Tuesday, November 29, 2016

The Government by the Worst People Rolls On

This is just sickening, and it gives the lie to the notion that Trump gives a damn about ordinary working people. Today's worst human being is named Wilbur Ross. You can read about him here:

https://www.thenation.com/article/12-coal-miners-died-on-this-mans-watch-in-2006-now-trump-wants-to-make-him-commerce-secretary/

Excerpt:

Ross made his money collecting “distressed assets”—failing steel and textile mills in the Midwest and South, and coal mines in Appalachia. Dubbed the “the King of Bankruptcy,” Ross cut jobs, wages, pensions, and health benefits at the companies he acquired, and reaped the profits. In the early 2000s, Ross’s foray into the steel industry netted him a $267 million personal windfall, but stripped health-care benefits from more than 150,000 retired steelworkers. Then he moved on to the coal industry, at one point controlling as much as $1.2 billion in coal assets through his company, the International Coal Group.

One of ICG’s acquisitions in West Virginia was the Sago Mine, about 100 miles east of Charleston. The mine, a non-union operation, racked up a slew of safety violations from federal inspectors—more than 208 in 2005 alone. That year, the roof of the mine collapsed 20 times. Workers at Sago were injured three times as often as workers in similar mines elsewhere. Though Ross claimed not to be part of operating management at Sago, he admitted later that he was aware of the violations, and waved them away.

Congratulations, West Virginia and Kentucky! This is what you voted for.

Monday, November 28, 2016

There is No Lie These People Will NOT Tell.

Let me say this as clearly as possible:

The assertion that 3,000,000 illegals voted for Clinton is a DAMNED LIE. Trump and the radical Right Wing media are LYING about this. They will lie about ANYTHING. Period.

Are we clear?

Please see this article on the subject:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-illegal-voters-rumor_us_583c6b62e4b000af95ef15cc

Friday, November 25, 2016

This is What We Are Facing

Every day seems to bring some new outrage to my attention. This one is simply sickening. This outrage concerns Richard Spencer, darling of Steve Bannon's Breitbart:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/11/21/meet_the_neo_nazi_steve_bannon_s_site_described_as_a_leading_intellectual.html

This is a man that Bannon thinks is just swell. From a recent conference in Washington, D.C. Excerpt:

He railed against Jews and, with a smile, quoted Nazi propaganda in the original German. America, he said, belonged to white people, whom he called the “children of the sun,” a race of conquerors and creators who had been marginalized but now, in the era of President-elect Donald J. Trump, were “awakening to their own identity.”
As he finished, several audience members had their arms outstretched in a Nazi salute. When Mr. Spencer, or perhaps another person standing near him at the front of the room — it was not clear who — shouted, “Heil the people! Heil victory,” the room shouted it back.
And more:
At the conference on Saturday, Mr. Spencer, who said he had coined the term, defined the alt-right as a movement with white identity as its core idea.
And more:
Mr. Spencer’s after-dinner speech began with a polemic against the “mainstream media,” before he briefly paused. “Perhaps we should refer to them in the original German?” he said.
The audience immediately screamed back, “Lügenpresse,” reviving a Nazi-era word that means “lying press.”
Mr. Spencer suggested that the news media had been critical of Mr. Trump throughout the campaign in order to protect Jewish interests. He mused about the political commentators who gave Mr. Trump little chance of winning.
“One wonders if these people are people at all, or instead soulless golem,” he said, referring to a Jewish fable about the golem, a clay giant that a rabbi brings to life to protect the Jews.
Mr. Trump’s election, Mr. Spencer said, was “the victory of will,” a phrase that echoed the title of the most famous Nazi-era propaganda film. But Mr. Spencer then mentioned, with a smile, Theodor Herzl, the Zionist leader who advocated a Jewish homeland in Israel, quoting his famous pronouncement, “If we will it, it is no dream.”

I have seldom been so disheartened.

You Need to Know This: Vitally Important News

The flood of Russian fake news on behalf of Trump was truly staggering. The Chicago Tribune has the story here:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-russian-propaganda-fake-news-election-experts-20161124-story.html

Some key passages:

PropOrNot's monitoring report, which was provided to The Washington Post in advance of its public release, identifies more than 200 websites as routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season, with combined audiences of at least 15 million Americans. On Facebook, PropOrNot estimates that stories planted or promoted by the disinformation campaign were viewed more than 213 million times...

The final weeks of the campaign featured a heavy dose of stories about supposed election irregularities, allegations of vote-rigging and the potential for Election Day violence should Clinton win, researchers said.
"The way that this propaganda apparatus supported Trump was equivalent to some massive amount of a media buy," said the executive director of PropOrNot, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid being targeted by Russia's legions of skilled hackers. "It was like Russia was running a super PAC for Trump's campaign. . . . It worked."
He and other researchers expressed concern that the U.S. government has few tools for detecting or combating foreign propaganda. They expressed hope that their research detailing the power of Russian propaganda would spur official action.
A former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, said he was struck by the overt support that RT and Sputnik expressed for Trump during the campaign, even using the #CrookedHillary hashtag pushed by the candidate.
McFaul said Russian propaganda typically is aimed at weakening opponents and critics. Trump's victory, though reportedly celebrated by Putin and his allies in Moscow, may have been an unexpected benefit of an operation that already had fueled division in the United States. "They don't try to win the argument," said McFaul, now director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. "It's to make everything seem relative. It's kind of an appeal to cynicism."

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Can You Understand Why I Go Crazy Sometimes?

THIS is enough to make any decent person outraged. The author of this article is Jewish, and the comments made to her after her participation in the Standing Rock protests were very real :

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/this-filthy-jewess-is-done-with-alt-right-bullshit_us_5835b6cfe4b0c2ab94436657

Some of the delightful comments she received:

“The ugly kike Erin Schrode from Marin County hilariously got shot by a rubber bullet as she was making trouble on the behalf of the low-IQ redskins in North Dakota.”
“I’m just sad the bullets were rubber, like the world needs another Talmudic anti human psychopath.”
“Bullets don’t work on these rodents. Try Zyklon B.” Zyklon B is the toxic gas which Nazis used to kill Jews en masse in concentration and extermination camps throughout Germany.
“You were shot because you are a filthy kike. It’s obvious. Maybe, anuddah shoah just has begun.” I was born Jewish. My mother is Jewish. I identify as Jewish. In the eyes of neo-Nazis, that is reason enough to mount a relentless campaign. My being shot at Standing Rock spurred a new wave of evil, which I only learned of when an email with the subject line “you got shot! lol” appeared in my personal inbox. “Dumb parasite jew. Hilarious!” it read, with a link to a chatroom boasting hundreds more despicable comments and bastardized images.

Some Surprising Statistics for You

A. Hillary Clinton now leads the popular vote by MORE than 2,000,000. Trump is down to 46.7% of the vote, a percentage in "victory" LOWER than Mitt Romney's in defeat.


B. The counties that voted for Clinton represent TWO-THIRDS of the GDP of the United States of America. Here it is in graphic form. (Click to enlarge.)




Monday, November 21, 2016

A Deeply Ironic Fact

President Obama made it possible for millions of workers making less than $47,000 a year to get time and a half pay for overtime. Trump and the Republican congress may reverse the rules that made that happen. The story is here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-expanded-overtime-pay-for-millions-of-workers-trump-could-take-it-away_us_58334ba0e4b058ce7aac5ee5?

The thing that's so ironic is this: a lot of Trump voters benefit from this rule. So they just voted to screw themselves. These same voters usually hate Barack Obama, who helped them out.

No, I do not understand how these people "think".

FAVORITE COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLE:

Reality: "Trump is going to cut your Social Security, health care, government services, put toll roads everywhere, take away your overtime pay, turn women into breeding sows by attacking family planning and the right to choose, roll back civil rights by 65 years, create an oligarchy, eliminate environmental laws that have cleaned up air and water, accelerate climate change, remove consumer and workplace protections, cut banking regulations, kill the concept of protected areas by opening up all federal land (including national parks) to greed, lay siege to the First Amendment, attack the press, infringe upon religious freedom and fracture America right up the middle of every single possible dividing line you can think of. All while using the White House to attack his enemies and personally enrich himself and his friends in a continuation of what are already egregious conflicts of interest."

Trump voter: "But...but...emails!!"

Sunday, November 20, 2016

Who's Gonna Win and Who's Gonna Lose in Trump's Tax Plans

The awful details are here:

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/11/20/1600706/-Trump-s-forgotten-Americans-will-get-lower-taxes-on-the-rich-and-higher-income-inequality

Here's a highly relevant chart. (Click to enlarge.)



Let's just say that a lot of the people who voted for Trump have been played for suckers.

Saturday, November 19, 2016

How the People Who Know Trump Best Voted

NEW YORK CITY VOTE FOR PRESIDENT:

Clinton    1,969,920   78.6%
Trump         461,172   18.4%
Others           75,518     3.0%

Friday, November 18, 2016

Estimated Final 2016 Popular Vote, and a Question for People

FINAL CLINTON VOTE (ESTIMATED)
65,084,694
FINAL TRUMP VOTE (ESTIMATED)
63,015,219
FINAL MARGIN (ESTIMATED)
2,069,474
Sources:
2016 National Popular Vote Tracker
United States Election Project

May I ask something? If the situation were reversed, and it was Trump who was going to win the PV by 2 million while losing the EV 306-232, how do you think a lot of his followers would react?

An Urgently Important Article You Need to See

It's about the most dangerous political threat in the world today: the unholy alliance between the so-called "Alt Right" and Russia. Please friends--give this a look.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/11/18/1601406/-Everything-You-Need-to-Know-About-Steve-Bannon-Breitbart-Russia#comment_64473420

I'm simply at a loss for words about all this. The potential for disaster here is limitless.

The Looming Potential Disaster of a Broken Iran Agreement

With his typical reckless stupidity, Donald Trump is pledging to destroy the Iran nuclear deal. Here's a discussion of why that's a spectacularly bad idea:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/11/17/what_happens_if_trump_blows_up_the_iran_deal.html

Key passage:

One option would be for the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress to continually pass sanctions on Iran until it withdraws from the treaty. The House is already passing bills doing just that this week. Another possibility would be for the U.S. to trigger the “snapback” mechanism contained in the treaty, which allows any of the countries that negotiated the deal to cancel it within 30 days, without a vote by the United Nations Security Council, if they flag a violation. (An ongoing dispute between the International Atomic Energy Agency and Iran over stockpiles of heavy water could be used as a pretext.) This would result in the U.N. sanctions that were in place prior to the deal to be legally re-imposed, though it’s unlikely that China and Russia would actually enforce them. This would almost certainly cause Iran to pull out of the deal entirely, this time with a lot more sympathy from the international community.

If the unity of the countries that negotiated the deal falls apart, “all of the safeguards that the IAEA has put in place under the deal will go away,” says Jeffrey Lewis, an expert on nuclear nonproliferation at Middlebury College and founder of the Arms Control Wonk blog. “The IAEA access will drop, and they will say that they are no longer in a position to verify the peaceful nature of Iran’s program. They just won’t have the access. You could end up with a situation in which there are no sanctions, and we have no idea whether they’re building a bomb or not. And by the time we figure it out, it might be too late.”

I can only repeat my initial assessment of Trump's election:

We're screwed.

Thursday, November 17, 2016

A Shocking Revelation About the Trump Campaign and Megyn Kelly

In this article here:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/11/17/megyn_kelly_trump_s_lawyer_threatened_me_seemed_ok_with_me_getting_physically.html

Key excerpt:

The Trump campaign stoked the flames of the Kelly hate, the Fox News host told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in an interview on Wednesday, to the point that one of the top executives at Fox News had to explain to one of Trump’s top employees why if she “gets killed” it might be bad for their campaign.
“Michael Cohen, who is Trump's top lawyer and executive vice president with the Trump Organization had retweeted ‘let’s gut her,’ about me,” Kelly said. “At a time when the threat level was very high, which he knew. And Bill Shine, an executive vice president of Fox, called him up to say, 'You got to stop this. We understand you are angry but she's got three kids and is walking around New York.' ”
“And he didn't much care,” Kelly continued. “And what Bill Shine said to Michael Cohen was, ‘Let me put it to you in terms you can understand: If Megyn Kelly gets killed it is not going help your candidate.’ ”
Let me put this in terms you can understand. Cohen took to Twitter to call Kelly a liar and retweet people calling her a “snake” and a “psycho.”

Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Shooting Down Misperceptions About the 2016 Election

This article located here: http://electionado.com/canvas/1479173071893  is very useful, and it helps explain how Hillary Clinton got sabotaged. It also explains why Bernie Sanders isn't being realistic about what drew voters to Trump.