The December 22, 2016 Thread

Filed in National by on December 22, 2016

President-elect Donald Trump has named Kellyanne Conway, his former campaign manager, as counselor to the president in the incoming administration, CNN reports.

New York Times: “Mr. Trump had wanted Ms. Conway to have a spokeswoman role in the administration. She declined that role and publicly discussed working with an outside political group backing the president, even as she held out for a West Wing position that would have a title on par with those of Reince Priebus and Stephen Bannon, the chief strategist.”

Oh good. I was hoping to hear her nails on a chalkboard voice for the next four years. Excellent.

You. Can. Never. Take. A. Republican. At. His. or Her. Word. They are liars. They do not deal in good faith. They will betray you at the earliest opportunity.

“After more than nine hours of closed-door meetings, jawboning and complicated legislative stratagems, North Carolina legislators went home in frustration Wednesday after failing to repeal the state law that has prompted economic boycotts, lawsuits, political acrimony and contributed to the defeat of the Republican governor,” the New York Times reports.

“Republicans, who control both houses of the legislature, could not agree on a way to repeal the law, commonly known as House Bill 2. The legislation curbs legal protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and requires transgender people in public buildings to use the bathroom that corresponds with the gender on their birth certificate.”

“The failure to reach a deal in a one-day special session, even after Charlotte, the state’s largest city, fully repealed the ordinance that set the law in motion, was yet another moment of political dysfunction in a state that has become accustomed to it. The session comes just days after Republicans stripped significant powers from Governor-elect Roy Cooper, a Democrat, who is to be sworn in on New Year’s Day.”

“Moving some of President-elect Donald Trump’s highest-profile cabinet nominees — with their millions in assets and complex business arrangements — through an arduous financial disclosure examination has been unusually slow and may threaten the quick start for the administration promised by the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell,” the New York Times reports.

“Senate Democrats are concerned that their Republican colleagues will permit confirmations to proceed without the ethics safeguards that have been in place for decades. If that happens, Democrats will almost certainly move to delay swift confirmations.”

No votes until it is complete. Which includes the turning over of all tax returns requested.

Jeet Heer at The New Republic thinks the man’s lies are a problem but, worse, that his tweets are a threat to our National Security:

Trump will soon be president, and every tweet and other utterance will matter greatly. “The president’s words, as uttered in speeches and other official statements, literally shape American foreign policy,” Shamila N. Chaudhary, a senior fellow at New America, wrote at Politico. “In turn, State Department bureaucrats rely on the commander in chief to articulate clear, thoughtful and consistent views, based on facts and a knowledge of history. Only then can the entire weight of the large State Department bureaucracy follow seamlessly behind him—and carry out his goals.” In other words, the problem with Trump’s tweets isn’t just that they contain lies and speculation; it’s that a steady, sober foreign policy is made impossible by those tweets. If other nations take Trump’s tweets literally, as China did, there is a real possibility of military conflict.

Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci has told the press they should not “take him literally, take him symbolically.” But if other nations follow this advice, then the value of the president’s words will be diminished. This is the sort of confusion that could easily lead to conflict, as the international community is torn between whether to believe Trump’s words or the explanation from others, whether advisors like Scaramucci or State Department officials.

Juan Cole at Informed Comment has five reasons why the Senate Dems should block all Trump Supreme Court Nominees, forever:

We don’t need a Trump-nominated Supreme Court justice. We desperately don’t need such a person. And there is no reason to have one. The Democrats in the Senate should just filibuster any nomination for the next four years. Now, you may say that a president deserves to have the nominee of his choice voted on. But those were the old rules before we saw how the Republican Party treated Barack Obama. They just told him no, no, no on everything. Everything. They even threatened the home mortgages of government employees by closing down the government. Twice. They vilified Obama, shouted disrespectfully at him from the floor of Congress, and then they refused even to let his Supreme Court nominee, a centrist, come up for a vote. They declared President Obama a lame duck when he had 11 months left in his presidency.

I declare Donald Trump a lame duck now. Four years out.

Well, the sooner they do filibuster a nominee, the sooner the filibuster gets killed.

David Horsey at the Los Angeles Times writes—Americans who voted against Trump are feeling unprecedented dread and despair:

I have never seen anything quite like the grief being felt by the majority of American voters who did not vote for Donald Trump.

Back in 1980, there was disappointment among Democrats when Ronald Reagan won. In 2000, after the long Florida recount and the intrusion of the Supreme Court into the decision, there were plenty of upset people who thought Al Gore, not George W. Bush, deserved to be president. But the losing voters in those elections were not despondent. They were not breaking out in tears weeks later. They were not waking up each morning with feelings of dread about what was to come.

This time it is different and, in my experience, unique. This is not simply a case of Hillary Clinton supporters being bad losers. For most of those who feel traumatized by what happened on Nov. 8, this is not about the candidate who won the popular vote, yet lost the election. It is about the candidate who was picked as president by the electoral college on Monday. People are mourning because the fate of their country will now be in the hands of an intellectually disinterested, reckless, mendacious narcissist.

It is not just Democrats. There are plenty of conservatives and Republicans among those feeling depressed.

Jill Abramson:

While the pundit class all said the Republican party was being torn apart by this election, it is the Democratic party that is in tatters. It has to be rebuilt from the ground up for the new, post-Clinton future. But the foundation for such a massive undertaking is shaky.

It isn’t just that Democrats are the minority party in Washington, it’s that they’ve lost state governments at all levels, from governorships to the state legislatures. While the Democrats have focused on gaining and holding the White House since 2008, the Koch brothers and their billionaire, rightwing allies have been showering money on local candidates, too, and the payoff has been huge.

One has only to look at the fracas in North Carolina, where the outgoing Republican governor and his Republican legislature are undermining the powers of the new governor, to see how effective the Koch network has been.

State governors, like Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, have always been where the parties go looking for new talent but with so few blue states, the pickings are slim for the Democrats. The only real bright spot for them are the mayors of big cities, where their party is in control. But even there, big-city problems are tarnishing potential younger stars like Rahm Emmanuel of Chicago and Bill de Blasio of New York.

But talent is not even the party’s biggest problem. It is the ideas that animate the party.

Concert prompter Mark Ross “is in the process of putting together a large-scale concert called ‘We the People’ to directly compete with Donald Trump’s inauguration, according to Playbook. “The organizers are looking to hold the event in Miami on Inauguration Day.” Said one source: “The talent is banging on our doors to do this.”

A new USA Today/Suffolk poll finds that 62% of Democrats and independents surveyed said Hillary Clinton shouldn’t mount another presidential campaign in 2020, and only 23% would be excited if she did.

No shit. I am the biggest Clinton supporter there was, and I say she is done. She has had two bites at the apple in a time when their are no second acts in American politics. And she ran a bad campaign with a bad strategy against a bad opponent and still lost. No, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton are now retired and they better stay that way.

Oh good. I am sure none of our exports will suffer a retaliatory tariff. I am sure prices for everything will not rise. LOL.

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  1. RE Vanella says:
    December 22, 2016 at 8:08 am

    “The Constitution gives the president of the United States an extraordinarily wide grant of authority to use the power of the pardon. I’m not saying he should. I’m not saying he will. It also allows a president in a national security moment to say to somebody, ‘Go do X,’ even if it’s technically against the law, and, ‘Here’s your pardon because I am ordering you as commander in chief to go do this.'”
    –Newt Gingrich, NPR 21 Dec 2016

    http://www.npr.org/2016/12/21/506378085/gingrich-says-trump-must-address-business-conflicts-soon-urges-monitors

    “The dire warning issued by the departing president of Poland’s highest constitutional court was one that should frighten not only the Poles, but people of all democratic nations in which populist rulers have taken or threaten to take power. Andrzej Rzeplinski, whose term expired on Monday, said that the governing Law and Justice Party is systematically weakening the checks and balances provided by the courts, the press and other institutions, and is leading the country ‘on the road to autocracy.’”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/opinion/polands-tragic-turn.html

  2. jason330 says:
    December 22, 2016 at 8:36 am

    A Senate filibuster of any Trump SC nomination will depend on Carper and Coons supporting the filibuster. That is not going to happen. It is a pipe dream up there with “the electoral college could vacate the election.”

    Carper will vote to allow a Trump nominee, and then vote against the nominee. I have $100 bucks put away for anyone who wants the other side of that bet.

  3. RE Vanella says:
    December 22, 2016 at 8:43 am

    My old bookie Vegas Vic would call that wager a stone cold 5-star lock of the year.

  4. puck says:
    December 22, 2016 at 10:28 am

    “Oh good. I am sure none of our exports will suffer a retaliatory tariff. I am sure prices for everything will not rise. LOL.”

    Fear of consumer price increases has been used to justify all sorts of atrocities against US labor, including opposition to minimum wage increases, and normalization/expansion of imported labor (illegal or otherwise).

    Did you ever consider that maybe goods are underpriced and are driving labor’s race to the bottom? Price increases just might incentivize investors to produce things in the US again. It worked for oil.

  5. El Somnambulo says:
    December 22, 2016 at 10:51 am

    I’ve come to the realization that the entire Trump White House is designed for one purpose: To loot the Treasury and to make Trump and his billionaire cabinet members even more billions, with those billions coming from the taxpayers. If Trump’s role model is Putin, and I think it is, then what Trump will do is loot the government coffers just like Vlad.

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