New York Times: “A body believed to be of the suspect in a Kentucky highway shooting that left five people seriously injured this month was found on Wednesday, the authorities said, ending a manhunt that stretched into a second week and set the local community on edge. The Kentucky State Police commissioner, Phillip Burnett Jr., said in a Wednesday night news conference that at approximately 3:30 p.m., two troopers and two civilians found an unidentified body in the brush behind the highway exit where the shooting occurred.... The police have identified the suspect of the shooting as Joseph A. Couch, 32. They said that on Sept. 7, Mr. Couch perched on a cliff overlooking Interstate 75 about eight miles north of London, Ky., and opened fire. One of the wounded was shot in the face, and another was shot in the chest. A dozen vehicles were riddled with gunfire.”
To keep the Conversation going, please help me by linking news articles, opinion pieces and other political content in today's Comments section.
Link Code: <a href="URL">text</a>
OR here's a link generator. The one I had posted died, but Akhilleus found this new one that he says is easy to use.
OR you can always just block, copy and paste to your comment the URL (Web address) of the page you want to link.
Note for Readers. It is not possible for commenters to "throw" their highlighted links to another window. But you can do that yourself. Right-click on the link and a drop-down box will give you choices as to where you want to open the link: in a new tab, new window or new private window.
Thank you to everyone who has been contributing links to articles & other content in the Comments section of each day's "Conversation." If you're missing the comments, you're missing some vital links.
New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~
~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~
~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”
New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”
Click on photo to enlarge.
~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI."
Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”
New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”
Washington Post: “An early Titian masterpiece — once looted by Napolean’s troops and a part of royal collections for centuries — caused a stir when it was stolen from the home of a British marquess in 1995. Seven years later, it was found inside an unassuming white and blue plastic bag at a bus stop in southwest London by an art detective, and returned. This week, the oil painting 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt' sold for more than $22 million at Christie’s. It was a record for the Renaissance artist, whom museums describe as the greatest painter of 16th-century Venice. Ahead of the sale in April, the auction house billed it as'the most important work by Titian to come to the auction market in more than a generation.'”
Washington Post: The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., which houses the world's largest collection of Shakespeare material, has undergone a major renovation. "The change to the building is pervasive, both subtle and transformational."
What American voters want in a president is a hero, someone who will save us from whatever we may imagine ails us. If you look back at every election in modern times from Ike on forward, the candidate who won appeared more heroic, even if he wasn't, with the possible exception of the victory of Jimmy Carter over Gerald Ford, an election that followed the Watergate debacle & Ford's pardon of Nixon.
The athletic war hero JFK certainly looked more heroic than Nixon. Lyndon Johnson, who manufactured some WWII medals, looked more heroic than the white-haired Barry Goldwater. Although there was nothing heroic in Nixon's appearance, neither was there much in the appearance of his opponents, although George McGovern actually was a WWII hero. Nixon's "heroism" centered, like Trump's, on his promise to restore white America & "save us" from racial equality.
Jimmy Carter actually served on active military duty in WWII; Ronald Reagan served as a PR man, but he was a hero in war (and football) movies! Reagan promised to "save us" from both a horrible economy AND "welfare queens in pink Cadillacs." Bush I was a tall, WWII vet who beat a short guy who looked ridiculous wearing a military helmet while riding around in a tank. Bill Clinton won against two WWII vets, but his older opponents "looked" weak by comparison. Dubya, with his brushhogging swagger, appeared more heroic than the technocrat Al Gore. Barack Obama, whose opponent John McCain was also a real war hero while Obama was not, promised to "save us" from Dubya's recession & McCain's doddering lack of understanding of a free-falling economy. Mitt Romney, who looked the part of a presidential hero figure and came close to unseating a sitting president, still lacked the eloquence and authoritative posture of his opponent.
Donald Trump constantly portrayed himself as heroic -- "Only I can fix it" -- while Clinton appeared to be someone who merely "soldiered on" in the face of repeated adversity. Yes, "it's the economy, stupid," and yes, it's white supremacy, but it's also far less about policy and more about image. Trump won on image; certainly not on substance, because what substance there is, as Clinton might say, is deplorable.
If I were Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, I would not have run for president in 2015-16. Rather, I would have looked, with the help of other party leaders, for another Obama -- someone who conveyed the qualities of the epic hero. It's time to do that now -- to cultivate and promote a core group of younger Democrats -- competent, handsome (or beautiful), and assertive. Skittish Democrats probably won't have the guts to go for it, but the person who replaced Hillary in the Senate, Kirsten Gillibrand, might replace her as the next nominee, too. There are others. I urge all of them to take elocution lessons (Bill Clinton practice by watching & emulating Reagan's style), polish their resumes, and practice looking heroic.
Marie
P.S. If you think this post suggests we want fake heroes rather than real ones -- well, yeah.
Amy Chozick of the New York Times: "Hillary Clinton on Saturday cast blame for her surprise election loss on the announcement by the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, days before the election that he had revived the inquiry into her use of a private email server. In her most extensive remarks since she conceded the race to Donald J. Trump early Wednesday, Mrs. Clinton told donors on a 30-minute conference call that Mr. Comey's decision to send a letter to Congress about the inquiry 11 days before Election Day had thrust the controversy back into the news and had prevented her from ending the campaign with an optimistic closing argument.... Mrs. Clinton said a second letter from Mr. Comey, clearing her once again, which came two days before Election Day, had been even more damaging." -- CW
Some things I missed:
Gail Collins: "Sometime soon, there'll be another woman presidential nominee. Maybe she'll be in the Clinton tradition, the grand and glorious American worker bees. Maybe she'll just leap out, like Barack Obama did, a fresh face with a new message. All we can know now is that when we talk about how she got there, we'll be telling Hillary Clinton's story." -- CW
NYT reporter Sydney Ember publishes, in a tweet, a "letter to NYT readers from Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. & Dean Baquet," the publisher & managing editor of the paper, respectively. Weirdly, the letter to readers does not seem to have appeared in the actual newspaper where, um, readers, might see it. And of course the comments are priceless: "The New York Times is a piece of crap. I will never read it because it will always be biased." CW: Not sure how the writer knows the paper is a piece of crap if he's never read it; some people are just intuitive, I guess.
Bernie Sanders, in a New York Times op-ed: "When my presidential campaign came to an end, I pledged to my supporters that the political revolution would continue. And now, more than ever, that must happen." -- CW
Paul Waldman: "The greatest trick Donald Trump pulled was convincing voters he'd be 'anti-establishment.'... An organizational chart of Trump's transition team shows it to be crawling with corporate lobbyists, representing such clients as Altria, Visa, Coca-Cola, General Electric, Verizon, HSBC, Pfizer, Dow Chemical, and Duke Energy.... Who could possibly have predicted such a thing? The answer is, anyone who was paying attention.... Trump's tax plan would give 47 percent of its benefits to the richest one percent of taxpayers. Paul Ryan's tax plan is even purer -- it gives 76 percent of its cuts to the richest one percent in its first year, and by 2025 would feed 99.6 percent of its benefits to the top 1 percent. Once that's accomplished, Trump and the Republicans plan to either gut or completely repeal the Dodd-Frank financial regulations, the greatest wish of Wall Street bankers.... the voters thinking that Trump would vanquish the establishment were just marks for a con, like those who lost their life savings at Trump University." -- CW
Steve M.: "Clinton was so busy portraying Trump as a monster that she forgot to say he'd be a lousy president.... Clinton's campaign echoed the media's message that what was important about Trump was his character and personal behavior. Ad after Clinton ad showed Trump insulting women and mocking a disabled reporter. No Clinton ad, as far as I know, ever went after Trump's economic plan the way this Barack Obama ad, for instance, went after Mitt Romney's:
AND Andy Borowitz expresses my thoughts when I read that Trump had said he learned something from the President about ObamaCare: "Speaking to reporters late Friday night..., Donald Trump revealed that he had Googled Obamacare for the first time earlier in the day. 'I Googled it, and, I must say, I was surprised,' he said. 'There was a lot in it that really made sense, to be honest.' He said that he regretted that the frenetic pace of the presidential campaign had prevented him from Googling Obamacare earlier." -- CW
*****
This needs to be a time of redemption, not a time of recrimination. -- Speaker Paul Ryan, Wednesday ...
... ** Adam Serwer of the Atlantic: After the American Civil War, the so-called "Southern Redemption" annihilated "the optimism of emancipation leading to racial equality in the South.... The election of Donald Trump, and the complete dominance of the Republican Party both in the federal government and in the states, may usher in a new era of Redemption, one which could see the seemingly astounding racial progress of having a black president relegated to little more than symbolism.... The erasure of the legacy of the first black president of the United States will be executed by a man who rose to power on the basis of his embrace of the slander that Obama was not born in America.... The Democrats will resist.... But history suggests they will fail.... The uncomfortable truth is that, whether you're Donald Trump or Bill Clinton, economic populism is most effective in American politics when it is paired with appeals to racism." Read it all. -- CW ...
... Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker is a bit more sanguine: "When all the votes are counted in California ... Trump will likely have lost the national vote by more than a million votes and have received a smaller percentage of votes than Mitt Romney's 47.2 per cent, in 2012.... As Harry Enten noted at fivethirtyeight.com, Trump received a smaller share of the votes than the G.O.P. Senate candidate in ten out of the thirteen states where there was a closely contested Senate race.... It may even be possible that white nationalism cost Trump more votes than it gained him. Trump and Republicans in Congress will almost certainly overinterpret their mandate, as victors often do.... The bigger unknown is how Trump will leverage his slim victory in areas that are more fundamental to democracy and civil liberties. The early signs are ominous." -- CW
Michael Shear, et al., of the New York Times: "... Mike Pencewill take over as the leader of 's transition effort, pushing aside Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey..., the transition team said on Friday. The reorganization puts the urgent task of selecting cabinet officials and key West Wing posts in the hands of Mr. Pence, whose loyalty to Mr. Trump and deep contacts with the Republican establishment on Capitol Hill are seen as critical to navigating the often politically treacherous transition period.... Stephen K. Bannon, the conservative provocateur and chairman of the Breitbart News website, will be a top transition adviser.... Three of Mr. Trump's adult children and his son-in-law, who were among his closest campaign advisers, will join a 16-member advisory committee to help guide his choices." ...
... CW: What? The kids? It wasn't two weeks ago that one of them was assuring the public that the family would keep an arm's length distance from governance so they could run Trump's businesses. I'm so surprised Trump went back on his word on this. I thought it might take a whole week.
... Shocking News -- It Was All BS. "Lock Her Up?" Maybe Not. Jose DelReal of the Washington Post: "... Donald Trump and key advisers in recent days have backed away from some of the most sweeping pledges that the Republican candidate made on the campaign trail, suggesting that his administration may not deliver on promises that were important to his most fervent supporters. Trump built his campaign message around bold vows to, among other things, force Mexico to pay for a massive border wall, fully repeal the Affordable Care Act and ban Muslims from entering the United States. But in the days since his upset election victory, he or his advisers have suggested that those proposals and others may be subject to revision. On President Obama's health-care law, for example, Trump said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Friday that he would like to keep some parts of the law intact and may seek to amend the statute rather than repeal it. In the same interview, Trump also avoided answering whether he would follow through on a campaign vow to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while secretary of state.... His lack of clarity on these and other issues has added more uncertainty to a tumultuous presidential transition...." -- CW ...
... Reed Abelson of the New York Times: "Just days after a national campaign in which he vowed repeatedly to repeal President Obama's signature health care law, Donald J. Trump is sending signals that his approach to health care is a work in progress. Mr. Trump even indicated that he would like to keep two of the most popular benefits of the Affordable Care Act, one that forces insurers to cover people with pre-existing health conditions and another that allows parents to cover children under their plan into their mid-20s. He told The Wall Street Journal that he was reconsidering his stance after meeting with Mr. Obama on Thursday. The comments added to a sense of whiplash about the law and its future. More than 100,000 Americans rushed to buy health insurance under the Affordable Care Act on Wednesday, the biggest turnout yet during this year's sign-up period, underscoring that millions of people now depend on the law for coverage. Beyond Mr. Trump's comments, new plans laid out on his presidential transition website this week deviate from what he had proposed during the campaign, and he added ideas that appeared to more closely align with the mainstream Republican agenda." -- CW ...
... Sarah Kliff of Vox: "... Donald Trump told the Wall Street Journal Friday that there are two parts of the Affordable Care Act he'd like to keep: the ban on preexisting conditions and the provision that allows young adults to stay on their parents' coverage through age 26.... That second policy is easy enough to keep running. It's a pretty simple regulation that the insurance industry has already become accustomed to. Continuing the ban on preexisting conditions is ... not so easy. Because as it stands now, the guaranteed issue of insurance is intertwined with two other major reforms of the individual market: a requirement that everybody purchase insurance or pay a fine (the mandate) and subsidies to make coverage affordable for those with low and middle incomes." -- CW ...
A Peek Inside the Cabinet of Horribles. Paul Waldman: "... wait until you get a load of the people Trump wants to populate the executive branch with. It won't help.... Let's run some of the early contenders down, shall we? These are obtained from leaked documents and news reports quoting people around Trump." -- CW
Suffer the Hapless Elites. Francis Wilkinson of Bloomberg: Dear Trumpians, your hero is about to give us dastardly elites "our cosmopolitan comeuppance.... The precise nature of the penalty elites will pay is unclear.... By extrapolating from Trump's campaign, and from the 'Better Way' agenda of Trump's soon-to-be-loyal-lieutenant Paul Ryan, it looks as if the first thing that elites will be targeted with is a huge tax cut.... Trump, who lives in blue Manhattan and perhaps fears that he might yet pay taxes one day, has a plan that goes easier on residents of Trump Tower than Ryan's plan. But either way, the elite are set to end up with a whole lot more money.... Trump is promising to punish the elite in other ways. He's "draining the swamp" in Washington by empowering lobbyists on his transition team, where they oversee the issues they are paid to influence." -- CW
Give Trump a Chance? No Way. James Downie of the Washington Post: "Politicians govern as they campaign.... We know who [Trump] is. On Thursday evening, after being informed of protests around the country against him, did Trump give these citizens a chance? No, he sought to delegitimize them, calling them 'professional protesters, incited by the media.' Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, a possible candidate to run Trump's Department of Homeland Security, said the protesters 'must be quelled.'... (Of course, Trump supporters such as Clarke saw nothing wrong with promising to pick up 'pitchforks' and 'muskets' if Clinton won.)... We can hope for the best for a Trump presidency, though that hope looks increasingly foolish by the hour. We must plan for the worst.... Now is the time to fight back." -- CW ...
... Mark Berman & Wesley Lowery of the Washington Post: "... in the wake of Donald Trump's election, many civil rights, environmental, immigration, labor rights and LGBT activists -- all of whom have frequently deployed street marches and disruptive protests during the Obama years -- saw taking to the streets as the clear first step in collectively registering their opposition of what they fear is to come.... MoveOn.org, a liberal group, [called] on people to gather in cities nationwide Wednesday. Ben Wikler, MoveOn's Washington director, said different people organized events in 275 cities and communities across the country, noting that many were candlelight vigils and group discussions rather than the sprawling marches." -- CW ...
Just had a very open and successful presidential election. Now professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting. Very unfair! -- Donald Trump, in a tweet Nov. 10, 9:19 pm ET
Love the fact that the small groups of protesters last night have passion for our great country. We will all come together and be proud! -- Donald Trump, in a tweet, Nov. 11, 6:14 am ET
... Washington PostEditors: "With a single tweet, [Donald Trump] ... rekindled every legitimate fear of the damage he might do from the White House. And nine hours after that, the president-elect reversed course again -- with a contradictory, and statesmanlike, message on Twitter." -- CW ...
Abigail Hauslohner, et al., of the Washington Post: "Three days since businessman Donald Trump won the presidency, it is clear that the animosity wrought by a historically divisive election did not simply die in its wake, but may have intensified. U.S. cities have been convulsed by anti-Trump protests. Swastikas, racial slurs and personal threats have appeared on public buildings and dorm room doors.... Across the country, women and minorities reported incidents of intimidation perpetrated by Trump supporters or those claiming to be, who under the cloak of anonymity seemed to see in the results a validation of their extremist views.... And online, the vicious word-slinging between supporters of the two candidates has escalated to include videotaped accounts of personal confrontation and retribution.... At a Veterans Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery on Friday, President Obama again called for reconciliation.... The protests continued for a third night on Friday in Atlanta, Miami and other cities, but remained largely peaceful. Trump, too, departed briefly from his calls for reconciliation Thursday night to blast the protesters on Twitter, but tweeted Friday that the protesters were exercising their constitutional rights." -- CW ...
... Southern Poverty Law Center: "Pulling from news reports, social media, and direct submissions at the Southern Poverty Law Center's website, the SPLC had counted 201 incidents of election-related harassment and intimidation across the country as of Friday, November 11 at 5pm. These range from anti-Black to anti-woman to anti-LGBT incidents. There were many examples of vandalism and epithets directed at individuals. Often times, types of harassment overlapped and many incidents, though not all, involved direct references to the Trump campaign. Every incident could not be immediately independently verified." -- CW ...
** Increasingly, it wasn't what I wrote that angered these readers; it was that I wrote it while being me. -- Michelle Lee ...
... Michelle Lee, a Washington Post fact-checker, who is of Asian descent: "The first email calling me a 'b[itch]' for my Pinocchio rating came early in the election season.... Over the next 18 months or so, 'b[itch]' became one of the more pedestrian names I was called for doing my job.... I expected the volume of criticism to swell throughout the campaign, and it did. But what surprised me was just how fiercely racist and sexist the comments became.... (Many of the comments were in response to my fact checks of Donald Trump, but not all.)" -- CW
Plagiarist-in-Chief. Nancy Scola of Politico: "... Donald Trump's official government website, GreatAgain.gov, lifts the work of a nonprofit organization that provides research on presidential transitions, with some passages being duplicated whole-cloth.... TheTrump website was launched lateWednesday and replicates material on the copyrighted site of the Center for Presidential Transition, which is a project of the Washington-based nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service.... Much of the transition site's news feed matches information from the nonprofit's site word-for-word and was clearly written before Election Day.... Trump's site contains a small note at the bottom: 'First Posted on Center for Presidential Transition.' But by not making clear where the content comes from, including a link back to the source site, the Trump transition faces charges of sloppiness at best, and even potential legal challenges...." -- CW
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Adam Serwer: "During the 2016 presidential campaign, reporters marveled at the ability of Donald Trump and his surrogates to create an alternate reality in which statements made by the candidate had not been made at all.... Now they will have the entire apparatus of the federal government to bolster their lies, and the mainstream press is woefully unprepared to cover them. The first reason is that political journalism is highly dependent on official sources, which are chased with abandon.... Another obstacle is that media objectivity is not a fixed point. It is carefully calibrated to the perception of public opinion, because media organizations do not want to alienate their intended audience." -- CW
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Brian Stelter of CNN: "Corey Lewandowski, the controversial Donald Trump campaign manager turned CNN commentator, resigned from CNN on Friday afternoon. The resignation is effective immediately. A CNN spokeswoman confirmed that Lewandowski is no longer serving as a contributor to the network. Lewandowski has stayed in close touch with Trump and some top Trump aides since being fired from the campaign in June. This week there has been media discussion about Lewandowski possibly taking a role in the Trump administration." -- CW
Peter Stevenson of the Washington Post: While most of the media were predicting that Clinton would win the presidency, "Allan Lichtman..., a Washington, D.C.-based professor insisted that Trump was lined up for a win — based on the idea that elections are 'primarily a reflection on the performance of the party in power.'... [In September,] Lichtman made another call: that if elected, Trump would eventually be impeached by a Republican Congress that would prefer a President Mike Pence -- someone whom establishment Republicans know and trust." -- CW
Thanks, Jim Comey! Anna Palmer of Politico: "Navin Nayak, the head of Clinton's opinion research division, sent an email to senior campaign staff Thursday night.... 'We believe that we lost this election in the last week. Comey's letter in the last 11 days of the election both helped depress our turnout and also drove away some of our critical support among college-educated white voters -- particularly in the suburbs,' Nayak wrote. 'We also think Comey's 2nd letter, which was intended to absolve Sec. Clinton, actually helped to bolster Trump's turnout.'... Additionally, Nayak pointed to anger at institutions, a desire for change of power at the White House after two terms under President Barack Obama, the difficulty of recreating the Obama coalition and the reluctance of some Americans to vote for a female president as underlying challenges the Clinton camp faced throughout the campaign. Despite those challenges, Nayak wrote, Clinton's campaign was poised to win until the last week, when 'everything changed.'" -- CW
Way Beyond the Beltway
Nick Cumming-Bruce of the New York Times: "Islamic State militants have summarily killed scores of civilians in the Iraqi city of Mosul in recent days, sometimes using children as executioners, and have used chemical agents against Iraqi and Kurdish troops, United Nations officials said on Friday.Video posted by the militants on Wednesday showed four children, who appear to be 10 to 14 years old, shooting four civilians accused of disloyalty at a location near the Tigris River, said Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman for the United Nations human rights office in Geneva. The video release identified one of the children as Russian, another as coming from Uzbekistan and two as Iraqis." -- CW
Fahim Abed & Rod Nordland of the New York Times: "A suicide bomber managed to sneak onto the main American military base in Afghanistan on Saturday and kill four people, according to U.S. and Afghan officials.... The American military confirmed in a statement that four people had been killed. About 14 were wounded, the statement said. A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, claimed responsibility for the attack on the militants' behalf and said that it had killed a large number of American soldiers." -- CW
The AP has called Arizona for Trump. Michigan (leans Trump) & New Hampshire (leans Clinton) are outstanding:
Julie Davis of the New York Times: "President Obama and Donald J. Trump made a public show on Thursday of putting their bitter differences aside after a stunning election upset, during a once-unimaginable Oval Office meeting. It brought together a president who has darkly warned that Mr. Trump could not be trusted with the nuclear codes and a successor who rose to political prominence questioning Mr. Obama's birthplace and legitimacy.... It was an extraordinary show of cordiality and respect between two men who have been political enemies and are stylistic opposites...." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... David Nakamura & Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: "In a sign of how tensions between the two politicians have not disappeared in the immediate aftermath of the election, the White House did not arrange for the traditional photo-op between the current first couple and the incoming one, a custom that George W. Bush and his wife Laura observed when the Obamas visited the White House in 2008. Melania Trump met separately with Michelle Obama.... [Donald] Trump later met with House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) at the Capitol and said they also would work together -- but on Republican goals that are opposed by Obama and his fellow Democrats." -- CW ...
... Paul Waldman: "This tableau, of Obama shaking the hand of the man who spent years in a despicable racist effort to convince the country that he wasn't really an American, just sickens me. You may not like President Obama's policies, but no one of any political stripe can argue that he didn't conduct himself in office with uncommon graciousness, thoughtfulness, and dignity. And now he's going to be succeeded by a guy millions of us use as a lesson for our children in how human beings shouldn't act." -- CW
... Kathleen Hennessey of the AP: "... Donald Trump on Thursday refused to let a group of journalists travel with him to cover his historic first meeting with President Barack Obama, breaking a long-standing practice intended to ensure the public has a watchful eye on the nation's leader. Trump flew from New York to Washington on his private jet without that 'pool' of reporters, photographers and television cameras that have traveled with presidents and presidents-elect. Trump's flouting of press access was one of his first public decisions since his election Tuesday." CW: So maybe not the most transparent presidency ever? ...
A Very Short-Lived Reprieve for Muslims. Jose DelReal of the Washington Post: "Donald Trump's campaign staff temporarily redirected the webpage detailing his controversial proposal to temporarily ban Muslim immigration into the United States, one of the most divisive and controversial policy ideas of his campaign, but swiftly sought to restore it after reporter inquiries Thursday." -- CW ...
... The Government the Gullible Deserve. Eric Lipton of the New York Times: "... Donald J. Trump, who campaigned against the corrupt power of special interests, is filling his transition team with some of the very sort of people who he has complained have too much clout in Washington: corporate consultants and lobbyists. Jeffrey Eisenach, a consultant who has worked for years on behalf of Verizon and other telecommunications clients, is the head of the team that is helping to pick staff members at the Federal Communications Commission." And so forth. -- CW: Trump didn't wait a day before he started betraying his dimwitted voters (and the rest of us, of course, but we knew this would happen).
Comrade President Trumpskyev, Moscow on Line for You! Ivan Nechepurenko of the New York Times: "The Russian government maintained contacts with advisers toDonald J. Trump during the American presidential campaign, one of Russia's top diplomats said Thursday -- an assertion a Trump spokeswoman flatly denied. 'There were contacts,' Sergei A. Ryabkov, the deputy foreign minister, was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency. 'We continue to do this and have been doing this work during the election campaign,' he said." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Akhilleus: No wonder Putin was so happy Comrade Donaldavich won. Wonder how long after Trump gets his security briefing he gives BFF Vlad the inside dope on US national security secrets. And it's also no wonder Wikileaks never released anything hacked from the Trump campaign. Although I doubt a revelation like this would have done him any harm. The American right has quite a crush on the ex-KGB strongman.
Roxana Popescu & Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: "Attorneys for ... Donald Trump went to court Thursday to ask that a civil fraud suit against Trump scheduled to begin in less than three weeks be delayed, a reminder of the unusual complications facing Trump as he shifts from businessman to commander in chief. Trump's attorneys said he will be too busy with the presidential transition to participate in the Nov. 28 trial involving his defunct real estate seminar program, Trump University. They asked that the trial be postponed until February or March, after he has taken office. They made their request before Judge Gonzalo Curiel, the jurist Trump harshly criticized during the campaign as biased because of his Mexican heritage." -- CW ...
... Dan Levine & Karen Freifeld of Reuters: "The U.S. judge overseeing a lawsuit against ... Donald Trump and his Trump University told both sides they would be wise to settle the case 'given all else that's involved.' Lawyers for [Trump] ... are squaring off against students who claim they were they were lured by false promises to pay up to $35,000 to learn Trump's real estate investing 'secrets' from his 'hand-picked' instructors. Earlier on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel tentatively rejected a bid by Trump to keep a wide range of statements from the presidential campaign out of the fraud trial.... Trial is scheduled to begin Nov. 28, and Curiel told lawyers he was not inclined to delay the six-year-old case further." -- CW
Giuliani Interviews On-Air for AG Spot. Callum Borchers of the Washington Post: "... Rudy Giuliani ... used a CNN interview Thursday morning to tout his qualification to be attorney general. Giuliani initially indicated he would take the job if he couldn't point to three other lawyers who would be just as good." Luckily for Rudy, Trump watches a lot of TV. Maybe he caught the interview. -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Christopher Mele of the New York Times: "Thousands of demonstrators filled the streets in several cities across the country for a second night on Thursday in what were largely peaceful protests against the election of Donald J. Trump as president. In Portland, Ore., the police contended with what they described as an 'aggressive' crowd of about 4,000 protesters and widespread reports of vandalism, fires and broken windows. 'Due to extensive criminal and dangerous behavior, protest is now considered a riot,' the Portland Police Department said on Twitter." -- CW ...
... ** Masha Gessen in the New York Review of Books: "... Clinton's and Obama's very civil passages ... seemed to close off alternative responses to [Trump's] minority victory. (It was hard not to be reminded ofNeville Chamberlain's statement, that 'We should seek by all means in our power to avoid war, by analyzing possible causes, by trying to remove them, by discussion in a spirit of collaboration and good will.') Both Clinton's and Obama's phrases about the peaceful transfer of power concealed the omission of a call to action. The protesters who took to the streets of New York, Los Angeles, and other American cities on Wednesday night did so not because of Clinton's speech but in spite of it. One of the falsehoods in the Clinton speech was the implied equivalency between civil resistance and insurgency. This is an autocrat's favorite con, the explanation for the violent suppression of peaceful protests the world over." Read on for Gessen's Rules for Survival in an Autocracy. -- CW
ISIS and Al Qaeada Thrilled About Trump. Laura Bult of the New York Daily News. "Islamic extremists are celebratingDonald Trump's shocking victory this week, claiming the election outcome proves half of Americans' anti-Muslim sentiment, according to a group monitoring jihadism. Islamic terrorist organizations including Al Qaeda, the Islamic State and the Taliban are touting Trump's stunning win as a signal of the country's downfall, according to reports in SITE Intelligence Group cited by USA Today. 'Pro #AQ (Al Qaeda) accounts: "On 9-11 US struck w disaster at the hands of AQ. On 11-9, US struck with disaster at the hands of their own voters,'" wrote SITE founder Rita Katz on Twitter." Akhilleus (Also linked yesterday.)
Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Michigan), in a Washington Post op-ed: "I said Clinton was in trouble with the voters I represent. Democrats didn't listen.... Much of the district is Democratic and those voters strongly supported Bernie Sanders in the primary. That result didn't surprise me, but it did infuriate me that Clinton and her team didn't show up until the weekend before the primary, when it suddenly became clear they had a problem.... They never stopped on a campus; never went to a union hall; never talked to the Arab American community. Sanders was in my district 10 times during the primary. How would any sane person not predict how this one would go? It was fixable for the general election." -- CW ...
... CW: Several reports have noted that Clinton narrowly won the popular vote, but something that gets far less attention is this from Dominico Mantanaro of NPR: Based on unofficial returns for 2016, President Obama got 65.9MM votes in 2012; Clinton won only 59.1MM, or 6.8MM fewer than Obama. Romney won 60.9MM votes in 2012; Trump got 59MM, or 1.9MM fewer than Romney. Contributor Patrick repeatedly pushed for GOTV; despite numerous reports touting Clinton's ground operation, obviously it was dismal.
Make America Hate Again. Heather Timmons of Quartz: "In his acceptance speech on Nov. 9, US president-elect Donald J. Trump made a pledge of unity, promising to be a leader for 'all Americans.' But some of his supporters have not heard that message. Even as Trump was speaking, one person in the audience yelled 'Hang Obama,' and online commentators spewed a steady stream of racist, sexist, and anti-Semitic messages on a YouTube livestream, directed to 'Anti-whites,' 'Killery,' and 'Jews in Congress.'" Read on for a sampling of the violence & expressions of hatred across the U.S., including one assault on a Trump supporter. CW: Actually, his supporters did hear the message. But to them & to Trump, "all Americans" means "all white Christian Americans, especially men." ...
... Make America White Again. Here's more from Sean O'Kane in Medium. -- CW
Tim Egan: "The strongest resistance [to Trump] should come from the white working class; they will soon find out that Trump will treat them the same way he treated the suckers who signed up for his fraudulent university. When steel mills fail to return to Youngstown, or when new trade deals produce no more magic than the old ones, these economic exiles will wonder how they got betrayed. Look to the euphoria of soon-to-be deregulated Wall Street bankers for your explanation. Finally, all of us in the American family should never trust anyone from the pollster industrial complex, including those at my own newspaper. Never. Read your horoscope; it's far more likely to be accurate." -- CW
Paul Krugman: "I’m not ready to accept that this is inevitable — because accepting it as inevitable would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The road back to what America should be is going to be longer and harder than any of us expected, and we might not make it. But we have to try." -- CW
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, in a Washington Post op-ed: "Trump represents the last wisp of the rich white plantation owner holding on to the glories of the past.... How can we hope that this man understands or cares about us? Especially now that white America has rewarded his outrageous racism, misogyny, xenophobia and religious intolerance with a mandate to put those beliefs into policy. For African Americans, America just got a little more threatening, a little more claustrophobic, a lot less hopeful. We feel like disposable extras, the nameless bodies who are never part of the main cast.... People of color ... must mount a long-term offensive that includes relentlessly challenging every act of institutional racism in the country." -- CW
Sarah Jones in Politicus USA: "Since Donald Trump won his bid for the White House, the women of America have been suffering Trump Traumatic Stress Disorder. I wish I were kidding. But I'm not. This is real and it's serious.... Women shared these feelings with me on Twitter and Facebook and more and more notes poured in. The same story and the same symptoms: Sobbing, vomiting, can't sleep, nightmares.... It's about the fact that our beloved country decided to give the most powerful position in the world to a man who admitted sexually assaulting women.... It's about kicking women in the guts, electing a man we know is a dangerous, unstable predator." -- CW ...
... CW: Then there are women like me, who deal with TTSD by diverting my attention to other things. A friend sent TTSD friends a bunch of Cute Animal Pictures. Like this one:
And the Fox Lay Down with the Hare. (CW: Not sure how this worked out for the bunny when the fox awakened.)
David Brooks: "Trump's bigotry, dishonesty and promise-breaking will have to be denounced. We can't go morally numb. But he needs to be replaced with a program that addresses the problems that fueled his assent. After all, the guy will probably resign or be impeached within a year. The future is closer than you think." CW: Yippee! President pence.
** Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Digby in Salon: "The media's normalization of Trump is complete. The demonization of Clinton continues." -- CW
This is actually one of the untold stories of the 2016 campaign. I was not the only journalist to whom Trump offered gifts clearly meant to shape coverage. Many reporters have told me that Trump worked hard to offer them something fabulous -- from hotel rooms to rides on his 757. -- Megyn Kelly, in her memoir Settle for More ...
... Book Review. Jennifer Senior of the New York Timesreviews Fox "News" anchorMegyn Kelly's memoir, Settle for More. In the book, Kelly relays how Donald Trump first tried to curry favor with her by offering her freebies to his resorts, then turned on her when he learned Kelly would question him in the first GOP primary debate about his attitudes toward women, then maybe he tried to poison her. Also, as reported earlier, Roger Ailes hit on her & threatened her career. CW: How come Trump made such a big deal about Clinton's team getting a heads-up for a debate question when he himself got a heads-up in his? Oh, yeah, it's the projection thing again.
Annals of "Journalism," Ha Ha Ha. So Fox "News," in a print report by Bryan Llenas, asserted that the CEO of Grubhub, an online restaurant delivery service, "Tells Pro-Trump Employees to Resign." Oh, crap, the headline writer had to make a change. The new headline is "Boss says employees who agree with Trump's rhetoric should resign." That little change was because what Grubhub CEO Matt Maloney actually wrote to employees was that any employees who agree with Trump's "nationalist, anti-immigrant and hateful politics" should resign because Maloney won't abide workplace intolerance. They don't do nuance at Fox.
Jonathan Chait: "... in a Fox News interview with Bret Baier, [House Speaker Paul] Ryan said Medicare privatization is on.... Ryan tells Baier, 'Because of Obamacare, Medicare is going broke.' This is false. In fact, it's the complete opposite of the truth. The Medicare trust fund has been extended 11 years as a result of the passage of Obamacare, whose cost reforms have helped bring health care inflation to historic lows. It is also untrue that repealing Obamacare requires changing traditional Medicare." ...
... CW: Those old codgers who voted for Trump at the same time they want "the government to keep its hands off my Medicare" are in for a rude awakening. Whether Ryan can get away with further privatizing Medicare for those who are at or near the age of eligibility remains to be seen, but I can tell you that Medicare is already partially "privatized" (that is, upper-income recipients pay premiums), so he has a good chance of making it even more of a pay-go plan. ...
... Steve M.: "Everything bad in the next four years is going to beObama's fault. They're going to call the next recession 'the Obama recession.' They're going to give massive new tax cuts to the rich and blame the skyrocketing deficits on Obama. Oh, and any terror attacks on President Trump's watch will be because Obama made America weaker, even if it's four years from now and the Homeland Security secretary is an self-promoting wingnut clown like Sheriff David Clarke or Joe Arpaio. And the average American won't know any better." -- CW
Mike DeBonis, et al., of the Washington Post: "The Senate's soon-to-be top Democrat told labor leaders Thursday that the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the trade deal at the center of President Obama's 'pivot' to strengthen ties with key Asian allies, will not be ratified by Congress. That remark from Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who is expected to be the incoming Senate minority leader, came as good news to the AFL-CIO Executive Council, which met Thursday in Washington. Schumer relayed statements that Republican congressional leaders had made to him, according to an aide...." -- CW
Lisa Rein of the Washington Post: "Jason Chaffetz, the Utah congressman finishing his first term leading the powerful House Oversight and Government Reform Committee..., will continue to investigateHillary Clinton's use of a private email server as secretary of state." -- CW
Joe Davidson of the Washington Post: The Inspector General of Homeland Security found that the Secret Service's computer system "suffer[s] from neglect, ignorance and bad management.... The [IG] report ... is related to the agency's breach and leak of personal information belonging to Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) last year.... A 2015 OIG investigation found that 45 employees got into Chaffetz's 2003 Secret Service job application. Only four had a legitimate need, leaving the rest in violation of the Privacy Act and agency policies. The file snooping began minutes after Chaffetz, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, opened a hearing into allegations of agents' misconduct." -- CW
Beyond the Beltway
Surprise! Trump Victory Encourages Hatemongers. Allegra Kirkland of TPM: "In the wake of Donald Trump's upset presidential win, the small yet vocal cohort of white nationalists who supported his campaign are refocusing their efforts from trolling liberals online to running for elected office. Their reasoning: If a candidate who appealed to the tide of anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim sentiment surging on the country's right could win over voters, why not one who is openly 'pro-white'?.... Others are thinking in the short-term and training their eyes, perhaps more quixotically, on possible positions in a Trump administration." -- CW
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