THE RESISTANCE
“I listened as they called my President a Muslim.
I listened as they called him and his family a pack of monkeys.
I listened as they said he wasn’t born here.
I watched as they blocked every single path to progress that they could.
I saw the pictures of him as Hitler.
I watched them shut down the government and hurt the entire nation twice.
I watched them turn their backs on every opportunity to open worthwhile dialog.
I watched them say that they would not even listen to any choice for Supreme Court no matter who the nominee was.
I listened as they openly said that they will oppose him at every turn.
I watched as they did just that.
I listened.
I watched.
I paid attention.Now, I’m being called on to be tolerant.
To move forward.
To denounce protesters.
To “Get over it.”
To accept this…
I will not.
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First Press Briefing: the press gets taken to the woodshed
President Trump used his first full day in office to wage war on the media, accusing news organizations of lying about the size of his inauguration crowd as Saturday’s huge protests served notice that a vocal and resolute opposition would be a hallmark of his presidency.
With Americans taking to the streets in red and blue states alike to emphatically decry a president they consider reprehensible and, even, illegitimate, Trump visited the Central Intelligence Agency for a stream-of-consciousness airing of grievances — including against journalists, whom he called “the most dishonest human beings on Earth.”
Scott Pruitt: Be afraid, very afraid….
Oklahoma is 1,400 miles from the entrance of the Chesapeake Bay at Havre de Grace, Md., halfway across the country. But the distance didn’t matter to Oklahoma’s attorney general, Scott Pruitt, after the Environmental Protection Agency drew up a plan to clean the polluted bay. He tried to stop it.
Pruitt was one of 21 state attorneys general who signed an amicus brief opposing the largest cleanup of a water body in U.S. history. The brief supported a federal lawsuit filed by the American Farm Bureau Federation and the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau that claimed the EPA usurped the power of states in the watershed to regulate pollution that flows into the bay from cities and farms.
Pruitt is now President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to run the EPA, the agency that Pruitt has railed against, suing it more than a half-dozen times over regulations on clean water and clean air that he disagreed with.
How can anyone deny that the Chesapeake Bay needs to be cleaned up? Where did all the fish go? Oysters? Crabs? These ocean dwellers are slowly returning as clean up efforts continue. Does this bureaucrat think that people who rely on the Chesapeake Bay for their livelihoods don’t need jobs? There have to be fish, crabs and shellfish in order to make a living off the Bay.
People who live here in Prince William County can all do their part also to keep the Bay clean. We are part of the watershed. I don’t think for one second that our local government would do anything necessary to prevent the fouling of the Bay, unless of course the EPA ordered it to happen. In fact, I have heard the BOCS chairman moan and groan about the regulations the board must pay to comply with.
Taking it a step further, we need clean air to breath. Factory emissions must be curtailed. Why do people deny these things. Anyone who thinks burning coal is clean, has never lived around it. Anyone who thinks that burning coal is healthy has never met anyone with black lung disease. Read More
The trashing of Lauren Batchelder
About a year ago, 18-year-old college student Lauren Batchelder stood up at a political forum in New Hampshire and told Donald Trump that she didn’t think he was “a friend to women.”
The next morning, Trump fired back on Twitter — calling Batchelder an “arrogant young woman” and accusing her of being a “plant” from a rival campaign. Her phone began ringing with callers leaving threatening messages that were often sexual in nature. Her Facebook and email inboxes filled with similar messages. As her addresses circulated on social media and her photo flashed on the news, she fled home to hide.
“I didn’t really know what anyone was going to do,” said Batchelder, now 19, who has never discussed her experience with a reporter until now. “He was only going to tweet about it and that was it, but I didn’t really know what his supporters were going to do, and that to me was the scariest part.”
This is what happens when Trump targets a private citizen who publicly challenges him.
This was just the beginning of Ms. Batchelder’s problems:
The power of fear and incompetence
This video speaks for itself. Even though it was first published November 18, 2016, nothing has changed. If anything, there has been lots of crowing over a misidentified mandate (there is NO mandate), some right wing fear mongers are beginning to ratchet up playing on people’s fears.
Is some of the most recent ratcheting an attempt to scare the left into submission? Control the right and scare the left seems to be the not-so hidden agenda.
Ben Carson to head up HUD? He has never held a government post. Of course, neither has the president. While we are at it, let’s destabilize our relationship with China. I sure hope we don’t need their help with North Korea any time soon.
Throw in Retired US Army Lieutenant-General Mike Flynn as National Security advisor. Has he denounced his radical son yet? What other leaders have surrounded themselves with generals?
What Trump is doing is disgraceful, irresponsible, and unacceptable. His behavior brings a whole new meaning to bully pulpit. I can’t wait for the impeachment hearings to begin.
No one is surprised. Trump is filling our dreaded expectations, even before taking office.
Trump steps in it with China–speaks with Taiwan president
President-elect Donald Trump spoke Friday with Taiwan’s president, a major departure from decades of U.S. policy in Asia and a breach of diplomatic protocol with ramifications for the incoming president’s relations with China.
The call is the first known contact between a U.S. president or president-elect with a Taiwanese leader since before the United States broke diplomatic relations with the island in 1979. China considers Taiwan a province, and news of the official outreach by Trump is likely to infuriate the regional military and economic power.
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Trump wants to jail flag-burners, ignoring Texas v. Johnson
In the newest example of “Jesus Kellyanne can you PLEASE take his phone away?” President-elect Donald J. Trump — who will soon be sworn in as our nation’s 45th Commander-in-Chief — took to Twitter this morning for one of his more stunning admissions in quite some time.
On the table is the issue of burning the American flag, perhaps in reaction to the news that a handful of college students in Massachusetts burned a flag this week in protest to the election results. Burning the American flag is a Constitutionally protected right under the First Amendment stemming from the SCOTUS 1989 case Texas v. Johnson. The landmark case under Chief Justice William Rehnquist argued that any statute or law that criminalizes the desecration of a venerated object like the American Flag violates a person’s First Amendment privileges as outlined by the Bill of Rights.
Despite the law, our President-elect seems to have different ideas for the future of our country:
“Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag,” Trump wrote. “[I]f they do, there must be consequences – perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!” The Tweet is at least the first one in a while not to take bizarre aim at CNN, his favorite target as of late.
Someone absolutely needs to tell Trump to put away his Twitter account. He is acting like a petulant adolescent, not the president of the greatest nation in the world.
Trump has little knowledge of the law and plays to the dumbest person in the room. We might all want to punch someone in the face for flag burning or we might say we want to deport them or some other dire threat. We know we can’t but it feels good to say it. The difference is that WE are not the president, or soon-to-be president. Donald Trump is and he needs to stop acting like a teenager who is getting off on mouth-flashing.
Romney: To be or not to be…?
Many people, both Democrats and Republicans want Donald Trump to select Mitt Romney as Secretary of State. Romney is known as being dignified, knowledgeable, and a cool head, unlike some of the other suggestions.
Some Trump loyalists disavow Romney because of his harsh words before the election about Trump’s suitability to hold the office he will soon hold.
Romney also would have an easy time being confirmed by the senate.
Should Trump nominate Romney because of his statesmanship or should he stick with his loyal supporters like Giuliani or Gingrich?
New economic election discoveries
In the modern era of presidential politics, no candidate has ever won the popular vote by more than Hillary Clinton did this year, yet still managed to lose the electoral college. In that sense, 2016 was a historic split: Donald Trump won the presidency by as much as 74 electoral votes (depending on how Michigan ends up) while losing the nationwide vote to Clinton by 1.7 million votes and counting.
But there’s another divide exposed by the election, which researchers at the Brookings Institution recently discovered as they sifted the election returns. It has no bearing on the election outcome, but it tells us something important about the state of the country and its politics moving forward.
The divide is economic, and it is massive. According to the Brookings analysis, the less-than-500 counties that Clinton won nationwide combined to generate 64 percent of America’s economic activity in 2015. The more-than-2,600 counties that Trump won combined to generate 36 percent of the country’s economic activity last year.
Clinton, in other words, carried nearly two-thirds of the American economy.
So what does this data tell us? What does it tell us moving forward?
According to the WaPo:
In between those elections, U.S. economic activity has grown increasingly concentrated in large, “superstar” metro areas, such as Silicon Valley and New York.
How will Trump keep his promises to return the coal industry and jobs to areas that don’t have the money and aren’t the population centers? He has a tall order before him.
Trump demands an apology from cast of “Hamilton”
Washingtonpost.com
The cast of “Hamilton” was not going to throw away its shot.
After Friday evening’s performance, at which Vice President-elect Mike Pence was in the audience, several dozen of the Broadway musical’s cast members zeroed in on Pence during their curtain call. Brandon Victor Dixon — the actor who played Aaron Burr — stepped forth and cut through the applause.
“You know, we have a guest in the audience this evening,” he said to audience laughter. “And Vice President-elect Pence, I see you walking out, but I hope you will hear us just a few more moments. There’s nothing to boo here, ladies and gentlemen. There’s nothing to boo here. We’re all here sharing a story of love. We have a message for you, sir. We hope that you will hear us out.”
As he pulled a small piece of paper from his pocket, Dixon encouraged people to record and share what he was about to say “because this message needs to be spread far and wide.”
(see above)
Twitter exploded late Friday night with responses that cleaved into two camps: Those who cheered the cast for voicing their concerns so directly and those who found the exchange “rude.” In the latter was President-elect Donald Trump, who tweeted twice Saturday morning about Pence’s musical visit, saying that the cast had “harassed” the vice president-elect with “cameras blazing.”
The War on Women now recognized by GOP women
A growing number of prominent Republican women are worried that as members of their male-dominated party step up to defend Donald Trump against accusations of sexual assault, they are causing irreparable damage to the GOP’s deteriorating relationship with female voters.
Trump has faced questions throughout his campaign about his crass comments about women, but concern escalated this month following the release of a 2005 video in which Trump boasted that he had sexually assaulted women and subsequent allegations by 11 women that Trump had inappropriately touched or kissed them. A series of mostly male Republicans have come to Trump’s defense — dismissing the accusers as liars and, some worry, further alienating the female voters that the party desperately needs to survive.
“For next-generation professional women, the party is going to have to do something very, very drastic to change the course of where this candidate has taken us,” said Katie Packer, a deputy campaign manager for Mitt Romney in 2012. “I think the leaders in our party are going to have to aggressively reject this. Come November 9, they better be prepared to make very strong statements condemning all of Trump’s behavior.”
This division within the Republican Party comes as polls suggest the nation is on the verge of electing its first female president even as misogyny remains a part of American life and culture. Ironically, it is Trump’s candidacy rather than Hillary Clinton’s that has brought sexism to the forefront of political debate.
Finally! It’s about time the problem was seen by all women. Non-GOP women have always recognized that there was a war on women. This issue became very apparent when various issues involving reproductive rights were in the forefront. There was great denial amongst Republican males. “War on women?” they scoffed. “Nonsense!” Then numerous reasons were given to negate when we knew.
GOP women now see instance after instance of disrespect shown to women, starting with the trashing of Megyn Kelly,and on to the fat-shaming of Miss Universe. They heard the famous bus genital-grabbing remarks with their own two ears. The bad behavior has been verified by 11 women who stepped forward so far to discuss in detail, their own personal experiences with Mr. Trump. They also see men who so far have refused to denounce much of the personal behavior of the GOP candidate. These same women also see many other examples of creepy behavior far too numerous to list that just shouldn’t be acceptable in the year 2016.
Listening to leadership as well as Trump supporters minimize or deny allegations of sexism and misogyny has made GOP women nervous. It has made them realize there really is a war on women. In 2016, we shouldn’t even be having these conversations. Yet alas, we still are.
Trump’s hot mic: Is this the final straw?
WARNING! VIDEO CONTAINS GRAPHIC, VULGAR LANGUAGE!
Donald Trump bragged in vulgar terms about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women during a 2005 conversation caught on a hot microphone — saying that “when you’re a star, they let you do it” — according to a video obtained by The Washington Post.
The video captures Trump talking with Billy Bush of “Access Hollywood” on a bus with Access Hollywood written across the side. They were arriving on the set of “Days of Our Lives” to tape a segment about Trump’s upcoming cameo on the soap opera.
The tape obtained by The Post includes audio of Bush and Trump’s conversation inside the bus, as well as audio and video once they emerge from it to begin shooting the segment.
In that audio, Trump discusses a failed attempt to seduce a woman, whose full name is not given in the video.
“I moved on her, and I failed. I’ll admit it,” Trump is heard saying. It was unclear when the events he was describing took place. The tape was recorded several months after he married his third wife, Melania.
