Robert Reich: A Sane Voice in the Democratic Party--and one we Must NOW listen to

Robert Reich, who had served in Bill Clinton's cabinet and knows the Clintons very well, warned us over and over that we should nominate Bernie Sanders as our presidential nominee. The DNC wouldn't hear of it and did everything they could to keep Bernie from being nominated. Result: What we now see heading for our White House.

The Democratic Party Lost Its Soul. It's Time to Win it Back.

by Robert Reich | November 19, 2016

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— from Robert Reich's Blog

Who will become the next chair of the Democratic National Committee? This leadership contest has significant implications for the future of American politics. The choice will help determine how the Democratic party responds to its extraordinary defeats in recent years, ending with the election of Donald Trump.

You might think this overwhelming drubbing would cause the Democratic party to reorganize itself into a very different party from the one it's become – which is essentially a giant fundraising machine, too often reflecting the goals and values of the moneyed interests that make up the bulk of its funding.

Don't bet on it.

For one thing, many vested interests don't want the Democratic party to change. Most of the money it raises ends up in the pockets of political consultants, pollsters, strategists, lawyers, advertising consultants and advertisers themselves, many of whom have become rich off the current arrangement. They naturally want to keep it.

For another, the Democratic party apparatus is ingrown and entrenched. Like any old bureaucracy, it only knows how to do what it has done for years. Its state and quadrennial national conventions are opportunities for insiders to meet old friends and for aspiring politicians to make contacts among the rich and powerful. Insiders and the rich aren't going to happily relinquish their power and perquisites, and hand them to outsiders and the non-rich.

Most Americans who call themselves Democrats never hear from the Democratic party except when it asks for money, typically through mass mailings and recorded telephone calls in the months leading up to an election. The vast majority of Democrats don't know the name of the chair of the Democratic National Committee or of their state committee. Almost no registered Democrats have any idea how to go about electing their state Democratic chair or vice-chair, and, hence, almost none have any influence over whom the next chair of the Democratic National Committee may be.

I have been a Democrat for 50 years – I have even served in two Democratic administrations in Washington, including a stint in the cabinet and have run for the Democratic nomination for governor in one state – yet I have never voted for the chair or vice-chair of my state Democratic party. That means I, too, have had absolutely no say over who the chair of the Democratic National Committee will be. To tell you the truth, I haven't cared. And that's part of the problem.

Nor, for that matter, has Barack Obama cared. He basically ignored the Democratic National Committee during his presidency, starting his own organization called Organizing for America. It was originally intended to marshal grass-roots support for the major initiatives he sought to achieve during his presidency, but morphed into a fund-raising machine of its own.

Finally, the party chairmanship has become a part-time sinecure for politicians on their way up or down, not a full-time position for a professional organizer. In 2011, Tim Kaine (who subsequently became Hillary Clinton's running mate in the 2016 election) left the chairmanship to run, successfully, for the Senate from Virginia.

The chair then went to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, a Florida congresswoman who had co-chaired Clinton's bid for the Democratic nomination for president in 2008. This generated allegations in the 2016 race that the Democratic National Committee was siding with Clinton against Bernie Sanders – allegations substantiated by leaks of emails from the DNC.

So what we now have is a Democratic party that has been repudiated at the polls, headed by a Democratic National Committee that has become irrelevant at best, run part-time by a series of insider politicians. It has no deep or broad-based grass-roots, no capacity for mobilizing vast numbers of people to take any action other than donate money, no visibility between elections, no ongoing activism.

If it is to be relevant to the future, the Democratic party must be capable of organizing and mobilizing Americans in opposition to Donald Trump's Republican party – turning millions of people into an activist army to peacefully resist what is about to happen by providing them with daily explanations of what is occurring in Trump's administration, along with tasks that individuals and groups can do to stop or mitigate their harmful effects.

It must harness the energies and idealism of young people across the nation who were drawn to Bernie Sanders's campaign because of its promise to get big money out of politics; reverse widening inequality; turn the nation's wildly expensive and baroque healthcare complex into a single-payer system; reverse climate change; end the militarization of our police and the mass incarceration of our people and stop interminable and open-ended warfare.

And it must create a multi-racial, multi-ethnic coalition of working-class, middle-class, and poor white and black Americans and Latinos determined to wrest control of the economy back from an oligarchy of Wall Street moguls, corporate titans and billionaires who have used it for their own gain – starting with the president-elect.

That means helping working-class white people understand they've been conned by Trump into believing he's a populist, and that their economic insecurities are due to a rigged game rather than to immigrants, black people, Latinos and Muslims.

In other words, to become a credible force that wins elections and addresses what ails America, the Democratic party must no longer represent America's ruling class. It must be the voice of the dispossessed – now the majority of Americans.

The Democratic party will choose its new chair soon after the start of the year. So far the contestants include Howard Dean, a former DNC chair, Minnesota Representative Keith Ellison, Naral Pro-Choice America President Ilyse Hogue, Labor Secretary Tom Perez, former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley and South Carolina Democratic party chair Jaime Harrison.

Between now and then, there will be a fierce behind-the-scenes struggle among the handful of contenders. I don't know who will win, but I do know this: the party must transform itself from a fund-raising machine into a movement. That will be difficult, but not impossible. The times demand it. If the Democratic party fails in this mission, it will be supplanted by another organization capable of doing so.
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About author ROBERT B. REICH, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written thirteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock" and "The Work of Nations." His latest, "Beyond Outrage," is now out in paperback. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause. His new film, "Inequality for All," is now available on Netflix, iTunes, DVD, and On Demand.

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WARNING: Steve Bannon tells us: "Darkness is Good"

Here they come marching into our lives again--the Sith of our time. Cheney told us he would take us to the "Dark Side," and he was true to his word.  This new Tea Party Republican snake Bannon is telling us "Darkness is good,"  and is comparing the Trump presidency to Cheney, Darth Vader and...SATAN." (Evangelistic Christians, how do you feel about this descriptive comparison in the man you have now helped bring to the most powerful position in the world?)  Bannon, Trump's new chief strategist and senior counselor, feels no need to hide their evil intent. We should listen to what he is saying. He is proudly telling us what the Trump administration will be about: a power-driven, evil regime sweeping the land and taking us back to the Dark Ages.  

Anyone remember Germany in the '30s and '40s?  You have been warned.

Washington (CNN)Steve Bannon has no regrets.

The ex-Breitbart executive, who serves as Trump's chief strategist for the new administration, told The Hollywood Reporter that "darkness is good."

"Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That's power. It only helps us when they (liberals) get it wrong. When they're blind to who we are and what we're doing," he said in an interview published Friday, his first outside of Breitbart since the election.

Briebart News, which Bannon has been associated with since its start in 2007, has been vehemently pro-Trump throughout his presidential campaign, and is also known for pushing nationalist policy positions, as well as conspiracy theories, and has been criticized as being racist, sexist and anti-Semitic.

The interview largely didn't address Bannon's previous controversies, though he denied being a "white nationalist."  "I'm a nationalist. I'm an economic nationalist," he said in the interview. 

RELATED: Donald Trump settles Trump University lawsuits

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Trump Supporters Aren't Done with Sending a Message to Washingon

Trump supporters don't yet realize they've been horrendously snookered.  Just like the naive people who signed up for Trump University courses and were scammed by the sociopathic President-elect, the Trump voters are already being scammed as Trump installs a team that will increase wealth and power for the elite, increase racism and bigotry, and pull out the rug from under the people who most need help (and were begging him for it)--the middle class and poor.

By his actions and from his own mouth, Trump told us all that he is a con-man, a sexual predator and a liar. This dastardly man warned us with his own past behavior that he is a poisonous snake in the grass.  Yet his voters still trusted the snake who told them he is a snake.  They should not be surprised when he strikes out and bites them, our country and the world, infecting us with his toxic poison, causing deadly consequences for all.

But it is guaranteed that they will be surprised, because they're slow learners. Proof of that statement: many of them still defend Cheney/Bush.  As the following article asks them: How long before you rally again, take to the streets, and be part of sending a message to Trump's Washington establishment?

Personally, I think it will be a long time before Trump voters of the Tea Party variety will ever admit they were wrong. Like their new leader, they've proven over and over again that they are unwilling to take responsibility for their actions. They are easily manipulated to vote against their own interests, and they continually point fingers everywhere but at themselves when their chosen leaders take them and our country in wrong and perilous directions.

This time around, the consequences imperil not only our country, but the entire planet.  With Trump ignoring climate change for the length of his administration, the whole world is being held hostage as the U.S. President denies it as a Chinese hoax.  

EXCERPT:

...Trump's "major government program" message appears to have been severely garbled in transmission, which is a gentler way of putting the naked truth: Trump was almost certainly lying his ass off. Continues Krugman:

The transition team's point man on Social Security is a longtime advocate of privatization, and all indications are that the incoming administration is getting ready to kill Medicare, replacing it with vouchers that can be applied to the purchase of private insurance.

In Trump's defense, I should back up a bit. He wasn't really lying his ass off; as the perfect sociopath, he has no betray-able core. What sounded very good to his ralliers sounds doubleplusungood to the Republican establishment on which he now depends, so to hell with the cheering ralliers.

Most voters knew this was the @realDonaldTrump, and so they voted against him. They knew that Trump would only do that which benefited Trump, which, turns out, is that which will most screw his white working-class supporters -- to whom my only question now is, How long before you rally again, take to the streets, and be part of sending a message to Trump's Washington establishment?

Trump's supporters aren't done with sending a message to Washington

by P.M. Carpenter | November 18, 2016 - 9:26am

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The Washington Post is running readers' responses to the question, What on earth possessed you to shed all rationality and vote for Donald J. Trump? The submissions are many, with one in particular summarizing the general sentiment expressed throughout: "He was an outsider," "he spoke truth about political correctness," and "he is not a Clinton." Most telling is the reader's final remark: "Why not be part of sending a message to Washington?"

The question itself is a summary of the reader's overall sentiment. Wanted: A rhetorical renegade and outsider ("not a Clinton"), both of which, by definition, would send a message to the Washington establishment. Inherent in the reader's message-sending was, of course, the reader's knowledge of what message was being sent. And from where, or rather whom, did this knowledge come? Naturally, incestuously, from Donald Trump himself.

Thus Trump would be the reader's conduit by which a message is sent, said message being Trump's message. His "message" was multifaceted and routinely incoherent; nonetheless there were some messages that were quite explicit. And one of them, notes Paul Krugman, was this:

During the campaign, Donald Trump often promised to be a different kind of Republican, one who would represent the interests of working-class voters who depend on major government programs. "I'm not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I'm not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid," he declared.

The message-sending reader is now learning, however, that Trump's "major government program" message appears to have been severely garbled in transmission, which is a gentler way of putting the naked truth: Trump was almost certainly lying his ass off. Continues Krugman:

The transition team's point man on Social Security is a longtime advocate of privatization, and all indications are that the incoming administration is getting ready to kill Medicare, replacing it with vouchers that can be applied to the purchase of private insurance.

In Trump's defense, I should back up a bit. He wasn't really lying his ass off; as the perfect sociopath, he has no betray-able core. What sounded very good to his ralliers sounds doubleplusungood to the Republican establishment on which he now depends, so to hell with the cheering ralliers.

Most voters knew this was the @realDonaldTrump, and so they voted against him. They knew that Trump would only do that which benefited Trump, which, turns out, is that which will most screw his white working-class supporters -- to whom my only question now is, How long before you rally again, take to the streets, and be part of sending a message to Trump's Washington establishment?

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If you missed Bernie's speech about Trump today, you can still see it online

http://heavy.com/news/2016/11/bernie-sanders-trump-speech-full-video-hold-accountable-to-promises-stop-racism-rescind-bannon-watch-online/

FEEL THE BERN!  JOIN "OUR REVOLUTION"!!!!  We are holding Trump to his promises to help the middle class and poor!  And we are insisting that he address Climate Change!

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West Virginia official on leave after racist Michelle Obama post

I am saddened and ashamed of living in the same country with this kind of consciousness.  I  received many e-mail cartoons of this racist type from right wingers during the Obama years, which just served to make me aware of the ignorance that propels such thinking.   It's heartbreaking to discover that even people you are close to --  friends or relatives -- can actually think this way.   And ironic that they would rather see as First Lady a woman who posed nude for a men's magazine than a REAL "classy, beautiful, dignified" black woman in the White House.  That we have not yet risen above this LOW level of bigotry in our country is so disappointing, it makes me want to cry....  

But fortunately we have an intelligent woman, the present First Lady, to lead us in the right direction.  As Michelle Obama says, "When they go low, we go high."  And the Obamas have always gone high, role-modeling to the low-consciousness people among us what higher consciousness looks like.  Unfortunately, these low people have shown they are too ignorant to understand and too stupid to change.  After giving us Cheney/Bush and the 8 nightmarish years of that administration, they have now given us Trump -- they couldn't have gone much lower than that.  We're in demagogue territory now, and can see how the same thing happened in Germany in the '30s and '40s of the 20th century.   Some lessons are never learned and will be repeated over and over until they are.  I pray we will not have to experience the depths of hatred, cruelty and ignorance of that period of history all over again.   Yet, the consciousness of Trump and the lackeys who surround him  are of the same ilk as the racist bigots and white supremacist "purists" of that period.  ...Our country is heading in the wrong direction.  Woe is us.

West Virginia official on leave after racist Michelle Obama post

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Last Updated Nov 15, 2016 11:40 AM EST

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - A local West Virginia official said she has been placed on leave after she made a racist post on Facebook about first lady Michelle Obama.

Clay County Development Corp. director Pamela Ramsey Taylor made the post following Republican Donald Trump's election as president, saying: "It will be refreshing to have a classy, beautiful, dignified First Lady in the White House. I'm tired of seeing a Ape in heels."

Clay Mayor Beverly Whaling responded: "Just made my day Pam."

Taylor told WCHS-TV on Monday night that she was put on leave.

Mayor Whaling apologized for her role in the incident on Tuesday, saying her comment wasn't intended to be racist. Whaling said in a statement sent to news media that she was referencing the change in the White House. She says she isn't racist.

Clay's town council planned to discuss the issue at a previously scheduled meeting Tuesday evening.

The post, first reported by WSAZ-TV, has caused a backlash and prompted calls for Taylor and Mayor Whaling to be fired. The post was shared hundreds of times on social media before it was deleted. The Facebook pages of Taylor and Whaling couldn't be found Monday.

The nonprofit Clay County Development Corp. provides services to elderly and low-income residents in Clay County. It is funded through state and federal grants and local fees. It is not affiliated with the town of Clay, which is about 50 miles east of Charleston.

Owens Brown, director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's West Virginia chapter, is among those calling for the removal of both women.

"I feel so it's unfortunate that people still have these racist undertones," Brown said. "Unfortunately, this is a reality that we are dealing with in America today. There's no place for these types of attitudes in our state."

African-Americans make up about 4 percent of West Virginia's 1.8 million residents, according to the U.S. Census.

About 77 percent of Clay County residents supported Trump in the Nov. 8 election. In 2012, President Barack Obama received 31 percent of the county vote when Republican Mitt Romney easily carried the state.

Last week in Kentucky, Republican Dan Johnson defeated incumbent Democrat Linda Belcher in Bullitt County in a race for the state House of Representatives despite a series of Facebook posts that depicted President Barack Obama and his wife as monkeys. Republican officials, including potential new House Speaker Jeff Hoover, had called on Johnson to drop out of the race. But Hoover declared last week that Johnson would be "welcome in our caucus."

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Now we know: Trump IS exactly the Ugly Man he showed us he was

For 17 months he showed us who he was, and now he's flagrantly showing us again. He is the @realDonaldTrump — a bottomless abomination of a small, pernicious, utterly clueless man.
Time's up. Trump is the @realDonaldTrump.

by P.M. Carpenter | November 15, 2016

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Of all the political mysteries swirling these days, the most mysterious has got to be that community of wise old men who tell us that we must wait to see who the "real Donald Trump" is.

I do not count President Obama among them, who is taking heat from the left for having been so gracious in his press conference yesterday. Obama's rhetorical forbearance was as it should have been; it is not the sitting president's job to further poison the incoming president's sewer. In fact I was rather surprised that Obama went as far as he did, commenting that "There are going to be certain elements of [Trump's] temperament that will not serve him well unless he recognizes them and corrects them." Only abject fools, who appear to constitute 47.3 percent of the American electorate, would fail to comprehend the president's muted observation that Donald J. Trump is a reckless imbecile.

Other wise old men, in both politics and the media, are however furiously engaged in a Trump Normalization Project. Give the man time, they say; let's see how he and his 17 months of naked obscenities shake out. Perhaps he'll rule as a sober, cautious, thoughtful chief executive. The enormity of his new job may temper his many-sided debaucheries.

Well, we've now had a week of the president-elect, and the real Donald Trump has proven himself the @realDonaldTrump. Irrelevant is whether his appointment of Steve Bannon survives the almost universal outrage it has met. The fact will remain: Trump was feckless and careless enough to announce a vicious misogynist and virtual neoNazi as his closest adviser.

Elsewhere, reports the Times, "People with knowledge of [Trump's hiring] process described a series of chaotic discussions." At the helm is a grossly incompetent executive who managed to screw inventors and countless employees as he somehow sank more than one gambling house, the only business on earth in which it is statistically impossible to lose. Such gross and, evidently, perpetual incompetence-cum-choas will soon be in charge of two million federal employees and the world's most powerful military machine. And the normalizing wise old men can't seem to see that the past is incontestable prologue.

Amidst all the "deliberative" chaos, can the factual horror of Steve Bannon be surpassed? Trump is trying this best. Under consideration for secretary of state is none other than that senile paranoid of malevolent gibberish, Rudy Giuliani. This dreadful little blatherskite could well be America's next ambassador to the world. If not Rudy, perhaps John Bolton, a jingoistic jackanapes who has never met a potential war he didn't like.

As the nation's chief law enforcement officer? Trump is pondering Sen. Jeff Sessions, an overt racist who couldn't even pass his preliminary examinations for a federal judgeship.

Thus the ineffable mystery of assorted wise old men who foolishly advise Americans to be patient. Who knows, they say, Trump as president may yet reverse a half-century of vast incompetence, rash misjudgments, pathological mendacity, Bernie Madoff con artistry and other miscellaneous demolitions of human decency. To such foolishness we can only say … For 17 months he showed us who he was, and now he's flagrantly showing us again. He is the @realDonaldTrump — a bottomless abomination of a small, pernicious, utterly clueless man.
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Congratulations, Trump Voters! Here's What You've Won!

Best essay yet on what we all have to look forward to in the next 4 years, courtesy of Trump voters:

Congratulations, Trump Voters!  Here's What You've Won!

By Jon Perr

...some of Donald Trump's fans are about to find out that many of their rewards will be things they never expected--or wanted. So, if you'll indulge me as I play game show host for a bit, Trump voters, let me tell you what you've won!

You've won a massive tax cut for the very richest people in America! That's right; President-elect Trump has promised to reward the "forgotten" men and women of America with a $6.2 trillion, 10-year tax cut that delivers over half of its windfall to the top one percent of earners. The top 0.1 percent would grab almost a quarter of the winnings and save an average of $1.2 million a year. But that's not all! Thanks to changing personal exemptions and other budget cuts, many taxpayers will see their after-tax incomes decline. That's especially true if Speaker Ryan gets his "Better Way" with Trump's tax plan. Ryan's plan to end the deductibility of state and local taxes means those of you living in high-tax/high-service blue states will get battered even more.

But your prizes don't stop there!

You've also won a bonanza for bankers and Wall Street executives. With his plans to repeal the Dodd-Frank regulations on Wall Street, eliminate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that has already saved 25 million Americans $11 billion and slash the tax rate for all businesses to 15 percent, your favorite populist says what he's not thinking. In his own personal Protocols of the Elders of Donald, Trump warned that "Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of US sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends, and her donors." Yet while Clinton was going to raise their (and her) taxes, President Trump will clean up Main Street by redirecting its unsightly cash to Wall Street.

And Trump voters, just when you thought you couldn't get any luckier, you've won a First Family that will teach America the lesson that charity begins at home. While the Trump Foundation has given virtually nothing to actual charities for years, Trump's businesses and campaign are another matter. But wait! Donald Trump may not have paid any taxes for 20 years, but now he'll be sure he and his kids pay little or none in the future. As it turns out, the Trump Organization consists of hundreds of "pass-through" partnerships or limited liability corporations, so Donald, Donald Junior, Ivanka and Eric can get in on that new 15 percent business tax rate. And if our new President is truly worth $10 billion, thanks to elimination of the estate tax his heirs could pocket $7 billion which otherwise would go to the United States Treasury. So as your son or daughter goes to the recruiting office to join President Trump's expanded military, remember that he didn't just dodge the draft. He dodged his taxes, too.

Trumpeteers, I know what you're thinking. Donald said with him as President, you'd get "sick of winning." Actually, what he meant to say was "don't get sick." That's right! You've won his "big and beautiful" Obamacare replacement plan that will take away health insurance from 22 million Americans. Whether by ending subsidies to buy coverage, rolling back the expansion of Medicaid or by allowing insurers to reinstitute some of their most dangerous and deceptive business practices, millions of people across America will have the opportunity for financial ruin and even needless death, and maybe both! Thanks to President Trump, you could be one of them, especially if you live in a red state like Arkansas or Kentucky where Obamacare had the biggest impact in dramatically reducing the ranks of the uninsured. Expanding health care coverage and lowering income inequality: What was the establishment in Washington thinking?

If you're under 55 like me, you're probably saying to yourself, "thank God for Medicare." Now you'll be able to thank the Trump White House and the Republican Congress for ending Medicare as we know it. I know, I know: Donald Trump repeatedly promised, "We are not going to cut Social Security. We are not going to cut Medicare." But Speaker Paul Ryan and the 2016 GOP platform didn't. Instead, Ryan's House GOP budgets and his 2016 "Better Way" plan raise the retirement age while giving you what the Democrat Party calls a "voucher" (it's a "premium support," lefties) to buy your own health insurance when you hit 65. You'll just take your subsidy, go to the exchange and select from the public option or a range of private insurance plans. (If you're like me, you might be thinking, "Wait a minute. Subsidies, a public option, exchanges, navigators, federal risk corridors...that sounds like Obamacare. Well, stop thinking that. Those things are for shafting Medicare recipients by shifting health care costs onto future seniors like you and me, not to help youngsters under 65 to get insurance.)

Gosh, this Medicare privatization is complicated. You're doubtless wondering, "how can I put this knowledge to work for me?" By practicing with your brand new privatized Social Security scheme! Your new red state friends in Congress are going to send President Trump a Better Way to keep Social Security afloat. Instead of simply raising the $118,000 salary cap for payroll taxes that would keep America's retirement program in the black for 75 years, Speaker Ryan and company will ask Donald for a new and improved retirement age and a plan "that uses power of markets to create wealth and to help secure the future of our Social Security system." As then-Rep. Ryan explained it in 2010, we just need to take trillions of dollars from today's Social Security Trust Fund and offer "the option of investing over one-third of their current Social Security taxes into personal retirement accounts." What could possibly go wrong with Wall Street managing your retirement savings?

Women for Trump, your new President hasn't forgotten you. While #CrookedHillary won the women's vote, Donald Trump doesn't want you to worry your pretty little head about all this complicated health care stuff. (Having dinner ready on time is another matter.) That's why you will soon win the complete loss of your reproductive rights. Any of Donald's promised picks to the Supreme Court will not only ensure the reversal of Roe v. Wade, but sweep away the "undue burden" standard and the "health of the mother" exception Paul Ryan once described as "so wide you could drive a Mack truck through it." Vice President-elect Mike Pence will be there not just to help you eliminate federal funding for Planned Parenthood, but to stop "Big Abortion" by also ending the 46-year-old Title X program that provides contraception, cancer screening, STD testing and other services that millions of American women depend on each year. And when it comes to bans on telemedicine and medicine-based abortions (now half of all procedures), prohibitions on offering or even informing women about pre-natal genetic testing and mandatory invasive ultrasounds, Donald Trump stands ready to grab America's women by their p**sies.

Speaking of p**sies, Trump fans, Barack Obama. That's why you've won a President who will "bomb the shit" out of ISIS even as he refuses to put U.S. troops on the ground in Syria or Iraq. After eight long years without it, you've earned a President who isn't afraid to waterboard terror detainees and "much worse." By pledging to kill the families of suspected terrorists, The Donald will bring you American war crimes you can count on. It's all part of his plan to defeat ISIS, the one that "my top generals" will have "30 days to submit to the Oval Office." (It better be a good one, too. Only Donald Trump has had the courage to declare "I know more about ISIS than our generals, believe me" and call them "embarrassing to our country.") And if you don't like the breakthrough nuclear agreement with Iran, you're in luck again. President Trump wants to tear it up.

Who among us hasn't thought at one time or another, "Why can't we use nuclear weapons?" We need a man in the White House who knows that the "nuclear triad" is when a dude has an affair with a woman and her two daughters. That's why your new President of the United States will give you more of what you want. Let Saudi Arabia deal with Iran with its own nuclear arsenal. Let Japan and South Korea handle China and North Korea. What's a little proliferation among friends?

But all of this has been lost on President Obama. He's not just weak, but dangerously reckless when it comes to the man who should be America's best friend, Vladimir Putin. That's why you've won as your new President a man who has both met and not met Putin, and knows that Russia is about to move into Ukraine, into which it has already moved. That's why Trump wants to roll back U.S. sanctions on Russia over its Ukrainian intervention, recognize its annexation of Crimea and renounce America's Article 5 mutual defense guarantees to our cheapskate NATO allies in Eastern Europe like Estonia. President-elect Trump knows that to stand up to Vladimir Putin, you have to stand with him. Together, we can #MakeGreaterRussiaAgain.

Amigos de Trump (just kidding!), your biggest victory is about an issue that no one talked about during the campaign. Thanks to accelerating global climate change, our planet is facing a point of no return past which ecological devastation and humanitarian chaos make us an endangered species. But meeting American commitments under the Paris climate accord is an expensive, difficult and long process. Which is why Donald Trump has already eliminated the problem for you. "The concept of global warming," Trump decreed four years ago, "was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive." To ensure that the U.S. is actually uncompetitive in the 21st century renewable energy economy, President-elect Trump's energy plan ends subsidies for wind and solar power while doubling-down on fossil fuels with expanded coal, oil and natural gas production. Work is already underway, as President-elect Trump has picked noted climate change eraser Myron Ebell to lead the EPA transition and reassure Americans that rising oceans and temperatures are "nothing to worry about." And coal miners, low natural gas prices may have gutted your industry, but under President Trump your jobs are coming back.* (*Provided you don't mind moving to another state and working as something other than a coal miner.)

And Trump voters, you are in line to receive bonus prizes, all courtesy of Donald Trump's crusade to roll back President Obama's tidal wave of regulations. In this, he'll doubtless be aided by Supreme Court picks who will represent more than just Antonin Scalia's reanimated corpse back on the bench. By striking down eight decades of Commerce Clause jurisprudence, the Trump-filled SCOTUS will undermine the legal framework for the federal government since the New Deal. The 14th Amendment's due process and equal protection guarantees may no longer apply to women, LGBT Americans or African-Americans, but certainly will to corporations' "right to contract." Donald Trump will make America great again, just like it was when the Supreme Court decided Lochner v New York in 1905. You're going love reading the decision, just like you'll love the dirty air, poisoned water, rancid food, epidemic of workplace accidents and so much more!

As a candidate, Donald Trump promised more than once he would become "the greatest jobs president that God ever created." But he was being too modest. In President-elect Trump, you've won an economic and budgetary magician. After all, while no President since Democrats John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson has averaged 4 percent annual economic growth and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office forecast only 1.9 percent for the next decade, Donald Trump has assured us we will have "tremendous" GDP growth as high as 6 percent. At the same time, Trump has pledged to simultaneously increase defense spending, leave Social Security and Medicare untouched and deliver his $6.2 trillion tax cut while eliminating the entire national debt "I would say over a period of eight years." It's like he's going to give Uncle Sam a Trump-branded Sham Wow to wipe up roughly $31 trillion dollars of red ink by January 20, 2025. (That $31 trillion consists of the current $19.3 trillion national debt, plus $6.7 trillion more the CBO projects between 2017 and 2024 to which about $5 trillion in extra deficits Trump's proposed budgets will produce.) But Jon, I'm sure you're asking yourself, how can President Trump possibly cut $31 trillion (or 82 percent) from $38 trillion in total federal spending without repeatedly raising the debt ceiling, defaulting on the national debt and/or triggering the worst U.S. and worldwide economic cataclysm since the Great Depression?

The answer is simple. No ordinary President of the United States could. But Donald Trump is no ordinary President. He is, as he humbly acknowledged, "the king of debt." And like a 21st century alchemist, he can turn bullsh*t into gold. (If you have any doubt on that point, see Trump University, Trump Mortgage, Trump Water, Trump Magazine, Trump Airways, Trump Taj Mahal Casino...)

Trump supporters, you're the real winners. Big league. Thanks to President Trump and the Republican Congress, your church will be able to engage in political activity and keep its tax-free status. With his Court and a national "Right to Work" law, your pesky unions won't be able to bother you for dues or maybe even exist at all. And Donald Trump will "drain the swamp" and ethical morass the do-gooder Clinton Foundation purportedly posed by bringing his own fetid lake with him. Through the amazing grace of his own children, the blind trust of the Trump Organization will see. President-elect Trump may owe $100 million to Deutsche Bank, his lender of first and last resort, but that's no reason to worry about his potential conflict of interest over its current conflict with federal regulators. Only a paranoid like Newsweek's Kurt Eichenwald would worry that given the Trump Organization's "deep ties to global financiers, foreign politicians and even criminals...If Trump moves into the White House and his family continues to receive any benefit from the company, during or even after his presidency, almost every foreign policy decision he makes will raise serious conflicts of interest and ethical quagmires." Take that, swamp!

Back in 2007, former Vice President Al Gore wrote a book titled, The Assault on Reason. In that jeremiad, Gore--who certainly knew something about losing close elections distorted by media-manufactured narratives--warned about the crippled state of American political discourse and U.S. democracy itself:

What happened to our country...Why do reason, logic and truth seem to play a sharply diminished role in the way America now makes important decisions?

We have checks and balances. We are a nation of laws. We have free speech. We have a free press. Have they all failed us? Why has America's public discourse become less focused and clear, less reasoned? Faith in the power of reason - the belief that free citizens can govern themselves wisely and fairly by resorting to logical debate on the basis of the best evidence available, instead of raw power - remains the central premise of American democracy. This premise is now under assault.

Under assault, Gore lamented, because "the 'well-informed citizenry' is in danger of becoming the 'well-amused audience.'"

Nine years later, we have the election of 2016 which bore less resemblance to Founding Father's vision of our democratic process in action than to the latest season of Survivor: America. Which, after this week's vote, seems apt. After all, we're being told the big winner this year, as in the first season of Survivor, was an angry, middle-aged white guy. But while Richard Hatch won $1,000,000, ultimately he didn't end up with what he wanted or needed.

He went to prison for tax evasion.

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Cenk Uygur to Hillary Clinton Dems: BE GONE!

I'm With Cenk!!!!  Hillary demanded her "turn" and denied the Bernie supporters their candidate who would have won against the GOP as the real--and sane--candidate of Change. With global warming not even being addressed by the Trump administration, we will have to make sure that Dems win the 2018 midterms.  SANE change must occur in our country if our planet is to survive.  Sane Republicans (only a few of them left now) are horrified, too.  Along with devastated Democrats, they recognize that with Trump in the White House, we have lost our leadership role in the world.  The U.S. "exceptionalism" is gone--along with respect for America. We are now seen as crazy--and deservedly so.  If we are ever to regain the respect of other countries and a path back to being seen as Leader of the Free World, Progressives need to be in charge of the Democratic Party from now on!

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/11/14/cenk_uygur_to_clinton_staffers_be_gone_from_the_democratic_party.html

The Young Turks' host Cenk Uygur issued an ultimatum Sunday to the Hillary Clinton supporters in the Democratic National Committee after reading this article in The Hill over the weekend: Shattered dreams in Clintonworld

"Be gone," he tells them. "You guys want to work in the private sector anyway. Go get those jobs. Go get rich. Okay? Just leave us alone."

He continued: "Sorry, you're not getting the wheel again after driving into the ditch... We're going to take the wheel and drive it in a progressive direction. A direction the American people actually want. Get out of the way."

CENK UYGUR: In that article, they were looking forward to their 'gilded future,' God damn it, that is exactly the problem. While those guys were scheming about their gilded future, they didn't give a damn about the Democratic party. They didn't care about progressives, they didn't care about the country. So, understand why they opposed Bernie so much. Is it because they genuinely didn't think he was as good a candidate as Hillary Clinton?

It was a quarter that, because they're old... But the main reason is Bernie wouldn't have given them that "gilded future." They wouldn't have gotten all those jobs, they wouldn't have gotten to measure the drapes.

So they would have been against Bernie just as much as they would have been against Trump, because they wouldn't have gotten the beloved jobs they hoped for.

That is why today, they are busy setting the narrative that, 'Oh no, it wasn't us. It was the Bernie guys. It was Comey. It was sexism. It was everybody else. Next time, please hire us again to make the same mistakes.' Because for them, it is not a mistake, it is their livelihood...

So listen guys, all of you who worked for Hillary.

Be gone. Poof. Be gone.

You want to hate me for it? You want to say I'm pouring salt in your wounds? You want to say I'm trying to manipulate the American people? Yeah, I'm going to fight back.

What I mean by 'Be Gone,' is you guys want to work in the private sector anyway. Go get those jobs. Go get rich. Okay? Just leave us alone.

The Democratic Party has to be run by progressives... because we can't let another monster like Donald Trump win again... even if we seem impolite in our fight back against him. Sorry.

...

CENK UYGUR: These Hillary supporters just drove a car into a giant ditch named Trump. They let Trump win. They let him become the most powerful man on Earth. Sorry, you're not getting the wheel again after driving into the ditch. You can use any lame excuse you want, but we're not going to give you the wheel again. From now on we're going to go in a progressive direction. I know that you loved in the past to intimidate, and use the media to say that anybody who opposes [you] is not opposing [you] because of ideas and ideology, but because they have some bad intention. You don't control the media anymore, so sad day for you. We're going to take the wheel and drive it in a progressive direction. A direction the American people actually want. Get out of the way."

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Robert Reich: Our liberal rage will be a resistance army to contain Trump poison

How Robert Reich plans to turn liberal rage into a 'resistance army' to contain Trump's 'poison'

By David Ferguson

In a post-election interview with Democracy for America, Congresswoman-elect Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, and Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) discussed the victory of former reality TV star Donald Trump in the presidential election.

Reich said that anger is going to be a valuable tool for people opposed to President-elect Trump.

"I would not be sincere if I did not talk about the despair and the fear I certainly felt Tuesday," Reich said. But now that fear and sadness has turned to anger.

"Anger is not bad," he said. "The angrier we are and the more activated and directional — the more we can channel that anger into real constructive change and blocking things that are bad, so much the better."

"We do have to fight bigotry in all its forms," Reich said. "Any kind of bigotry that has been unleashed by this campaign, by Donald Trump, giving permission to that kind of bigotry is something we've got to be alert to and we've got to fight."

We have to make sure, he said, "that kind of poison is limited and contained."

Later in the interview, Reich cautioned that progressives may not grasp yet the magnitude "of what we are up against."

"I think that Donald Trump and the Trump administration are going to be changing the rules," he said, with regards to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Departments of Health and Human Services, Education, Defense and more.

Reich called for a "resistance army" all across the country to pressure politicians not to roll back the rules and regulations that hold our system of checks and balances in place.

"He is going to have the reins of the entire federal government," Reich warned. "We need a Democratic Party that is going to alert people and mobilize people continuously."

"We have not seen this degree of potential harm," he said of the Trump presidency.

Listen to the interview at: http://www.rawstory.com/2016/11/how-robert-reich-plans-to-turn-liberal-rage-into-a-resistance-army-to-contain-trumps-poison/

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Watch the video on this site! Would you dare to question who you really are?

WOULD YOU DARE TO QUESTION WHO YOU REALLY ARE?  A true eye-opener as to our nationalities/origins!!!

http://www.momondo.com/letsopenourworld/

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WELL STATED! From the New Yorker: Truth about Our American Tragedy

AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY

 

By David Remnick

 , The New Yorker NOVEMBER 9, 2016

The electorate has, in its plurality, decided to live in Trump's world.SOURCE PHOTOGRAPH BY JOE RAEDLE / GETTY

The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the Constitution, and a triumph for the forces, at home and abroad, of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism. Trump's shocking victory, his ascension to the Presidency, is a sickening event in the history of the United States and liberal democracy. On January 20, 2017, we will bid farewell to the first African-American President—a man of integrity, dignity, and generous spirit—and witness the inauguration of a con who did little to spurn endorsement by forces of xenophobia and white supremacy. It is impossible to react to this moment with anything less than revulsion and profound anxiety.

There are, inevitably, miseries to come: an increasingly reactionary Supreme Court; an emboldened right-wing Congress; a President whose disdain for women and minorities, civil liberties and scientific fact, to say nothing of simple decency, has been repeatedly demonstrated. Trump is vulgarity unbounded, a knowledge-free national leader who will not only set markets tumbling but will strike fear into the hearts of the vulnerable, the weak, and, above all, the many varieties of Other whom he has so deeply insulted. The African-American Other. The Hispanic Other. The female Other. The Jewish and Muslim Other. The most hopeful way to look at this grievous event—and it's a stretch—is that this election and the years to follow will be a test of the strength, or the fragility, of American institutions. It will be a test of our seriousness and resolve.

Early on Election Day, the polls held out cause for concern, but they provided sufficiently promising news for Democrats in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, and even Florida that there was every reason to think about celebrating the fulfillment of Seneca Falls, the election of the first woman to the White House. Potential victories in states like Georgia disappeared, little more than a week ago, with the F.B.I. director's heedless and damaging letter to Congress about reopening his investigation and the reappearance of damaging buzzwords like "e-mails," "Anthony Weiner," and "fifteen-year-old girl." But the odds were still with Hillary Clinton.

All along, Trump seemed like a twisted caricature of every rotten reflex of the radical right. That he has prevailed, that he has won this election, is a crushing blow to the spirit; it is an event that will likely cast the country into a period of economic, political, and social uncertainty that we cannot yet imagine. That the electorate has, in its plurality, decided to live in Trump's world of vanity, hate, arrogance, untruth, and recklessness, his disdain for democratic norms, is a fact that will lead, inevitably, to all manner of national decline and suffering.

In the coming days, commentators will attempt to normalize this event. They will try to soothe their readers and viewers with thoughts about the "innate wisdom" and "essential decency" of the American people. They will downplay the virulence of the nationalism displayed, the cruel decision to elevate a man who rides in a gold-plated airliner but who has staked his claim with the populist rhetoric of blood and soil. George Orwell, the most fearless of commentators, was right to point out that public opinion is no more innately wise than humans are innately kind. People can behave foolishly, recklessly, self-destructively in the aggregate just as they can individually. Sometimes all they require is a leader of cunning, a demagogue who reads the waves of resentment and rides them to a popular victory. "The point is that the relative freedom which we enjoy depends of public opinion," Orwell wrote in his essay "Freedom of the Park." "The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them."

Trump ran his campaign sensing the feeling of dispossession and anxiety among millions of voters—white voters, in the main. And many of those voters—not all, but many—followed Trump because they saw that this slick performer, once a relative cipher when it came to politics, a marginal self-promoting buffoon in the jokescape of eighties and nineties New York, was more than willing to assume their resentments, their fury, their sense of a new world that conspired against their interests. That he was a billionaire of low repute did not dissuade them any more than pro-Brexit voters in Britain were dissuaded by the cynicism of Boris Johnson and so many others. The Democratic electorate might have taken comfort in the fact that the nation had recovered substantially, if unevenly, from the Great Recession in many ways—unemployment is down to 4.9 per cent—but it led them, it led us, to grossly underestimate reality. The Democratic electorate also believed that, with the election of an African-American President and the rise of marriage equality and other such markers, the culture wars were coming to a close. Trump began his campaign declaring Mexican immigrants to be "rapists"; he closed it with an anti-Semitic ad evoking "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion"; his own behavior made a mockery of the dignity of women and women's bodies. And, when criticized for any of it, he batted it all away as "political correctness." Surely such a cruel and retrograde figure could succeed among some voters, but how could he win? Surely, Breitbart News, a site of vile conspiracies, could not become for millions a source of news and mainstream opinion. And yet Trump, who may have set out on his campaign merely as a branding exercise, sooner or later recognized that he could embody and manipulate these dark forces. The fact that "traditional" Republicans, from George H. W. Bush to Mitt Romney, announced their distaste for Trump only seemed to deepen his emotional support.

The commentators, in their attempt to normalize this tragedy, will also find ways to discount the bumbling and destructive behavior of the F.B.I., the malign interference of Russian intelligence, the free pass—the hours of uninterrupted, unmediated coverage of his rallies—provided to Trump by cable television, particularly in the early months of his campaign. We will be asked to count on the stability of American institutions, the tendency of even the most radical politicians to rein themselves in when admitted to office. Liberals will be admonished as smug, disconnected from suffering, as if so many Democratic voters were unacquainted with poverty, struggle, and misfortune. There is no reason to believe this palaver. There is no reason to believe that Trump and his band of associates—Chris Christie, Rudolph Giuliani, Mike Pence, and, yes, Paul Ryan—are in any mood to govern as Republicans within the traditional boundaries of decency. Trump was not elected on a platform of decency, fairness, moderation, compromise, and the rule of law; he was elected, in the main, on a platform of resentment. Fascism is not our future—it cannot be; we cannot allow it to be so—but this is surely the way fascism can begin.

Hillary Clinton was a flawed candidate but a resilient, intelligent, and competent leader, who never overcame her image among millions of voters as untrustworthy and entitled. Some of this was the result of her ingrown instinct for suspicion, developed over the years after one bogus "scandal" after another. And yet, somehow, no matter how long and committed her earnest public service, she was less trusted than Trump, a flim-flam man who cheated his customers, investors, and contractors; a hollow man whose countless statements and behavior reflect a human being of dismal qualities—greedy, mendacious, and bigoted. His level of egotism is rarely exhibited outside of a clinical environment.

For eight years, the country has lived with Barack Obama as its President. Too often, we tried to diminish the racism and resentment that bubbled under the cyber-surface. But the information loop had been shattered. On Facebook, articles in the traditional, fact-based press look the same as articles from the conspiratorial alt-right media. Spokesmen for the unspeakable now have access to huge audiences. This was the cauldron, with so much misogynistic language, that helped to demean and destroy Clinton. The alt-right press was the purveyor of constant lies, propaganda, and conspiracy theories that Trump used as the oxygen of his campaign. Steve Bannon, a pivotal figure at Breitbart, was his propagandist and campaign manager.

It is all a dismal picture. Late last night, as the results were coming in from the last states, a friend called me full of sadness, full of anxiety about conflict, about war. Why not leave the country? But despair is no answer. To combat authoritarianism, to call out lies, to struggle honorably and fiercely in the name of American ideals—that is what is left to do. That is all there is to do.

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