ I wouldn’t have hit him,” McGraw said. “But under the circumstances.” 

“That public behavior is disappointing to you?” 

“Yes, it is.” 

“That people don’t act more orderly?” 

“It’s a disgrace. . . . It was a situation way beyond decency.” 

“It’s a misunderstanding is what it is.”

I especially like the fact that he was offended by alleged obscenities being shouted at a rally.

Here’s one reaction to this article from another Trump voter:

The story about virtually the only case of a Trump supporter hitting a Hillary supporter at a Trump rally as the black guy was trying to disrupt Trump’s speech, this white elderly man has been punished for this and the Washington Post howls about this while not mentioning the many, many instances of Hispanic and black rioters attacking Trump rallies very violently. 

From the Washington Post. Unlike all the NYT articles, this piece of Fake News has only one reporter, not three or five. At least the Post won’t go bankrupt as fast.

The article goes on and on and on trying to pretend to be about how charming and nice the black young man who deliberately disrupted a Trump rally because he hates Trump voters. The very old man is illustrated as this evil, bitter man who deserved a year probation and $1,000 fine.

 (At the Trump rally which Jones, the black kid, planned to disrupt) McGraw sat in the front row, and Jones found an open seat in the back. The last time they saw each other, McGraw was elbowing Jones in the face at a Donald Trump rally, one of the first moments of violence in what would become a historically contentious presidential campaign.

So, the elderly man elbowed Jones. I went to the comments section which are nearly uniformly Democrats since everyone else has been banned in the last year there, including me. The Democrats nearly uniformly state over and over again that the elderly man struck or beat up the young black man. 

Instead, he was elbowed and fell which is quite different from being say, punched in the face. By making this event more violent in their chatter, illustrates how the Hillary voters have made themselves very unpleasant to deal with, very violent and yet touchy, whiners.

After Jones was pulled up from the ground by county sheriffs and escorted out of the coliseum and the rally was over, McGraw went even further. “We don’t know if he’s ISIS. We don’t know who he is,” he said. “The next time we see him, we might have to kill him.”

People are nervous. Any day, we expect assassins to attack. Many, many Democrats threatened to kill Trump one way or another. Rich people and famous people threatened Trump this way. It was amazing to watch. 

The rich and famous have stopped threatening Trump only because they know very well, they can be arrested and should be arrested. But they are 100% responsible for the fear and freaking out because they pushed hard to do the violent solution to this election.

Five days before the hearing, Jones was cradling a phone against his ear and typing another pizza order into a computer. “Rakeem!” his manager yelled as two pizzas were slid into a carry case and placed beside him at the front counter. “You’re out!”

Working the counter, he makes $7.35 an hour. On deliveries, it goes down to $4.25 an hour, but there’s always the chance for a big tip, and he hustled the pizzas to a faded Mitsubishi sedan with a cracked windshield. He’d bought it earlier in 2016 for $1,600 — most of his savings — when McGraw’s attack at the Trump rally left him feeling unsafe riding the city bus.

A minority male who is young and strong was scared of an elderly white man? What? I see a guy making up stuff for the naive reporter justifying stuff.

What if McGraw was serious about killing him? Considering the way the election had gone, what if a white-supremacist group decided to try something?

This is now ridiculous. Across the US, the rampaging mobs, the 13% of the population doing 50% of the murders and nearly the same level of all crimes are black people especially young black males. 

When people walk down the street they don’t cross to the other side if they see three elderly white men walking, they certainly get scared if they see three black young males and for good reason.

Where he comes from, a rough neighborhood in northwest Fayetteville, threats are sometimes carried out. A few of his friends were murdered when he was younger, and two years before, someone shot up his aunt’s trailer, killing his 3-year-old cousin sleeping inside.

Note how the Washington Post liar doesn’t mention that these are murders done by young black males. The threats that are carried out are black gangs. His murdered friends were probably drug dealers on the streets.

So in the days after the rally, he quit his job after the company’s name was published, stopped taking the bus, bought a car and found a new job in a different part of town delivering pizzas.

He was worried about getting in trouble.

There was a time when he thought differently, not just about Fayetteville but about America as well. He knew there were racists in his country and community, but he also trusted that its people were tolerant of diversity and wouldn’t vilify someone who went to a Trump rally and yelled out some words of protest. But since that night, he has thought about race constantly.

These lies are typical: the young black male went to the Trump rally WITHOUT FEAR because he planned to make himself very loud, very obnoxious and expected to GET AWAY WITH IT. The shock for him was to have an elderly man trip him up.

I see a bad end to all this. Jones was told by fellow black young buck males that he was cheated and they all want worse things to happen. 8 years of Obama has gotten them all into this frame of mind that the Republican Senate, Republican House and Republican President and soon, the Republican Supreme Court will cuddle them and let them run riot and allow them to do as they all please.

These days are now over. I want civility and self control and respecting people’s property and lower crime rates. And Obama brought disorder, riots and rising murder rates in cities which have large black populations. This dire situation is sad to see. And the pendulum of history is now swinging to the opposite side.

The good news is that racism had nothing to do with the election which is a big relief. Otherwise Trump saying “I am the law and order president” might be kind of scary.

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Their present, Our future

by digby

Via Huffington Post:

It’s a photo so poignant and so symbolic you’d be forgiven for assuming it’s faked.

And you wouldn’t be alone in that conclusion: Both Reddit and Snopes dismissed it as fake when it went viral earlier this year. And yet this is a real photo of a real billboard, featuring President-elect Donald Trump promoting Trump Tower in Mumbai while homeless children camp in the street below.

Outside of cropping it and possibly tweaking the contrast, photographer Paul Needham assured The Huffington Post “the image is neither doctored nor edited in any way.”

Needham is the co-founder of SimpaNetworks, a company that helps farmers and small shops in rural India install and use solar power systems. He said he stumbled across the scene while driving through Mumbai to meet with some investors.

“I was inspired to take the photo because of the jarring juxtaposition of the Trump billboard and the poverty and homelessness down below,” he said. “The text on the billboard struck me as particularly naive and offensive.”

Trump and his followers would say those people just don’t work as hard as they do.
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