;)
The Commentariat -- Nov. 27, 2016
David Sanger of the New York Times: "The top lawyer for Hillary Clinton's presidential bid said Saturday that the campaign would join a third-party candidate's effort to seek a full recount in Wisconsin, and potentially two other states, though he said the campaign had seen no 'actionable evidence' of vote hacking. In a post on Medium, Marc Elias, the campaign's general counsel, described an intensive behind-the-scenes effort by the campaign to look for signs of Russian hacker activity or other irregularities in the vote count." -- CW ...
... Brent Griffiths of Politico: "Trump delivered a measured response -- measured by his standards -- attacking Stein directly but refraining from criticizing Clinton.... Kellyanne Conway, Trump's campaign manager, had a sharper edge to her response to the news that the Clinton campaign would join in the Wisconsin recount process. 'What a pack of sore losers. After asking Mr. Trump and his team a million times on the trail, "Will HE accept the election results?" it turns out Team Hillary and her new BFF Jill Stein can't accept reality,' Conway said in a statement to Bloomberg." -- CW ...
... Scott Lemieux in LG&$: "... the chances that the outcome in the three decisive states will be overturned are almost nil. The odds are against Trump losing the Electoral College votes of even one state. And when the recounts validate his Electoral College in his victory, this will serve to legitimize his presidency. There might good-government reasons to do the recounts anyway. But contrary to a lot of arguments I've seen, one thing these recounts are not is good hardball politics. They will almost certainly work to Trump's benefit by suggesting that the election was on the square and serving to mask the many ways in which the election was, in fact illegitimate." -- CW ...
... CW: If past is prologue, the recounts will likely change each state's counts by somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 votes, one way or the other. BTW, pundits seldm say so, but the guy who really won the election for Trump was Trey Gowdy, with an assist from the New York Times. It was Gowdy whose probe of Clinton's Benghazi actions led to the discovery that Clinton had exclusively used a private email system during her entire tenure at State, something which the Times first reported in an infamously inaccurate story. ...
... Eric Chenoweth in a Washington Post op-ed: "In assessing Donald Trump's presidential victory, Americans continue to look away from this election's most alarming story: the successful effort by a hostile foreign power to manipulate public opinion before the vote.... Putin is pursuing large strategic goals: recognition of the annexation of Crimea and international acceptance of foreign aggression to change state borders.... Frighteningly, Putin's worldview has resonance in the populist and nationalist fixations of Stephen K. Bannon..., whose stated mission is to 'destroy' the 'establishment' and end the domination of the 'donor class.' Bannon's 'closing argument' ad for Trump, redolent of Russian propaganda, described the United States as a corrupt and failing state because of nefarious 'global special interests.' It all points to grave danger for democracy and a world order that has kept the peace for 70 years." -- CW
Christopher Rugaber of the AP: "... Donald Trump's proposals would modestly cut income taxes for most middle-class Americans. But for nearly 8 million families -- including a majority of single-parent households -- the opposite would occur: They'd pay more. Most married couples with three or more children would also pay higher taxes, an analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center found. And while middle-class families as a whole would receive tax cuts of about 2 percent, they'd be dwarfed by the windfalls averaging 13.5 percent for America's richest 1 percent. Trump's campaign rhetoric had promoted the benefits of his proposals for middle-income Americans. 'The largest tax reductions are for the middle class,' said Trump's 'Contract With the American Voter,' released last month." ...
... CW: I love to see the AP calling Trump's bull, because local papers often carry the stories. If Democrats and major media would only keep highlighting what Trump, et al., are really up to, we may find that all but the most delusional Trumpbots & other assorted wingers turn on him and his Congressional buddies in the proverbial New York minute. Keep the government's hands off my tax breaks.
Hailey Branson-Potts of the Los Angeles Times: "The Council on American-Islamic Relations has called for increased police protection of local mosques after letters that threatened the genocide of Muslims and praised ... Donald Trump were sent to multiple California mosques this week. The letters were sent to the Islamic Center of Long Beach and the Islamic Center of Claremont, CAIR's greater Los Angeles chapter said in a statement. The same letter also was sent to the Evergreen Islamic Center in San Jose, according to CAIR's San Francisco Bay Area chapter. The handwritten letter, which was photocopied, was addressed to 'the children of Satan' and called Muslims a 'vile and filthy people.'" -- CW
** Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Joy-Ann Reid in the Daily Beast: "With Donald Trump about to ascend to the White House, the media risk being tamed by their devotion to access and the belligerencies of the notoriously vengeful resident of Trump Tower and his right-wing wrecking crew of a team. We face a singular test, both as a profession and as a country: will we allow ourselves to see what we see, or will we mentally drape the naked emperor in our midst?... The tug of normalization is powerful; even pleasing, when reality is unthinkable. The urge to look away, to pretend to see fine threads when the king comes strolling by, with his bare belly jutting out, can be irresistible." -- CW
Jay Michaelson of the Daily Beast: President Obama should recess-"appoint the 59 candidates for federal judgeships whose nominations, like [Judge] Garland's [Supreme Court nomination], have been left to languish. Recess-appointing Garland would "accomplish very little" & might do more harm than good. Recess appointments are good for one year. -- CW
David Ovalle, et al., of the Miami Herald: "Fidel Castro died, and Cuban Miami did what it does in times of community celebration: It spilled onto the streets of Little Havana -- and Hialeah, and Kendall -- to honk horns, bang pans, and set off more than a few fireworks, saved for exactly the sort of unexpected occasion worthy of their detonation." -- CW ...
... Here's the White House's statement on the death of Fidel Castro. -- CW ...
... Mimi Whitefield & Miguel Piedra of the Miami Herald: "In Havana, most Cubans calmly went about their daily business or just stayed home. The iconic street squares were eerily still, devoid of the heavy foot traffic normally found on a Saturday afternoon." -- CW ...
... Julie Davis of the New York Times: "The death of Mr. Castro ... has the potential to hasten Mr. Obama's goal of cementing the historic rapprochement that he hopes will be a signature part of his legacy. But with Donald J. Trump, who has been critical of the détente, set to succeed Mr. Obama, the fate of the thaw between the United States and Cuba is far from clear. Mr. Trump's initial response on the matter Saturday morning was a four-word post on Twitter. 'Fidel Castro is dead!' he wrote." -- CW
Harper Neidig of the Hill: "Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Saturday he will introduce legislation aimed at preventing major companies from sending jobs to foreign countries, similar to what ... Donald Trump proposed on the campaign trail.... 'I will soon be introducing legislation to make sure that Donald Trump keeps his promise to prevent the outsourcing of American jobs,' Sanders said in a statement.... Sanders aims to prevent companies like Carrier from moving to foreign countries by withholding federal contracts, tax breaks, loans or grants from corporations that move more than 50 jobs overseas. His legislation, titled the Outsourcing Prevention Act, would also impose an outsourcing tax of either 35 percent of the company's profits or an amount equal to its total savings from outsourcing the jobs." -- CW
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Reader Comments (16)
@Kate, here's a clip for you. Over the last couple of weeks I've come to the realization that I can't drink enough alcohol, smoke enough pot, or listen to enough Pink Floyd to sufficiently alter my perception of the new reality.
If I do, I just hurt myself.
When Bannon speaks of that nefarious "donor class," I wonder if his target is the emerging Trump cabinet?
@unwashed: I eat one marijuana edible after dinner (dark chocolate-yum!) and it makes me think all of this is just a bad joke--for about two hours The morning after is the big problem-o, when I realize that Prince Tiny Fingers really is our next president--which ruins my entire day. I don't think there is a win/win in this nasty situation!
Boo-fuckin-hoo!
@Kate––oh, how I'd love to nibble on one of those chocolate delights and let my mind wander to greener pastures and sparkling waters–-if only for two hours.
Yesterday Nancy expressed her frustration over Obama's "desperate need to appear gracious." I don't think it is a need on his part, but an obligation to this country and our allies. Privately, according to David Remnick who interviewed him after the election, he is devastated. But he doesn't have, at least not now, the luxury of ranting and tearing his hair out––what little is left. A new president has been elected and protocol must be followed even though it tears deeply into our psyches. If on the other hand, Obama dismissed Trump as the buffoon he is, the fear of reprisal would be so much greater than it is already. Yes, it is "absolutely maddening" but understand how much more maddening it must be for Obama and what it takes for him to BE gracious and act according to Hoyle. He is still the President and needs to carry on the best he can; there are plenty of critics out there that are crying loudly and ferociously that can and will do the job of putting Trump's feet to the fire.
I keep reading all these articles about Steve Bannon and his desire to destroy the establishment, yet Trump's adminstration is full of the establishment (or complete know nothings) and the people associated with Bannon were the ones who helped allow more corporate money to corrupt government. What I cannot seem to find anywhere is a description of what Bannon's dream world looks like. What is his alternative? Who does he think should be in power and how will his ideas actually help the middle class? Is he a libertarian, anarchist or Leninist communist? Does anyone know yet?
Lisa,
Good question.
There's rhetoric and there's reality. I haven't seen the article you seek yet either, but as my earlier snark implied I believe it certain that Bannon and his Breitbart, alt-right cohorts, under any conveniently adopted name, are taking dead aim at the "establishment" they consider the enemy.
That establishment, as fragile and tottering as it has always been in our country of hopes and dreams, is the promises made in our founding documents: those all men are created and all those Bill of Rights things that are so bothersome to the real elites, those with the money and property, because taken literally as so many of us still like to do, those promises threaten the very elites to which Bannon and Trump belong.
Bannon may style himself a revolutionary, but if he's any kind of revolutionary at all, he's of the turn back the clock kind, way, way back in fact, to a time before the American Revolution and all its implications, like the elimination of slavery and the movements toward gender and sexual equality, that he doesn't like.
His misogyny, his anti-Semitism and general racism, his comfort with and admiration for the monied white class, most of whom inherited their wealth, would all fit neatly into early 18th Century England, where those on the top thought little of or little about those who were not members of their exclusive class.
It is only in this sense that Bannon, whatever he chooses to call himself, however swashbuckling and grandiose he thinks himself to be, is a revolutionary.
His pretensions may be pathetic, but he is no less dangerous for that. Read this AM that forty percent of the NFL teams, worth hundreds of millions if not billions each, were largely inherited.
That's the world we live in, and Bannon wants more, not less of it.
These are bewildering times. Finding myself angry, pissed off, wondering how did we regress back to HERE? Thinking of the 60's and 70's, it almost seems (now) that the achievements made by pesky bra-burning women's lib-bers came too easily.
Easily? What? Have I lost it? As you question my thinking.
The marches. The protests. The sit-ins. We had Gloria and Bella, Betty and Eleanor and many others leading the charge. Remember MCP? Men labeled as Male Chauvinist Pigs. Hahahaha. Men appeared to take the pejorative in stride, often joking, "...what? you don't think I'm like that, do you?" Well, yeaaaah! And, we advanced. Or so we thought!
In retrospect, perhaps it was a gain made without actually changing entrenched mindsets. My theory is that most recent MCPs are descendants of the locust family. They went underground for a few decades, but suddenly we have the emergence of the son-of-the-son-of-(a bitch) crawling out to make a nightmare of progressive achievements all over again—not just for women, but minorities and gays.
Certainly none of the men commenting here on CW are of that MCP subset... most men really have come a long way, baby!
It's the power-grabbers who are poised to make policy decisions in the next administration that scare me. They want to take us back, way back! Inequality uber alles!
Ken, I certainly don't feel any better after reading what you think Bannon's vision is. So do you think that kind of world is what the rural US/Trump supporters want too? I feel like they have a "don't ask, don't tell," "ignorance is bliss" attitude. Will their freedom to hate and discriminate satisfy them enough to not care about the broken promises of a better life?
Lisa,
I'm not feeling so good myself these days, as you can tell.
But a possible dim light in the general darkness: I don't think all those rural folks who voted for Trump are little Bannons. My acquaintance with the many I know tells me they are not all deplorable in the same way as are Bannon, Trump and the other "leaders" who have floated to the top of our national cesspool of unease and inequity. And while I believe many of the barbaric traits that buoyed Trump to victory do exist in rural America, the countryside is not their only home, and many if not most of those countryfolk who voted for Trump are more decent than deplorable. They just wanted the fair shake Obama promised and thanks to Republican obstruction failed to deliver.
Bannon and Trump and Rudy and... the others creeping into the cabinet truly believe they are among the privileged few, the actual elite they make political points by pretending to rail against.
Unfortunately our economic system, unchecked by a rational government, both creates and praises their like.
Insofar as Bannon wishes to destroy civil society and replace it with a plutocracy of which he is one of the first among equals, he does wish to tear down the establishment.
He and his cohorts are ego unbound and are therefore evil.
We can hope that will become evident to many Trump voters before Trump, Bannon and the other "revolutionaries" wreck everything of worth in our still mostly civil society.
In support of C.W.s comment on the Chenoweth Trump tax plan article. USA today has an article on its effects on lower and middle income families. The loss od the personal exemption seems to be the big stinger to me.
It's written in plain English and maybe some people will start to see how much of that pig they bought is lipstick.
Just read the NYTimes Bannon offering which modified my one-dimensional take on him a little.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/27/us/politics/steve-bannon-white-house.html?
I had granted his thought more consistency than it might deserve.
He gets along with Trump because like Trump he's an angry white man with ego problems and with far more money and power than principle.
You would think these people would have the means to hire a good therapist, instead of compensating like mad, ala Bush II, on the backs of the rest of us.
Though there's some bobbing and weaving, the article does suggest there is that white only thing going on in the Bannon brain, which is a kind of consistency I guess, but I wish the Times would not persist in misusing "populism," just as do Bannon and all right wing so-called populists whose populism is best translated as what's good for me and all the (white) people like me who feel put upon.
So I found this article (link below) on how Steve Bannon sees the entire world, which is an interview with Bannon at the Vatican in 2014. He mentions a Judeo-Christian version of capitalism that existed 100 years ago, before the assassination of Ferdinand. He claims that the tremendous wealth created back then was distributed among a middle class, the opposite of what exists today. Since the fall of the Soviet Union he feels capitalism has fallen into a crisis. In opposition to the spiritual and moral foundations of a Judeo-Christian capitalism are state-sponsored capitalism (China and Russia) or crony capitalism we have now in the US, that creates wealth for a small subset of people, and the Ayn Rand libertarian capitalism that looks to make people commodities and objectify them. He claims that Christian capitalism is concerned with "What is the purpose of whatever I am doing with this wealth?" What am I doing with the ability God has given us to be creators of jobs and wealth." That it is concerned with reinvesting into positive things. He sees secularization as a destructive force, that Judeo-Christian capitalists did the right thing because of their faith. And he is convinced that we are at war with a jihadist Islamic fascism.
So he seems to be convinced that only with Judeo-Christian underpinnings can capitalism be good for the middle class. A secular socialism somehow just can't work (not sure why not).
At least I think this summarizes his views. But how in the heck does he support someone like Trump, the ultimate crony capitalist who is certainly not guided by Judeo-Christian principles and who is certainly not thinking about anyone other than himself? Does he really believe that there was a strong middle class 100 years ago that existed because of the kindness of Christian capitalists? Am I missing something? How does he mesh his Christian views with the lies his media empire broadcasts daily? And where does his anti-semitism come from if he respects the Judeo-Christian capitalism? And if he thinks the 2008 crisis was caused by the greed of investment banks, why is he pushing to put the same people in control of the government now? I am so confused.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/this-is-how-steve-bannon-sees-the-entire-world?utm_term=.dn6vnakl0#.jamM9Y0ZB
I am 88. I have spent thirty years as a member of the working class. I have hopped a freight, worn bib overalls, loaded the manure spreader in the spring, worked a couple of college years as a hospital orderly and spent a couple of years on a production line in the auto industry.
Most of the people I worked with over the years in low level jobs were just as well organized and thoughtful and intelligent as the executives and officials I worked with later.
There are of course the "deplorables" but the" deplorables" can not elect any one.
Middle aged men that are worse off than their fathers and have grown children without decent jobs feel betrayed as the system of American government has failed them. Hillary had no answer for the betrayed. Trump will fail them also and the thinking, unhappy, working class will follow another demagogue as the Democrats continue to represent the really big money.
Pray for a benevolent politico and a New Deal.
Thanks to Lisa for the fine research and to Carlyle for the good sense,
You can't figure out the Bannons--I would classify our Catholic Supremes prominent among them--of the world without considering the ego. They need to believe are smarter than anyone else, that they alone have the answer and they know they're right because: God..... Whom they always toss in somewhere as the Final Authority to prop up their shaky assertions about what they would prefer to believe.
So...ego, some self-serving smarts and notable intellectual laziness that never examines their assumptions or the actual world around them.
Religion: As I like to say, a shortcut to superiority, and as I'm learning to say, to certainty as well.
Bannon is a (self-serving) Believer. In some pictures he even looks a little like Scalia.
Thank you Lisa for that synopsis. You are not confused - you are correct. These guys do not "believe" anything, so they don't need consistency. They are shape shifters, scammers, parasites who latch on to any organism that will feed them. They are not "absolutists", "relativists" or "anything-ists" just liars. We elitists on the left tend to overthink what goes on with the dark side ;). Colbert was more correct than I believe he meant to be, it's all about the gut and truthiness. He thought he was just being funny.
I fail to understand the "White Guy" thing in so many countries where the indigenous people were not white. If you don't like red, brown, yellow, black people in the country to which your forebears migrated, then go back to where you effing came from!