Saturday Stuff

Offered without further comment (NSFW)…



…and I have a pretty good idea of what Kyle said about HRC, and I know he made a lot of good points, but you know what? The Clintons are GONE! Let’s focus on President-Elect Big Orange Cheetoh instead (NSFW of course) – I know this is the stuff of nightmares, but we did this to ourselves…



And by the way, I have a word or two to say about Facebook – I don’t know if Mark Zuckerberg planted fake news stories or not…to me, one of the biggest actual stories that will NEVER be reported is how much the media overall ganged up on HRC with the relentless negativity of supposed “scandals” to goose ratings and help elect Trump, basically to flush our democracy down the crapper, including this maggot in charge of the “third eye” network. Am I using that as an excuse to absolve HRC of the things her campaign did wrong? No.

However, in the aftermath of this carnage, I (stupidly) decided to go to our Facebook page after the results came in and have seen some sickening triumphal garbage from at least one individual who we thought knew better. This person is a dear family friend, so I chose not to even respond, but she forwarded a picture of a large group of people marching for common-sense immigration reform in this country, and the caption for the picture said something to the effect of “this is what happen when children have a tantrum when they don’t get what they want” (of course, referring to the election).

Children? These are men and women marching for some kind of social justice (you know, to actually NOT be demonized as rapists and criminals overall) and economic fairness (and good luck getting THAT given what has just happened). Also (and I know this may come as a shock to our friend), these people probably have hourly jobs without a bank of PTO time they can use, so they quite probably are not going to get paid because they’re missing work to march instead, to say nothing of having to worry about reprisals from their employer in case they’re found out!

But wait, there’s more!

Another person who is an acquaintance of Mrs. Doomsy posted something that purports to be a letter to mothers worrying about health care for their daughters now that Trump has won (she calls herself a “right-wing chick,” or something like that). As you read her bilious garbage, of course, you find out that she doesn’t give a damn about health care for the daughters of women who voted for Clinton and are worried about whatever insanity is going to come forth on this from the serial sexual offender we just elected, to our everlasting shame. No, she uses it as an excuse to blast Hillary Clinton for supposedly silencing the victims of her sexual predator husband, or crap to that effect.

Again, the Clintons are GONE! AND YOU’RE STILL HATING THEM! WHAT KIND OF SICK, TWISTED LIFE FORM ARE YOU ANYWAY??!!

One of the morals of this for yours truly is to stay the hell off Facebook for a good while yet, maybe permanently. And that’s not Zuckerberg’s fault.

…and also related to the election, I would definitely say that this is food for thought from Thom Hartmann (Greg Palast, by the way, is someone who has been a studious election observer for years, and here is more on the thoroughly irredeemable Kris Kobach)…



(And speaking of our side, ZOMG! ENOUGH ALREADY WITH THIS!! AT LEAST LET US TRY TO ENJOY THE HOLIDAYS FIRST!!!)

…and despite all of this misery, I know I still need to put up this song.

Friday Stuff

I’ve got a bit of catching up to do I know…if my posts seems to take on more of a despairing tone, I’ll try to be careful about that, but it’s hard not to feel that way.

Back to the videos…yeah, I think Samantha Bee pretty much said it; I had a feeling early on based on what I was reading from people who were smart about this stuff that suburban white women were going to decide this election, and boy, did they ever…of course, they went for the p*ssy grabbing, intellectually lazy narcissist instead of the person who was truly qualified (as I said at least once before, if Hillary Clinton were a man, this election would have been decided for her in July…and 53 percent of white suburban women voted for Trump? Wow, just…wow! That’s an awful lot of Clinton hatred at the expense of the reproductive health of your own daughters – again, wow…)…



…and I guess this is the last of Keith Olbermann’s fine GQ commentaries, and he ends it with an ominous warning which, sadly, is probably spot-on…



...also, though I know the foul, fetid FBI office in NYC won’t be cleaned out now as it should, premier investigative reporter Wayne Barrett talks to Chris Hayes about all of the sordid goings on, which played no small role in last Tuesday’s electoral coup…



...in addition, given the events of the week, I failed to note the passing of Former Clinton (and of course, there will only be one presidential Clinton reference now) Attorney General Janet Reno, who did a solid job IMHO; the fact that she drove the wingnuts utterly crazy is proof of that as far as I'm concerned...



…continuing, Cenk of TYT reports on the recent Trump protests, and don’t expect them to go away any time soon (I hope Cenk gets over his cold - I get his point about #NotMyPresident, but I'm fine with it because of how dirty the Repugs play this game to get the upper hand, and the assumption is that the Dems are supposed to play nice in response...F-that!)…



Update: Oh yeah, Trump is going to be "moderate" and "conciliatory" (here) - GMAFB!

…and believe me when I tell you that it’s hard to find good news at the moment, but though I respect Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota very much (also interested in running for head of the DNC), I have one reaction to this item that’s captured in the clip below (and to act like “the scream” doomed Howard Dean somehow is still more ridiculous corporate media framing – after the “news” networks with initials for names allowed themselves to get played by the Trump crowd all in the name of high ratings, why in God’s name would we ever trust them again, unless they managed to tell the truth totally by accident?)…



Oh, and one more thing – I know it’s typical in politics generally to engage in a circular firing squad after a loss like this, and I know Kyle Kulinski, for example, has a video that I haven’t seen yet saying “We warned you not to run Hillary as the nominee, Dems!” I respect Kyle, potty mouth and all, and I supported Bernie in the primary, but Hillary was the best candidate. NOBODY IN EITHER PARTY could touch her resume and I think she ran a skilled but definitely imperfect campaign. So can we please put that to rest...besides, do you SERIOUSLY think the Repugs wouldn’t have tried something like this with Sanders too? All they needed was to find one picture of Bernie engaging in a sit-in near a sugar cube full of LSD, for example – not alleging that ever happened of course because I’m sure it didn’t, but they would have found something comparable, or even manufactured it since that has happened before too (here) – and it would have been in a 24/7/365 rotation on Fix Noise right alongside the “New Black Panther” stuff at that polling location in Philly, and OF COURSE the other networks would have aired it also. So can we please dispense with that nonsense about HRC?

I actually think the only person who got this whole thing totally right was Bill Maher when he yelled at the camera last week and told the media to do its bleeping job because a right-wing coup was underway, again, with all the cable culprits dutifully regurgitating everything about Wikileaks, Emails, Clinton Foundation “access,” throwing in the women from the ‘90s who accused Number 42 including Monica Whatsername, and on and on and on.

(And by the way, can we please also just stop with stuff like this? We ridicule the other side, particularly Texas, when they engage in this nonsense, so I just think we should practice what we preach, that’s all.)

…and RIP Leonard Cohen…



…and I’ve been looking for a tune to commemorate Veterans Day, and I found this number about soldiers fighting in battle – I know I include a lot of songs by Richard Thompson at this site…and how exactly is that a bad thing?

Welcome To Donald J. Trump's America (updates)

Well, that Election Day sure turned out to be ugly, didn’t it, my fellow prisoners (pic is from here)?

I guess we should get the sparse good news out of the way first and congratulate Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada on their election to the U.S. Senate. Also, closer to home, Josh Shapiro won election as PA’s Attorney General.

Update 1 11/11/16: I forgot about Kamala Harris winning a U.S. Senate seat in California; sorry about that – kudos (here).

Update 2 11/11/16: I also forgot about Perry Warren winning Steve Santarsiero's old seat for PA-31 - nice work indeed! (here)

Aside from that – yeah, it was pretty much an electoral bloodbath. And I don’t know if this is the “conventional wisdom” or not (not that I care about that), but as far as I’m concerned, we all had a hand in it.

God knows I don’t want to give The Big Orange Cheetoh and his minions credit for anything, but I have a feeling that they had some kind of media strategy going on to the effect of “oh, we’re so disorganized, we don’t have a ground game, we’re not doing enough advertising,” and everybody bought that line including me (not including all the free media time Trump got generally of course, and yeah, I know HRC got a lot too). Not that this is a particularly brilliant observation on my part (indeed none of this is I know), but as I may have mentioned, I found myself driving in the lower/upper suburbs of Bucks County about a month ago, and prominent signs for EVERY SINGLE REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE were everywhere. Somebody in that gang had to have their act together to enable something like that, and just imagine that being played out on a national scale, which I’m sure it was (our side tried hard to match that, but we just don’t have the money and the ground game to pull that off like they do).

Still, before we get too discouraged over this, I’d like to point out the following from here: namely, that if a fraction of those who supported that fool Gary Johnson and Jill Stein had supported Hillary Clinton instead in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Florida, HRC would be our new president-elect. So, as in 2000 (which you have to put an asterisk next to anyway as far as I’m concerned), the most important lesson is this – when our side turns out to vote, particularly for president, the other side can’t stop us unless they have at least one third-party candidate (and I KNOW Johnson was funded by the Repugs and I have a feeling we’ll find out that Jill Stein was also – to his great credit, at least Johnson’s running mate and former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld was honorable enough to tell everyone to vote for Clinton instead since he realized what was going on). Also, if you were one of those supposedly “principled” individuals who thought, “Oh, both Trump and Clinton are equally corrupt, so I’m voting third-party” (which is horseshit anyway – more on that later) and did that even though YOU WERE WARNED that doing that would help Trump, then congratulations. Because of your supposed “principles,” you’re going to end up inflicting all kinds of misery that I’ll try to describe later in this diatribe (I also think third parties now should be illegal until we have serious campaign finance reform in this country to prevent this from ever happening again - try kicking that around a bit).

Also, though she lost, Katie McGinty put up more of a fight in losing to Pat Toomey than I thought she would. I got genuinely steamed at her for the trouble she had over Toomey’s BS about McGinty supposedly supporting “sanctuary cities.” That’s a typical nothing GOP talking point that they were able to propagate through their own myriad of conservative media and web sites – she should have just said, “I’m running for the U.S. Senate, not mayor of Philadelphia, and apparently Toomey doesn’t know the difference.” Still, though, there were positives in her campaign, for what it’s worth, though I must tell you that I’m now wondering why Joe Sestak was apparently so bad as far as the PA Dem establishment was concerned; he almost pulled off an electoral miracle in 2010 and he might have done it on Tuesday (yeah I know, woulda, coulda, shoulda…).

Speaking of putting up a fight, I think Steve Santarsiero deserves credit for doing that against Brian Fitzpatrick. The biggest problem Steve faced though, as far as I’m concerned, is that PA-08 is redder of a district than the “conventional wisdom” again supposedly tells us, especially after it was redrawn in 2010 to remove the Montco and Philadelphia sections that were included and were instrumental in Patrick Murphy’s win in 2006. Again, our side fought hard, but the Republicans had more money and their own formidable ground game.

Oh, and as usual, the Bucks County Courier Times was a dutiful ally for Republicans overall. Do you know that, in their endorsements that they published on Election Day, they didn’t even include an endorsement for president? They totally punted on an election where a woman nominee was at the top of the ticket for the first time in this country’s history (and do you really have to ask whether or not they endorsed Toomey and Brian Fitzpatrick, the latter with no record of constituent service whatsoever as opposed to Steve’s years in the PA House and the Lower Makefield Board of Supervisors?). Of course, with Trump’s win, his ugly mug has been plastered all over the front page for the last two days.

Another note – I have it on very good information from a friend who I won’t mention that this person submitted a letter to the editor criticizing Brian Fitzpatrick that wasn’t published. My friend contacted editor Guy Petroziello to find out why, and my friend was told that the letter was sent to Fitzpatrick and Petroziello was told that the letter was untrue, so it wasn’t published. Seriously.

That’s all right – this will be the last election in which we’ll be a subscriber to that “newspaper.”

And as long as I’m going down the list of people who deserve to be called out, I should mention that “Democrat” Shaughnessy Naughton, who sent a letter to us endorsing McGinty that arrived at Le Manse Doomsy THE DAY BEFORE THE ELECTION! Gee, why didn’t you wait a little longer so we’d gotten it THE DAY OF the election instead?

Also, to be fair, I want to call out myself a bit here for a stupid thing that I did. I put up a video a week or so ago of Hubert Humphrey’s concession speech and said that “Donald Drumpf” should use that as a model when the time comes for him to concede (yeah, I know – duuuuh!). One of the reasons why I did that was because every time I went to Daily Kos, they had a graph at the top of the site showing that Hillary Clinton had a 90-percent-or-something chance of winning. I admire Markos Moulitsas a lot, but he got fooled on this like the rest of us did. Also, speaking of Daily Kos, I kept going to the site to find out what kind of organizing was going on for Steve Santarsiero and related news for his campaign, but I couldn’t find anything even though Steve is a great progressive. That’s partly my fault too because I didn’t write any diaries about the campaign, something I surely would have done in prior years with less going on. I don’t know how much difference that would have made in the final outcome, but it wouldn’t have hurt (also, when it comes to viral videos, the so-called “Dem Rapid Response” channel completely fell down, and “Bold Progressives” and other Democratic-affiliated sites weren’t much better).

Update 11/30/16: As I said, I definitely admire Markos, particularly because I don’t know anyone else who can summon the passion he does over this stuff (here...and by the way, I've read the post twice and so far, I agree with every word, for what it's worth). More than that, though, he gives us a blueprint for moving forward, which is much more important.

Here’s more stuff on this whole debacle that I think we should consider: this was the first presidential election without the protections (I would call them) of the Voting Rights Act, and as far as I’m concerned, that itself was responsible for the outcome in North Carolina. Also, this was the first presidential election without an incumbent since Citizens United, and the avalanche of dark money into last-minute ads in particular made the difference as nearly as I can tell.

(Oh, and speaking of money, I don’t think I can communicate how truly torturous this entire election was with the appeals from EVERYONE IN THE WORLD for money MANY, MANY TIMES! I know I personally set a record for unsubscribing from Email lists. I also got more hangups and people yelling at me when I did phone banking than I can ever recall. I’m not criticizing those folks – they were totally sick of the election, and I was too…hard for me to blame them. Our entire process for this is a corrupt joke, but if you think that’s going to be fixed with this bunch that will be sworn in, you truly are dreaming. This country has to start giving a shit about this stuff as much as they would when it comes to, say, booking an airline or a hotel reservation or tickets to a concert or sporting event, and I don’t foresee that in any way, shape or form, unfortunately, even in light of this.)

And oh yeah, I’m sure Trump will keep James Comey as head of the FBI now for his little escapade prior to the election, and Comey will probably get the Congressional Medal of Honor too.

And another thing…this election officially now marks the exit of the Clintons from public life. I know our corporate media is simply overjoyed by that, having manufactured all of their utter bullshit about supposedly leaked classified Emails from Clinton as well as charges of “access” (ZOMG! HORRORS!) granted to certain persons from the Clinton Foundation after sizeable donations which were also found to be utterly baseless (to say nothing of the Wikileaks garbage from that Putin flunky Julian Assange). Who cares if the careers of individuals who have devoted much of their lives to public service were utterly besmirched in the name of ratings, to say nothing of discouraging legions of young men and women from pursuing similar careers because they decided that they don’t want to deal with all of this utter garbage from the DC political/media/industrial complex? I, on the other hand, want to thank and salute the Clintons, because I consider them to be great Americans. My criticism of Hillary’s campaign is that I think she engaged in a little too much “rope-a-dope” by beating on Trump instead of talking about the bread-and-butter economic stuff Bernie Sanders did in his campaign (and because she was a little late on that, that created the opportunity for Stein and Johnson to pretend that they were inheriting the Sanders mantle, which they definitely WERE NOT), though Hillary did pivot back that way towards the end. And though I honestly don’t know if her field operations were as “data driven” as that of Obama in ’08, her campaign was good enough to win the popular vote, so she must have been doing something right (though, given the way things turned out, I don’t know what the hell she was doing in Arizona towards the end. And where did Tim Kaine go after that great opening speech of his and the debate?). The rule of thumb I kind of applied during this (which, with each passing day, took on an eerie resemblance to 2000) was “what are families talking about around their kitchen or dinner tables at the end of the day?” including us, and I think it largely was who would be a better candidate for president, not who ran the best attack ad. In the end, I think Hillary won that little contest, but not by the margin she needed to win the whole damn election (again, especially with two “independent” candidates included).

With all of that being said, I can tell you what we now have to look forward to under President-Elect Donald Trump (first time I’m typing that – dear God)…

Are you a fan of fetal “personhood” legislation (and from there, it’s just a hop, skip and a jump to prosecuting doctors for murder for performing abortions)? Get ready for a federal bill that Trump (especially with the encouragement of VP Mike Pence, something also horrifying) will gladly sign into law (at least the Catholic Church will be happy).

And of course, Sen. Mr. Elaine Chao will rush to confirm Trump’s nominee to fill the Scalia vacancy on the Supreme Court, and Trump will probably end up nominating another conservative when Ruth Bader Ginsburg steps down to make it 6-3 in Republican favor, to say nothing of the awful lower-court judges that Trump will nominate and a Republican congress will confirm (with untold misery from that alone probably for decades to come).

Are you helped or are you a supporter of the Affordable Care LAW? Too bad – a bill repealing it also from Sen. Mr. Elaine Chao will also make it to Trump’s desk faster than you can say “The Ghost of Henry Hyde.” Probably 20 million people will now lose their health coverage (still proud of yourselves, all you Jill Stein and Gary Johnson voters)?

Worried about climate change? Tough luck. Look for Trump to end all government funding for alternative energy and billions more instead into fossil fuel development (as opposed to this, which we would have gotten instead – say bye bye to the polar ice caps and those pesky polar bears just trying to survive, to say nothing of increased risk of skin cancers and more cases of asthma).

And let’s not forget trickle-down economics – Trump and congressional Republicans will bring this back for sure, this time on steroids, economic impact be damned.

Also, I don’t know if the model of “managers” for our cities along the lines of what Rick Snyder did in Michigan will now come to hideous fruition on the national level (ask residents of Flint if they can drink their water yet), but if Trump and Congress decide to do that for residents of, say, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, etc., who the hell is going to stop them?

Oh, and I hope you weren’t in favor of common-sense immigration reform, infrastructure spending to repair our bridges, roads and mass transit, an end to the still-truly-ruinous sequester (which will probably be permanent now as opposed to expiring in 2021) and laws concerning gun safety, to say nothing of campaign finance reform.

And speaking of money – do you honestly think the congressional Republicans WON’T pass a bill that overturns Dodd-Frank and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? And that Trump will sign it? WHAT PLANET DO YOU LIVE ON? And related to that, one of the first things Democrats did when they took back Congress ten years ago was to clean up the utterly wretched student loan process, whereby banks were paid ridiculous servicing fees basically for doing nothing (more here). Look for all of that idiocy to return – why should Republicans in Congress give a shit if your son or daughter is burdened with student debt? As far as they’re concerned, if they voted, they’d probably vote for Democrats anyway!

And when Trump decides to lob a missile or two towards the Middle East because a mullah in Iran wrote a nasty “tweet,” don’t you DARE tell me how “untrustworthy” the Clintons supposedly are!

Also, I don’t know if Trump was serious about us potentially leaving NATO or not. But are you going to rest easy assuming he was kidding?

Are you also going to assume the same thing concerning Trump’s remarks about supposedly playing with our debt, representing the faith and credit of the United States? If you thought 2008 was a wild economic ride, get ready for what will happen if he does THAT.

Also, given his behavior during the campaign (and the way Repugs act generally), get ready for a total purge of all Democratic Party and Obama holdovers in ALL federal government offices and departments (again, except for Comey if he chooses to stay, and why wouldn’t he?). To me, the most important aspect of the government that this country takes for granted is that it’s supposed to run efficiently, as I believe it has for the most part under Obama. I’m just saying that we shouldn’t be surprised if, say, Trump puts somebody who used to run the Arabian Horse Association in charge of FEMA (like a certain Former Commander Codpiece of course…and who knows what kind of dregs from THAT regime will reappear now?).

Here’s another nightmare to try and block out of our minds: again, given what we know of Trump, do you honestly think he WON’T put together some kind of an enemies list? Do you honestly think the New York Times WON’T be at the very top? Do you honestly think he WON’T try and purge media in general that doesn’t kowtow to everything he says and does? And do you honestly think he WON’T use all of the tools of his disposal (you know, now being the most powerful leader on earth) to go after those he doesn’t like (which, as we know again from the campaign, is bound to be AN AWFULLY BIG GROUP OF PEOPLE, ENTITIES, PUBLICATIONS, etc.)?

(And by the way, love and kisses to Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer in New York, who waited WAY TOO DAMN LONG to rain some money down on the U.S. Senate campaign of Patrick E. Murphy in Florida against Marco Rubio, who won re-election with 52 percent of the vote. Ya’ think helping out earlier would have made a dif? Also, Chucky’s pal Evan Bayh bought it electorally in Indiana, so that was a waste of time and money too.)

Also, I want to state categorically for the record that, inasmuch as I am able given my time and other demands that affect my ability to maintain this site, that I intend to do everything I can within my admittedly limited means to oppose anything whatsoever that the Trump Administration (ugh) says and does. I intend to give them the same treatment that Republicans gave to President Obama, promising to oppose everything he did before he was even sworn into office.

So there you have it; at least, those are the horrors I feel obliged to conjure up at the moment. Once more, congratulations to all of you low-information voters out there who chose not to participate in our democracy until the last minute, when you were easily swayed by negative ads, to say nothing of our utterly co-opted corporate media that has ABSOLUTELY FAILED collectively in its duty to educate and inform this country. After next January 21st, we will be living in the demented, funhouse-mirror world brought to us by Not Your Father’s Republican Party, with “Fergus Laing” in charge at long last.

Suck on it, America! And who would I be if I didn't provide a tune to commemorate this catastrophe?



Update 1: Also, for the record, when it comes to Republicans and third-party candidates, I’m sure nobody else remembers the trick that Bucks County Republicans pulled to make sure Charlie (“I Have a Semi-Open Mind”) Martin was re-elected as a county commissioner, again at the expense of Steve Santarsiero, and that was to prop up somebody named Jay Russell as a supposed “third-party” alternative who ended up siphoning votes away from Steve to help Martin (with Russell joking with the utterly odious Jim Cawley, who was once head of the commissioners, about it).

Update 2: You know, it’s probably pointless for me to try and catalog all of this stuff because there’s going to be so much of it now.

Elderly white conservatives and their kids, as opposed to handing off what was once bequeathed to them by the prior generation, are going to choose to burn it all down instead.

And with “Donald Drumpf” occupying An Oval Office, they may just get their wish.

Update 11/15/16: Jon Perr is a terrific blogger - more than a little food for thought here

Tuesday Stuff

This may be the most NSFW item you'll hear on this site, but please put some ear buds (or something) on and listen anyway...

HOLY SH*T (You've Got To Vote) from Funny Or Die

...and I guess you can call this K.O.'s closing argument...



…and nice work by Judd Apatow here…



...and I'll bet you have to look really hard to find something positive about the presidential campaign of "Donald Drumpf"; fortunately, Bill Maher did just that (NSFW)...



…and did you ever wonder why we vote on Tuesdays? So did John Oliver…



...and for a final time, to support Steve Santarsiero in this election, click here...



...and ditto for Katie McGinty (here)...



...because the time has indeed come at long last.

Monday Stuff

If it’s good enough for Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich, it’s good enough for me…

It's not just the presidential race that matters. Dems could tip the balance in the Senate. Here's the race in Pennsylvania. Share and Vote! pic.twitter.com/OfUq6u7BMs

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) November 6, 2016

…especially because of the utterly partisan shill we have taking up space as our PA Senator right now, namely Pat Toomey, as Reich mentioned…



…uh huh…



...to support Dem Katie McGinty, click here...



…oh, and speaking of “Bri-Fi,” also of The Trump Party, running to take over his brother’s seat (not aware that the duty of representing PA-08 in Congress was a family inheritance), I give you this…



…and he can’t run and hide either...



...to support Dem Steve Santarsiero, click here…



…and I think it’s time for a motivational tune for tomorrow – this comes immediately to mind.