The December 29, 2016 Thread

Filed in National by on December 29, 2016

A new Economist/YouGov survey finds that nearly half of all Donald Trump voters believe a widely debunked conspiracy theory claiming that Hillary Clinton is involved in a child sex ring run out of a popular Washington, D.C. pizzeria.

Partisanship is a helluva drug.

President-elect Donald Trump distanced himself “from the Obama administration’s plans to punish Russia for its alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election,” the Washington Post reports.

Said Trump: “I think we ought to get on with our lives. I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly. The whole age of the computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what’s going on. We have speed, we have a lot of other things, but I’m not sure we have the kind of security we need.”

This guy makes George W. Bush look like a genius.

Labor Secretary Tom Perez said that it was unlawful for the Trump transition team to request the names of individual staffers employed at government agencies like the Energy Department, CBS News reported Tuesday. “Those questions have no place in a transition,” Perez said, according to CBS. “That is illegal.”

“Will dedicated career people be targeted because they were doing the right work?” he added. Perez is one of the main candidates for the DNC Chair, along with Congressman Keith Ellison.

Secretary of State John Kerry accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel “of thwarting peace in the Middle East, speaking with a clarity and harshness almost never heard from American diplomats when discussing one of their closest and strongest allies,” the New York Times reports.

“With only 23 days left in his four-year turn as secretary of state, during which he made the search for peace in the Middle East one of his driving missions, Mr. Kerry said the Israeli government was undermining any hope of a two-state solution to its decades-long conflict with the Palestinians.”

Wall Street Journal: “Mr. Kerry’s decision to deliver a broad, hard-hitting speech on the Middle East just three weeks before leaving office reflected the frustration many in the administration say they feel about the failure of peace efforts and the accusation by Israel and some of its Washington allies that President Barack Obama hasn’t been a loyal friend.”

Israel has made the two state solution now realistically impossible due to the illegal settlements in the West Bank. Thus there can only be a one state solution: Israel with both Jewish Israelis, Arab Israelis and Palestinians as residents and citizens. If Israel denies the full rights of citizenship (including voting rights) to the Palestinians and Arab citizens residing within its borders (now including the whole of the West Bank), that means it is a discriminatory Apartheid state that must be opposed by the whole world. Good job Israelis.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi accused Republicans of attempting a “power grab” to snuff out free speech on the House floor with their controversial new rules package, Politico reports.

“Democrats say the proposed fines, a response to their gun control sit-in over the summer, is an unprecedented breach of decorum. And some experts have questioned the constitutionality of such a move, which House members are expected to approve as part of a broader rules package in early January.”

Politico further says the Ryan Rules Package may be unconstitutional: “Paul Ryan’s new crackdown against protests on the House floor — a direct response to the Democrats’ gun-control ‘sit-in’ last summer — is prompting questions from experts in both parties about its constitutionality. As part of a House rules package members will vote to approve in early January, House GOP leaders want to empower the sergeant-at-arms to fine lawmakers up to $2,500 for shooting video or taking photos on the chamber floor. But experts say Ryan’s proposal may run afoul of Article 1 of the Constitution, which says ‘each House may … punish its Members for disorderly behavior.’

“For more than 200 years that has been interpreted to mean any contested sanctions against lawmakers must be approved by the full House with a floor vote, attorneys steeped in congressional legal matters say.”

Politico says Obama is getting under Trump’s skin: “Donald Trump can’t decide whether he thinks the transition of power is going well or not. But he knows he doesn’t like how much attention Barack Obama is getting and is also bothered by what Trump and his closest advisers see as an active effort to poke the president-elect and undermine the incoming administration with last-minute policy changes on his way out of office, according to two people close to the transition.”

“And the relationship is likely to get worse in the three weeks until the inauguration: Obama is scheduled to give a farewell address Jan. 10 that is expected to be a recounting of his successes and an inherent contrast with Trump and the administration is rushing to make public a report on Russian hacking during the election that intelligence officials say was done to help Trump, though the president-elect has disputed that entirely.”

South Carolina Rep. Chris Corley (R), who rebuked his colleagues in a Christmas card for lacking morals when they took down the Confederate flag, is accused of beating his wife and pointing a gun at her, the AP reports.

Officers charged Corley “with a pair of felonies that could send him to prison for up to 15 years after he attacked his wife during an argument over infidelity… The couple’s young children were in the home, and the wife took the family to her mother’s house across the street after Corley threatened to kill her, pointed a gun at her, then said he would kill himself.”

Gallup: “Americans are most likely to name President Obama as the man they admire most in 2016. Twenty-two percent mentioned Obama in response to the open-ended question. President-elect Donald Trump was second at 15%. It is Obama’s ninth consecutive win, but the seven-percentage-point margin this year is his narrowest victory yet.”


E.J. Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post
talks about the good that could come from a Trump presidency:

Gloom is a terrible way to ring out the old, and despair is of no help in trying to imagine the new.

So let us consider what good might come from the political situation in which we will find ourselves in 2017. Doing this does not require denying the dangers posed by a Donald Trump presidency or the demolition of progressive achievements he could oversee. It does mean remembering an important distinction President Obama has made ever since he entered public life: that “hope is not blind optimism.”

“Hope,” he argued, “is that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it, and to work for it, and to fight for it.”

It is this spirit that began to take hold almost immediately after Trump’s election. Americans in large numbers, particularly the young, quickly realized that the coming months and years will require new and creative forms of political witness and organization.

Jeet Heer at The New Republic says Trump’s Call for a Nuclear Arms Race Isn’t a Warning to Putin. It’s an Invitation:

Much has changed since 1987. The Soviet Union is no more, and its successor state, Russia, is a diminished global power. But Trump’s vision of the world has remained strikingly static. In the ’80s, as now, he sees the U.S. and Russia as status quo powers beset by turbulent upstart nations, and thus, as having essentially similar goals. Writing in Quartz, the journalist Sarah Kendzior argued such a friendship could lead to “the new mutually assured destruction: the two states with the most nuclear weapons in the world, both backed by authoritarian leaders, may be partnering against as-yet unknown shared enemies.”

A U.S.-Russian alliance, with both nations building up their nuclear stockpiles and intimidating emerging powers, has a certain superficial coherence. But in practice, it would be nearly impossible to execute. Putin doesn’t have the same list of major foes as Trump does. In Syria, they do seem to agree about the need to bolster the dictatorship of President Bashar al-Assad to end the civil war there. But on Iran, Putin supports the nuclear deal that Trump and his team seem eager to challenge, if not rip apart.

Since 2014, Putin has worked vigorously to improve Russia’s ties to China, leading to increased trade and military co-operation; Trump is flirting with a trade war with China. While Putin might be happy to work with a more amenable U.S. administration, there’s little reason to think he’s would join an American alliance against China. As a practical matter, Russia’s ambitions are clearly directed towards regaining a sphere of influence in central Europe and the Middle East.

About the Author ()

Comments (12)

Trackback URL | Comments RSS Feed

  1. mouse says:

    Anyone up there vacation in Sussex County and use Rt 24? Here’s the 2 latest approvals by the Sussex county real estate exploitation cabal: 600 new ugly plastic treeless homes for cheapskate retirees to escape taxes

    2016-1 The Estates at Middle Creek Subdivision – BDRP, LLC
    This is a major subdivision plan to subdivide 146.96 acres +/- into 314 single family lots
    with private roads and open space. The property is located on the north side of Angola
    Rd. approximately 2,210 ft. east of John J. Williams Hwy. (Rt. 24) The property is zoned

    2016-15 Belle Terre – Sussex Real Estate Partners, LLC This a Major Subdivision for
    cluster subdivision. The plan proposes to subdivide 123.75 acres +/- into 269 single
    family lots with a private road and open space. The property is located southwest of
    Dorman Fam Ln., approximately 1,000 ft. southwest of Mulberry Knoll Rd. (Rd. 284),
    approximately 1,800 ft. southeast of Cedar Grove Rd. (Rd. 283) and approximately 1,200
    ft. northwest of John J. Williams Hwy. (Rt. 24). Tax ID: 334-12.00-17.00, 18.00, 19.00
    and 20.00. Zoning: AR-1 (Agricultural Residential District).

  2. anonymous says:

    @mouse: You’re shoveling against the tide. SuxCo is run by a bunch of hicks who have gotten rich (by their standards) selling out to the vacation industry. About the only thing the state can do is starve them of state funding for roads, and Democrats will never do that as long as they get a cut of the proceeds.

    And while there are no elected Dems in SuxCo, there are plenty of upstate Democrats with their hand in that till. Hell, some of the upstate Dems actually live in Sussex. I just wish one would take on Schwartzkopf.

  3. anonymous says:

    “This guy makes George W. Bush look like a genius.”

    First they elected Reagan, and we said, “How could they pick someone this stupid?”

    So they elected W, and again we said, “How could they pick someone this stupid?”

    And now they’ve elected Trump. By the available evidence, I have to conclude that stupid is exactly what they’re looking for. Sad to say but there are dozens of Congresspeople and Senators who are even stupider than Trump, and one of them will probably be the next Republican in the White House.

  4. anonymous says:

    If gender is just a social construct, why are some people trans-gendered?

  5. mouse says:

    Yeah, I know but I’m going to fight it in every way I can.

  6. mouse says:

    Rep Smik and Sex Pettyjohn were on the local right wing talk radio yesterday morning and i called to ask them if the state legislator has any responsibility in protecting the inland bays. I pointed out that the inland bays are a state wide and regional resources in the context of endless rubber stamp approvals with few requirements of thousands of new homes by the sussex council while the inland bays are full of signs warning of dangerous bacteria and not to swim or eat shellfish. The maggots blew it off and said new developments have better safeguards and won’t pollute the inland bays. The POS maggots aren’t even embarrassed by their own lameness.

  7. Rusty Dils says:

    Anonymous, the worst capitalist is better than the best socialist, by an order of magnitude. Until you understand that, you will never be on the side of lifting people in the U.S. and around the world out of poverty. In the world league of economics, socialism is batting 0 for a 1000 in lifting people out of poverty!

  8. anonymous says:

    @Rusty Dils: Have you ever tried pissing on an electric fence? You should.

  9. puck says:

    dils: “the worst capitalist is better than the best socialist”

    And Rusty is in fact the worst kind of capitalist, according to courts and tax authorities from multiple states.

  10. mouse says:

    Must be sad to live in such a black and white world. Capitalism is great for building wealth but in a winner take all system it creates poverty as well and needs macroeconomic controls to assure it spreads wealth. I always wonder what you people get out of shilling for the robber baron you so admire. I guess the same thing you get out of shilling for polluters. Self hatred?

  11. anonymous says:

    @puck: Are you sure it’s the same Rusty Dils?

  12. Rufus Y. Kneedog says:

    The “Estates at Middle Creek” and “Belle Terre”. I’m reminded of the old adage that housing developments are often named after the things that are destroyed to build them.