Pic is from DC, I believe (and Michael Moore and Ashley Judd really tore it up, by the way - I'll try to post video if I can find it...and Alicia Keys wasn't bad either - more here)...
Think she'll ever vote Republican?...
From Philly, at Eakins Oval...
In Austin, TX...
Paris (of course)...
Barcelona, Spain...
Berlin...
Closer to home, this was the scene in Doylestown, Pa…
London, at Trafalgar Square…
Amsterdam, The Netherlands…
St. Louis, Missouri, USA...
Park City, Utah…
Accra, Ghana…
Athens, Greece…
Santiago, Chile…
Wellington, New Zealand…
Nairobi, Kenya, the birthplace of President Obama (#joke)…
Lilongwe, Malawi…
Marseilles, France…
Antarctica (for real)...
Indianapolis, Indiana…
Los Angeles...
Boston…
Raleigh, North Carolina…
Mexico City...
Sioux Falls, South Dakota…
Sydney, Australia...
..and here is Gloria Steinem speaking at the rally in New York City…
…I think you get the idea – if I find pics for locations I haven’t already covered, I’ll add them here.
And I think this is an appropriate “nasty girl” tune.
I guess it’s time that we take as much of a look as we can stomach at the cabinet nominees of Generalissimo Trump, and Chris Hayes talks to Sen. Ben Cardin about HHS Secretary nominee Tom Price, Repug (of course) congressman from Georgia (I have a lot of issues with Price, particularly since he has advocated for the utter destruction of the Affordable Care Law, but this is the proverbial cherry on the icing of the crap cake as far as I’m concerned, namely, the whole “hip stock” thing)…
…and Kyle K. discusses Bernie Sanders’s questioning of Betsy DeVos, Education Secretary Nominee (NSFW – Kyle’s last 4 minutes here are particularly awesome IMHO)…
…and Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaks with a lady who got totally screwed over by Steve Mnuchin, Treasury Secretary Nominee, when Mnuchin was at OneWest Bank (and this is a minor point I know, but Mnuchin was also executive producer for “Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice”…I tried to watch it, but it was boring and incoherent, so I shut it off)…
…and Sam Bee talks with Masha Gessen about what we can do in response (besides drink ourselves into a stupor, of course)…
…and I would say that our transition into “Amerika” is already underway based on stories like this (and here is more on the human garbage associated with the bill in question)…
…and Thom Hartmann tells us about Obama’s final speech – typically hitting the right notes as you might expect…
…also, Rachel Maddow reports on Number 44’s accomplishments (and boy, is she right at the very end)…
…and I’ve had this tune in mind for what is yet to come, mainly for the title (this video was also the subject of one of the funniest episodes of Beavis and Butthead that I ever saw).
Update 1: I don’t know about you, but I’ve been hearing a lot of sunny optimism from people I work with and regularly interact with in my life along the lines of “let’s wish the new president luck” (and you can file my relative silence in response under the heading of not making waves with my employer, lest I be branded an “unfriendly” which could have an impact of my job and prospects for potential professional development).
These comments are coming from hard-working people who do a lot of commendable things in their lives I’m sure, and I’m grateful that a few of them are actually my friends. And I’d like to make sure it stays that way.
However, I don’t know exactly what it says about these individuals that they apparently think the prior political campaign for president was something approximating what you might consider to be normal.
I guess it’s fine with them that the eventual winner of the contest for president was openly supported by white supremacists, and his campaign rallies regularly featured incitements of violence (as well as actual incidents of violence), particularly against the Democratic opponent as well as anyone considered to be an “other” and not a member of the collective “hive” in support of President Donald Drumpf. And I guess it’s also fine with them that the eventual winner of this mess benefited to no small extent from Russian hacking, massive attacks on our voting process to invalidate the ballots of Democratic voters, subversion by a rogue FBI director and office in New York, sanitation of the thoroughly odious record of the Republican candidate by our completely compromised Beltway courtier media (featuring what likely translated into millions of dollars’ worth of free publicity), and what I would call the stupefying incompetence of the campaign of the Democratic candidate (as well as the mind-numbingly idiotic exercise on the part of the “Bernie or Bust” crowd on our side who, out of hand, discounted any move towards the “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party” as Dr. Dean once called it, by our party’s nominee for president).
Oh, and I guess it’s also fine with them that, if the roles were reversed and the Democrat had benefited from all of this at the expense of the Republican, the loser’s party would be rioting in the streets with their guns at this very moment.
In fewer words (and I know this is not an original observation), what we are seeing is not normal. It is wrong. It is NOT the way our political process is supposed to work – not even close. And if ANY ONE OF US act as if it is, then all we are doing is validating something that, if something approximating justice is eventually done, will surely one day lead to prison sentences or million-dollar fines against selected individuals at a minimum.
NO, this is not “normal” under even the loosest definition of the word. And anyone who acts as if it is somehow is either a mindless Pollyanna, a willful criminal or a craven liar.
Asked for his reaction to the address, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Trump’s remarks were “a continuation” of his campaign rhetoric. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) had a nearly identical reaction, saying the new president’s message was “very consistent” with Trump’s pre-election pitch.
There will be no pivot. The Donald J. Trump we saw riding down an escalator in New York 19 months ago is the same Donald J. Trump who’s on his way to the Oval Office. The nuances of his personality don’t really exist. What we saw is what we have and we’ll get.
The result was an inaugural address intended for Trump’s base – and no one else. Those waiting for an uplifting message were left wanting. The expected olive branches were set on fire.
The speech was, to be sure, deeply and unapologetically populist, which was only surprising because I thought everyone knew better by now. Sure, Trump exploited populist anger throughout his campaign, but during the transition period, the new president appointed billionaires and Washington insiders to help lead his administration, started selling access to megadonors, and moved forward with an agenda built on tax cuts for the wealthy elite.
Isn’t it a little late for faux-populism about “giving [power] back to you, the American people”? Are there still people who heard this address and believed it?
Yeah, I’d say this was prescient – from “A Face In The Crowd,” of course…
…and K.O. tells us what we all must do tomorrow (going out of order with his great “Resistance” clips again - NSFW)…
…and RIP Wayne Barrett (here), one of the finest investigative reporters of all time (and by the way, he spent years covering those in the orbit, you might say, of soon-to-be President-For-Real Fergus Laing, including Rudy 9iu11ani, as demonstrated in the clip)…
After President Obama was first elected to office, I can remember a headline from The Onion to the effect of “Nation Elects Black Man To Come In And Clean Up Mess Made By White Man.”
Gotta love The Onion…
Yeah, I’m old enough to remember how the horrid cabal of Former President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History left one Barack H. Obama with more of a ruinous mess than any president had ever left a successor in modern history. Yes, Herbert Hoover left FDR with probably the worst economic crisis of all time, but what Obama inherited was the second, and he had to figure out how to bring two wars to an end as well (yeah, I know he didn’t do it in Afghanistan, and he also didn’t close GITMO either, but you need a Congress that’s actually going to act like adults instead of partisan children to do this stuff). And I can also recall how the miscreants under Number 43 once acted like it wasn’t a question of whether this country would suffer another 9/11-type attack, but when.
So what did Number 44 end up doing? Here is a comprehensive (though, I would imagine, incomplete) list.
As far as I’m concerned, what President and Mrs. Obama accomplished (along with VP Joe Biden and the rest of the Obama Administration) was nothing short of miraculous.
So, with that in mind, I present the following video selections as a tribute, with my great, everlasting thanks…
You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas (and some of those fleas have nicknames, apparently)...
...and the lady profiled in the story has my sympathies and I hope and pray all goes well for her, but seriously, what else did you expect Republicans to do, including President-Elect Twitter Tantrum Baby? (the video was cut a bit at the end before Dee Dee Ward said, “my side” – and yeah, that’s about what you can expect from that lying sack of shit Ron Johnson – heckuva job, all you voters who returned him, “No Corporate Tax” Pat Toomey, and the rest of that sorry lot last November)...
…and as his time winds down, sadly, President Obama reflects on what he considers his worst day, and it’s hard to argue with this - we all know the reason nothing happened and I'm not saying we shouldn't be outraged about it any more, but I'm only saying we should conserve our energy for the many battles on this and other issues that still will have to be fought unfortunately…
…and I always thought this was kind of a contemplative song, so here it is.
…and when the comparisons to Nixon have already started and President-Elect Big Orange Cheetoh hasn’t even been sworn in yet – yeah, that’s pretty ugly (and why is this not the least bit surprising - to be fair, Rachel Maddow doesn't provide the exact chronology of the quotes of how this started, though I defend Lewis of course)...
...but Chris Hayes does, talking with Dem Congressman Tim Waltz and Congresswoman Barbara Lee…
…and I had this tune in mind as a tribute to astronaut Gene Cernan, who just left us.
I’ve put up a portion of this video in the past, but I found the whole speech by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Barratt School in Philadelphia on October 26, 1967, so I’m including this here (and this post from 11 years ago is still timely as far as I’m concerned)…
…and returning to the present day, I think it should be noted that Dr. King was very concerned about economic opportunity also (here)…
A courageous Carl's Jr. worker calls out Trump's nominee to head the Labor Dept. Tell your senators to oppose Andrew Puzder: 202-224-3121 pic.twitter.com/rtBK5iwNBL
