Last Call For The European Disunion

Italian PM Matteo Renzi staked everything on a referendum to reform Italy's constitution on Sunday, and the referendum -- and Renzi's government -- have now both gone up in smoke.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi vowed to resign after suffering a crushing defeat on Sunday in a referendum on constitutional reform, tipping the euro zone's third-largest economy into political turmoil.

His decision to quit after just two and a half years in office deals a blow to the European Union, already reeling from multiple crises and struggling to overcome anti-establishment forces that have battered the Western world this year.

The euro fell to 20-month lows against the dollar, with markets worried that instability in the euro zone's third largest economy could reignite a dormant financial crisis and deal a hammer blow to Italy's fragile banking sector.

Renzi's resignation could open the door to early elections next year and to the possibility of an anti-euro party, the opposition 5-Star Movement, gaining power in the heart of the single currency. 5-Star campaigned hard for a 'No' vote.

"I take full responsibility for the defeat," Renzi said in a televised address to the nation, saying he would hand in his formal resignation to President Sergio Mattarella on Monday.

Mattarella will have to embark on a round of consultations with party leaders before naming a new prime minister -- Italy's fifth in as many years -- who will be tasked with drawing up a new electoral law.

Brexit, now Renzi out in Italy, almost certainly to be replaced by a nationalist government.  France is almost certainly next.  The bright spot in Europe right now? Austria.

Austrian voters roundly rejected on Sunday a candidate vying to become the first freely elected far-right head of state in Europe since World War Two, halting at least temporarily the wave of populism sweeping Western democracies.

The runoff vote was a litmus test, since it was a re-run of a vote held in May, before Britain voted to leave the European Union and Americans elected Donald Trump as president.

Norbert Hofer of the anti-immigration Freedom Party lost the May election by less than a percentage point, and polls had for months shown the race too close to call.

But within minutes of polls closing it was clear he had lost to former Greens leader Alexander Van der Bellen, who had put the June Brexit referendum at the center of his campaign, saying Hofer would lead Austria down the same road as Britain and warning voters not to "play with this fire".

"A red, white and red signal of hope and of positive change is being beamed from Vienna through Europe," Van der Bellen said in a victory speech, referring to the colors on Austria's flag. "I will be a pro-European president of Austria open to the world."

So there's that, but it's only a matter of time before France goes the way of the UK, and the EU falls.  They will get no help from America under Trump, as we will most likely be in the depths of a major war, major depression, or both, soon.

The Coming War On Democrats Being Allowed To Vote

On Sunday we received the clearest signal yet that the Trump administration will be running on perpetual outrage and conspiracy theories as they look to radically curtail voting rights across the country.

Vice President-elect Mike Pence defended President-elect Donald Trump's recent tweet claiming without evidence that "millions" of fraudulent votes were cast in the 2016 election.

"It's his right to express his opinion as President-elect of the United States," Pence told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos on "This Week" on Sunday morning. "He’s going to say what he believes to be true, and I know he is always going to speak in that way as president."

When pressed about whether he believes the claim is accurate, Pence said, "I think one of the things that’s refreshing about our president-elect and one of the reasons why I think he had an incredible connection with people all across this country is because he tells you what's on his mind."

"But why is it refreshing to make false statements?" Stephanopoulos said.

"Look, I don't know that that is a false statement," Pence replied.

The vice president-elect also repeatedly cited a Pew Charitable Trusts study on voter registration records. "I think the President-elect wants to call to attention to the fact there has been evidence over many years," he said.

Same thing from Trump's chief of staff, Reince Priebus.

Reince Priebus, the outgoing Republican National Committee chair, defended Donald Trump Sunday over the president-elect’s charge last week, presented without proof, that “millions” of people had voted illegally during the general election.

“Face the Nation” host John Dickerson pressed Priebus on that specific illegal vote claim, asking the incoming White House chief of staff how he handles the president-elect’s statement “when you know that that’s not true.”

“I don’t know if that’s not true, John,” Priebus said, saying that “there are estimates all over the map” on undocumented immigrants voting in election.

“But you think millions of people voted illegally?” Dickerson asked.

Priebus’ response: “It’s possible.”

When the “Face the Nation” host pushed back, saying “there is not evidence that it happened in millions of votes in California,” Priebus defended the president-elect once more.

“I think the president-elect is someone who has pushed the envelope and caused people to think in this country,” he said. “He’s not taking conventional thought -- on every single issue and has caused people to look at things that maybe they have taken for granted.”

This is the VP-elect and the President-elect's chief of staff both saying without any evidence that millions could have voted fraudulently.  The implication here is that Republicans will have to take drastic steps to eliminate the "could have" part, and at a national level.

This will be repeated until tens of millions of Americans believe it is true, so when national "voter ID" suppression laws become a reality, it will be a necessary one.

That is if we're still having elections in 2020.  Which is anyone's guess at this point.

The Next DNC Chair Up Is In The Air

I don't honestly know who the next chair of the Democratic National Committee will be, but I can tell you who it won't be: Howard Dean has been kicked to the curb already, and Rep. Keith Ellison's national career is all but over.

Keith Ellison came to Colorado seeking to cement his position as the front-runner for Democratic National Committee chairman. But the Minnesota congressman ended the week in worse shape than when it started.

Just hours after Ellison’s role as the favorite was thrown into question by a stinging condemnation of his past statements about Israel by the Anti-Defamation League — a move Ellison and his allies vigorously rebutted — former Chairman Howard Dean dropped his comeback bid and bowed out of the race, scrambling an already complicated contest.

The three remaining announced candidates for the chairmanship — Ellison, New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Raymond Buckley, and South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Jaime Harrison — spoke to state party officials from across the country for nearly two-and-a-half hours here at the Association of State Democratic Chairs meeting, exhaustively laying out their hopes for a rejuvenated party in displays that appeared to leave the DNC membership just as unsure of its next leader's identity as when it entered the room.

The result is a race that’s even more of a muddle, with the likelihood of additional candidates jumping in prior to February’s vote. Ellison himself appeared to recognize his tenuous position, and pledged in his strongest terms yet to consider giving up his House seat if he gets the chair’s role. He pleaded with attendees to keep an open mind as he insisted the DNC would be his top priority, while the other candidates — and Dean, in his pre-recorded video — insisted over and over that the decimated party needs a full-time chair.

I know "Dems in disarray!" is the obvious joke here, but it's not a joke.  There aren't any real candidates for the job at this point.  Debbie Wasserman Schultz was an unmitigated disaster. Donna Brazile lost all confidence with Clinton's defeat.  The state party chairs who are running haven't shown themselves to be exactly competent.  Honestly, South Carolina? New Hampshire?  These are early primary states who think they should be running things, not actual leaders.

It's a mess, and it's going to be a long time before the Dems can get their act together.  Which is too bad, because a united front to resist Trump is absolutely needed in order to keep the country in one piece.

Sunday Long Read: The View From Clay County

Author Brad King, a native of Clay County, Kentucky, argues that the revolt by Rust Belt white voters, particularly in coal country, really was solely economic in nature.

Let’s begin with a hypothetical.

Imagine you are in your mid-forties, you have two children, and you live in a place where there’s been no new businesses developed in the last thirty years. You live well off the beaten path, along one of myriad state routes that used to be the lifeblood of the country but now largely serve as a reminder of how forgotten you are. That lack of transportation infrastructure and cost of doing business due to regulations— oversight that you know makes your life better— discourages corporations big and small from coming into your town.

With no new businesses, increasingly you are forced to depend upon the government to provide you basic services like healthcare and unemployment insurance. You hate that, but you also have little choice. You don’t have the money — or connections — to move…somewhere else.

In each election season, you find yourself making a choice: continue receiving government help, which you know will not make your children’s life better, or forego those basic services in hopes that your town—one forgotten by the country— has the chance to create jobs that may provide you, and your children, the chance to carve out a life.

The choice each election season is the same, but the circumstances in which you live are getting worse because where you live isn’t part of the growth of the country.

So which do you choose: government help that you know will be there but that doesn’t provide a future, or the chance to maybe build something new (and knowing that if you fail, you will be worse off than you are)?

You must choose one or the other. If you decide not to choose, then you’re told you have no right to complain. And— by the way— no matter which you pick, people will chide you for being too stupid to know the right answer?

Here's the thing though: this falls apart on closer inspection.

Because if you wonder why people might vote for a political candidate that isn’t interested in social programs for Appalachia, maybe it’s because the people understand that it’s not social programs that are the problem. And if you wonder why the people may want an economy unrestrained by regulation, maybe it’s because the regulations have been set up in ways that help internal colonizers.

If we think back to the choice from the hypothetical, the idea of “self-interest” becomes something far more complex than just “vote for Medicaid because you need it” or “vote for more social programs.”

Maybe, just maybe, it’s not the people who are the problem at all.

Instead, it’s the fact that for whatever the deep-seated reasons are for the crushing poverty that has descended upon the Appalachian region, the twenty-four million residents know that what they really need is a fair chance against everyone else. And since the game has been rigged, the only way they know how to get out is to re-set all the rules.

That's weird.  You know why I think the real issue isn't economic at all?  Because the situation he's describing absolutely defines black America and has for hundreds of years, and for some odd reason black America, trapped in cities like Flint that doesn't have clean water, trapped in places like Ferguson where the city literally uses the law to run its local economy by fining residents and running debtor's prisons, and yes, just like Appalachia, trapped in places with crumbling infrastructure, terrible schools, no economic opportunity, chronic drug and mass incarceration problems and on top of that hostile police forces that treat them as the enemy and can regularly kill black Americans with impunity.

If there's anyone in this country who should want to reset all the rules it's black America.  And yet we didn't vote to burn the place down, when we're even allowed to vote because on top of everything listed above we have a political party in this country dedicated to making sure we can't vote, either.

Appalachia is tired of being forgotten?  That's why they lashed out?  How about Appalachia was tired of being treated like a bunch of ni-CLANG and decided that as bad as things are for them, at least they're not black.  They voted to reset the rules to benefit them at the direct expense of people not like them, but you notice they don't have Republicans trying to keep them from voting.

No, sorry Mr. King, your theory is garbage.  It was about the zero-sum game offered by the GOP to benefit coal country by having them help put those people in their place, and they took it.

Anything has to be better than being black in America, after all.

Last Call For Audit The Vote

Looks like Jill Stein took her recount money and went home, laughing.

Green Party-backed voters dropped a court case Saturday night that had sought to force a statewide recount of Pennsylvania’s Nov. 8 presidential election, won by Republican Donald Trump, in what Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein had framed as an effort to explore whether voting machines and systems had been hacked and the election result manipulated.

The decision came two days before a court hearing was scheduled in the case. Saturday’s court filing to withdraw the case said the Green Party-backed voters who filed the case “are regular citizens of ordinary means” and cannot afford the $1 million bond ordered by the court by 5 p.m. Monday. However, Green Party-backed efforts to force recounts and analyze election software in scattered precincts were continuing.

Stein planned to make an announcement about the Pennsylvania recount Monday outside the Trump Tower in New York.

The court case had been part of an effort spearheaded by Stein to force recounts in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, three states with a history of backing Democrats for president that were narrowly and unexpectedly won by Trump over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

A recount began Thursday in Wisconsin, while a recount could begin next week in Michigan. Trump’s victory in Pennsylvania was particularly stunning: the state’s fifth-most electoral votes are a key stepping stone to the White House, and no Republican presidential candidate had captured the state since 1988.

So unless a miracle actually finds malfeasance in Wisconsin and Michigan quickly enough to force a recount in Pennsylvania, it's over.  And even then it will be far too late.

Most — including Hillary Clinton’s campaign — expected Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein’s recount efforts in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin not to change the result in any of those states. The reality, however, was that the election results would not have changed unless the recounts shifted the states to Clinton in all of those states.

With Pennsylvania off the table, even a flip in the Michigan and Wisconsin results would still leave Trump at 280 electoral votes — 10 above the 270 necessary to become the next president.

Lawyers for the Green Party told the Associated Press that they would not be able to meet the Monday deadline for a $1 million bond that the Pennsylvania court had ordered in the case. Additionally, on Dec. 2, the court had issued an ordersuggesting skepticism as to whether the Green Party’s complaint seeking a statewide recount would succeed. That order came in the wake of the Trump campaign’s motion to dismiss the complaint.

On Saturday, the Green Party filed a motion to withdraw their statewide recount request — which the court granted in an order later Saturday — although individual precinct-based recount requests will continue, in an attempt to force an automatic statewide recount, and a lawyer familiar with ongoing efforts noted that an appeal seeking a forensic audit of the Philadelphia voting machines remains pending.

The Trump ear is inevitable, and at this point we must find a way to resist, as I said earlier today.

On Resistance In The Trump Era

Author and essayist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gives us this essential piece in the New Yorker about what it truly means to resist the normalization of the Trump era and what we must immediately start doing in order to not only fight back, but to survive the next four years.

America has always been aspirational to me. Even when I chafed at its hypocrisies, it somehow always seemed sure, a nation that knew what it was doing, refreshingly free of that anything-can-happen existential uncertainty so familiar to developing nations. But no longer. The election of Donald Trump has flattened the poetry in America’s founding philosophy: the country born from an idea of freedom is to be governed by an unstable, stubbornly uninformed, authoritarian demagogue. And in response to this there are people living in visceral fear, people anxiously trying to discern policy from bluster, and people kowtowing as though to a new king. Things that were recently pushed to the corners of America’s political space—overt racism, glaring misogyny, anti-intellectualism—are once again creeping to the center.

Now is the time to resist the slightest extension in the boundaries of what is right and just. Now is the time to speak up and to wear as a badge of honor the opprobrium of bigots. Now is the time to confront the weak core at the heart of America’s addiction to optimism; it allows too little room for resilience, and too much for fragility. Hazy visions of “healing” and “not becoming the hate we hate” sound dangerously like appeasement. The responsibility to forge unity belongs not to the denigrated but to the denigrators. The premise for empathy has to be equal humanity; it is an injustice to demand that the maligned identify with those who question their humanity.

America loves winners, but victory does not absolve. Victory, especially a slender one decided by a few thousand votes in a handful of states, does not guarantee respect. Nobody automatically deserves deference on ascending to the leadership of any country. American journalists know this only too well when reporting on foreign leaders—their default mode with Africans, for instance, is nearly always barely concealed disdain. President Obama endured disrespect from all quarters. By far the most egregious insult directed toward him, the racist movement tamely termed “birtherism,” was championed by Trump.

Yet, a day after the election, I heard a journalist on the radio speak of the vitriol between Obama and Trump. No, the vitriol was Trump’s. Now is the time to burn false equivalencies forever. Pretending that both sides of an issue are equal when they are not is not “balanced” journalism; it is a fairy tale—and, unlike most fairy tales, a disingenuous one.

Now is the time to refuse the blurring of memory. Each mention of “gridlock” under Obama must be wrought in truth: that “gridlock” was a deliberate and systematic refusal of the Republican Congress to work with him. Now is the time to call things what they actually are, because language can illuminate truth as much as it can obfuscate it. Now is the time to forge new words. “Alt-right” is benign. “White-supremacist right” is more accurate.

Now is the time to talk about what we are actually talking about. “Climate contrarian” obfuscates. “Climate-change denier” does not. And because climate change is scientific fact, not opinion, this matters.

Now is the time to discard that carefulness that too closely resembles a lack of conviction. The election is not a “simple racism story,” because no racism story is ever a “simple” racism story, in which grinning evil people wearing white burn crosses in yards. A racism story is complicated, but it is still a racism story, and it is worth parsing. Now is not the time to tiptoe around historical references. Recalling Nazism is not extreme; it is the astute response of those who know that history gives both context and warning.

Trump's America is not just a kleptocracy that will benefit the elites while the rest of us suffer in silence.  It is, as history has told us again and again, an existential threat to what freedoms we have, and it must be framed as such, we must demand this from the people who are trying to frame it, in our daily conversations, at our jobs, at our places of worship, at our dinner tables.

The act of resistance begins with the thought of resistance, that this is not the way it is supposed to be.  That must be done first and foremost.

As Adichie says, now is the time to remember the truth and to recall the facts as the basis for all resistance going forward.

The Things We Don't See

The advocacy group Sandy Hook Promise has released this PSA entitled "Evan" that initially appears to be about a high school teenager looking for a friend in the school's library.  That's not what the video is about at all, and I guarantee you that like myself, you'll miss the real story the first time through.





It's a very, very powerful message here, and one that we as a country have forgotten.

Trump's Pence-ive Decision, Con't

It's not what Donald Trump said at his rally here in Cincy Thursday night (during rush hour that backed up traffic for 15 miles in any direction, by the way), it's what VP-elect Mike Pence said to reporters in Cincy that should really terrify you.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Pence said President-elect Donald Trump is preparing ambitious 100-day and 200-day plans aimed at fulfilling core campaign promises and jump-starting economic growth. 

Asked what might surprise voters about the Trump White House, Mr. Pence said: “I think the only thing that will surprise them is that Washington, D.C., is going to get an awful lot done in a short period of time.”

Big deal, every incoming administration says that, right?

His comments also suggest that a Trump White House would eschew many of the free-market principles that have guided prior Republican administrations, including injecting itself into the personnel and long-term operating decisions of individual companies. 

The new administration’s first priorities would include curbing illegal immigration, abolishing and then replacing Mr. Obama’s signature health-care system, nominating a justice to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court, and strengthening the military, said Mr. Pence, whose wife, Karen Pence, sat nearby during the interview. 

By springtime, the Trump administration would work with congressional leaders “to move fundamental tax reform” meant to “free up the pent-up energy in the American economy,” he said. 

Pillars of the tax overhaul would include lowering marginal tax rates, reducing the corporate tax rate “from some of the highest in the industrialized world” to 15%, and repatriating corporate cash held overseas, he said.

Massive corporate tax cuts will mean massive domestic austerity, of course.  Particularly if we're going to be throwing hundreds of billions more at the Pentagon.   And by "massive austerity" I mean goodbye Medicare and Medicaid.

But as long as the Obama coalition suffers first and suffers hardest (and it will) that's okay with Trumpmerica.

Last Call For Swamp Things

He's a dangerous, unconstitutional, racist, mysogynist, authoritarian demagogue... but he's our dangerous, unconstitutional, racist, mysogynist, authoritarian demagogue, dammit!

As a candidate, Donald Trump promised to “drain the swamp” in Washington. Now that he’s been elected and is embracing part of that very establishment, Democrats and many in the media are slamming him as a typical politician who abandoned a principle as soon as it suited him.

But when McClatchy checked in with several dozen voters in central Pennsylvania – one of the swing states that swung the White House to Trump – to see how they defined the swamp, most didn’t really care. Instead, they said it’s fine with them if he uses the expertise of a DC establishment of lobbyists, donors and special interests to to get his way – and their way.

As I've said time and again, the chief motivation of Trump voters remains to brutally eviscerate the Obama coalition and to make sure they remain politically powerless forever.  The goal is to see them, and especially any white folks who dare to support them, rendered utterly broken and completely smashed in such a brutal and bloody fashion that those people never dare to raise their voices again in our country.

And they know exactly who The Enemy is, aiding and abetting those people.

Many – almost half – of central Pennsylvania voters interviewed were reluctant to give their names and expressed a deep distrust of the media, which they said isn’t giving Trump a chance to even get started.

“It’s been what, a few weeks? How do you know he isn’t going to drain the swamp? He is not even president yet, tell me how is he supposed to be doing that?” asked a woman who did not want to give her name to “the lying press” in Philipsburg.

The Germans had a term for "the lying press" in the 1930's: Lügenpresse.  It's gained far more recent usage in Germany's darker corners to boot.

The coronation of Lügenpresse represents a troubling trend. The phrase, which means "lying press" and found most recent use in the Nazi era, has become something of a watchword among Germany's increasingly vociferous anti-immigrant (and largely anti-Muslim) activists. In recent months, these demonstrators have called on the media to "tell the truth" about what immigrants are doing to Germany.

Things are moving pretty quickly now.  But he's our monster, say the Trump voters.  The rest of you are his prey.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article118026863.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article118026863.html#storylink=cpy

He Blinded Science With Me!

Trump'sadministration continues to crank out all-star cartoon villains, and that brings us to the Orange Snack Product's National Science Advisor.  There are few jobs on Earth I can think of that I would hate more than this, you'd need someone who was highly educated in science fields, but was still ignorant enough to believe Republican Glibertarian junk science nonsense. You know, one of those high-INT low-WIS types, in Dungeons and Dragons terms.  Now, who would I pick for a job like that if I were Trump?  Who do I know that can get away with picking for being "all sciencey" and still not actually know anything about science?

Why, my very own congressman, of course!

U.S. Congressman Thomas Massie, R-Ky., said he would “seriously consider” a position in President-elect Donald Trump’s administration, but hasn’t been approached by his transition team.

In a phone interview with The Daily Independent on Tuesday, Massie responded to rumors claiming he’s under consideration for a top post in the Trump administration.

“If there’s any truth to the rumor, it’s coming from his team, not mine,” said Massie. “[Trump] has assembled a very impressive cabinet so far, and I would seriously consider working in his administration.”

A report by The Liberty Conservative, an online magazine, surfaced Monday stating that the Trump team is considering Massie for director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, a position commonly referred to as Science Advisor to the President.

The author cited a “confidential source on the Trump transition team.”

Austin Petersen, a former candidate for the Libertarian Party’s 2016 nomination for President of the United States, founded the website The Libertarian Republic which also posted a story on Monday linking Massie to consideration for the Science Advisor position.

Petersen told The Daily Independent the source of the story is on the Trump transition team and agreed to speak to the online magazine “only on the condition of anonymity.”

Science Advisor to the President is considered the closest position to a cabinet-level role in science and technology. The appointee would spearhead nationwide initiatives related to science and tech, have increased access to Trump and work almost exclusively in the White House complex with the Office of Science and Technology Policy staff.

Massie believes he'd be qualified for the position if considered, but hadn't given it much thought previously.

The libertarian-leaning conservative said he’s even more intrigued by the idea of serving in the cabinet as secretary of energy.

I can't think of a better Trumpie for the job than an MIT-educated engineering award winner who thinks thousands of climatologists are all wrong. But you might want to hold off on those Energey Secretary plans there though Tommy.  Seems that's going to go to the ultimate climate change denier troll.

President-elect Donald Trump's transition team is considering Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia for the energy secretary job, according to three sources close to the discussions.

The conservative Democrat “is being considered to show the coal people how serious Trump is about coal,” one source said.

Manchin told POLITICO Thursday afternoon that he and his staff haven’t been contacted by Trump’s transition team and he didn't have any trips to New York City on his calendar. But Manchin, who is up for reelection in 2018 in a state that has become increasingly more Republican over the past decade, also didn’t dismiss the notion of taking DOE’s top job in the Trump administration.

“If I can do anything that would help my state of West Virginia, and my country, I would be happy to talk to anybody,” he told POLITICO. “Other than that, I haven’t heard anything ... I have nothing scheduled.”

Just last month, Manchin was named the vice chair of the Senate Democratic Policy and Communications Committee.

The lone coal country Democrat left in these parts who then joined Chuck Schumer's leadership team, now bailing on the Dems ahead of an almost certain loss in 2018?

Like I said, almost cartoon villainy stuff here.

That Poll-Asked Look, Con't

Nate Silver crunches the numbers and finds out that America's pollsters failed miserably in their likely voter models, not in the direction that I anticipated (underestimating voters of color) but in badly underestimating the number of white voters without college degrees that showed up for Trump.

Let’s take two fairly obvious data-driven conclusions from the 2016 election and see if there’s any link between them. 

The first conclusion: Education was almost everything in explaining the results of the race. Donald Trump substantially improved on Mitt Romney’s performance among voters without college degrees — especially white voters without college degrees. Hillary Clinton somewhat improved on President Obama’s performance with college-educated voters. The link between education levels and the shift in the vote is robust, even when controlling for other factors, such as income levels. 

The second conclusion: The polling was bad. Actually, let me amend that: The polling wasn’t that bad. (Reporters and analysts should have been more prepared for the possibility that Trump might win. We’re going to keep being really annoying about this.) 

With Clinton’s lead in the popular vote still expanding, the national polls are going to wind up having been pretty good (they showed her winning by 3 to 4 percentage points, and she’ll eventually win by about 2 points). The state polls? Not so hot. What matters, though, is not only the magnitude of the error in the state polls but the direction of it. The errors were correlated from state to state, and Clinton underperformed in a trio of states in the Rust Belt — Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — that were supposed to have been part of her firewall; that underperformance cost her the Electoral College.
So, are these two things connected? Did Trump beat his polls in states with large numbers of white voters without college degrees? 

The short answer is “yes.”

And the data is pretty convincing: there are 19 states that have a majority of white voters without college degrees.  Donald Trump beat the averages of state polls in 18 of those 19 states (all but Oregon) and he beat them by an average of 7.6 points.  He beat Ohio's and Wisconsin's state polls by 6 points,, Michigan's by 4, Pennsylvania's by 5, NC's by 4, and Florida's by 2.  He won all of those states.

In blood red states like Kentucky, he beat his state polling average by 11 points and by 14 in WV..

In other words, where national polling was correct (Clinton will end up winning the national popular vote by 2.5%-3% or so, where the polls had her) state polling in 2016 was 100% useless.

The same thing that happened in Kentucky in 2015 with Matt Bevin versus Jack Conway, the poll that was off by 13 points?  In 2016 it was national, and every single polling outfit messed up at the state level.

It's worth thinking about.  The reality however?

So Clinton lost Michigan by ~0.2%, Wisconsin by ~0.7%, Pennsylvania by ~0.8%. https://t.co/wbnGFEmcen

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) December 1, 2016

With this update:
WI: Hillary down 22,177
MI: Hillary down 10,704
PA: Hillary down 46,435
Total: 79,316 https://t.co/pcOqvSQlNz

— Charles Gaba (@charles_gaba) December 1, 2016

All less than Jill Stein's total in each state.

This is why Trump will be President in January.

Never forget.

StupidiNews!

• Donald Trump's "Thank You" rally in Cincinnati last night continued his campaign themes of attacking a "lying media", restricting immigration and building a Mexican border wall.
• Indiana state officials say they have agreed to $7 million in tax breaks in order to get Carrier International to keep 1,000 jobs in VP-elect Mike Pence's state.
• Donald Trump's pick for Defense Secretary is retired Marine Gen. James "Mad Dog" Mattis, who would need a waiver from Congress to serve as the DoD's civilian head.
• Senate Democrats say Donald Trump's cabinet choices could meet stiff resistance in confirmation hearings, but ultimately Democrats can't stop them without GOP help.
• Finnish cell phone maker Nokia is back after years of being overrun by the Apple/Android smartphone revolution, the brand will introduce Android smartphones in 2017.

Last Call For The Great Preet-Ender

Donald Trump summoned US Attorney Preet Bharara to Trump Tower on Wednesday, raising all kinds of conflict of interest questions.

Donald Trump met with U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara on Wednesday at Trump Tower, a senior law enforcement official told NBC News.

Bharara, whom many regard as the Justice Department's most powerful prosecutor, told reporters that he agreed to remain the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York after a "good meeting" with the president-elect. He added that Sen. Jeff Sessions, Trump's attorney general pick, previously reached out to him, asking him to stay as well.

Bharara and his office are known for their successful prosecutions of Wall Street figures, such as securing the guilty plea of Bernie Madoff's brother, Peter, for his role in the infamous Ponzi scheme.

The federal prosecutor also created two units focusing on financial fraud, including the Civil Frauds Unit, which has collected multimillion dollar settlements from financial institutions.

In other words, Trump only bothered to personally talk to precisely one US Attorney: the one who would be dealing with any Trump Organization cases, as NYC-based Trump would be in Bharara's Southern NY district.

You know who else Bharara would be dealing with in a federal prosecution?

The Clinton Foundation.

You do the math. I have, and two plus two equals authoritarian.

White Out In The Senate Dems

I understand the fact that 99% of the time, activist and NY Daily News columnist Shaun King is in it solely for the benefit of one Shaun King rather than the racial justice issues he advocates for, but this is part of the 1% of the time that he actually has a valid point: Senate Democrats have a major, major lack of diversity on their staffs and it's pretty appalling as he talks to a Senate staffer about it.

“Do you know how many black Chiefs of Staff exist in the Senate? The whole Senate? One. Out of one hundred chances they had to hire a black chiefs of staff, they hired just one African-American,” the staffer said in disgust. 

“But hold up, hold up,” the staffer continued. “I haven’t even given you the punchline yet. Guess who the one black Chief of Staff works for?” 

“Who?” I asked — having no idea what the answer was. 

“Tim Scott,” the staffer replied. “The lone black chief of staff in the entire United States Senate works for South Carolina Republican, Tim Scott. His office may be the most diverse in the entire Senate.” 

It was like a punch to the gut. It’s one thing for the elected officials in one of the most important halls of government in our nation to be just 2% black — that could be blamed on voters or demographics or fundraising, but the fact that only one U.S. Senator has hired a black chief of staff, and that senator is a Republican, is an indefensible choice. 

According to a recent study from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, of the 336 senior staff positions in the U.S. Senate, 0.9% of them are held by African-Americans. That’s three people. 

This is inexcusable and it has a devastating impact on the positions and priorities taken by senators themselves. 

“When Philando Castile and Alton Sterling were shot and killed by police in Minnesota and Louisiana, I practically begged my boss to issue a statement. My request fell on deaf ears,” the staffer said, 

It’s no wonder the Senate has done so little of substance on issues that truly matter to black folk. 

The lack of diversity in the U.S. Senate is so severe that it was called “one of the world’s whitest workplaces” in a scathing critique authored by The Atlantic’s Russell Berman. Berman also highlighted how the online magazine, Diversity Inc., “the nation’s worst employer for diversity.” 

The NBC News4 I-Team in Washington, D.C. actually discovered that Congress isn’t even following its own rules and laws on diversity. As Congress attempts to hold tens of thousands of employers feet to the fire on diversity all over the country, they aren’t even doing it themselves by tracking and reporting the most basic data on their hiring practices and records for women and people of color.

 It's pretty awful, and King is right.  It really is indefensible that fewer than 1% of Democratic staffers are black, when black voters make up more than 25% of the party as a whole.

Fix this, Democrats.

More than ever, heading into 2017?

Fix this.

Welcome To 2007, Suckers

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." - H. L. Mencken

After campaigning with lots of populist and anti-Wall Street rhetoric, Donald Trump is seriously considering a veteran Wall Street financier, Steve Mnuchin, to be his Treasury secretary.

Mnuchin spent 17 years at Goldman Sachs, ultimately as a partner at the investment bank. More recently, he's headed a privately owned hedge fund, Dune Capital Management. Last April he became Trump's chief fundraiser, and he's now a member of the president-elect's transition team. 

But Mnuchin's resume also includes a stint as chairman and CEO of a California bank that's been called a foreclosure machine. 

During the depths of the financial crisis, Mnuchin was looking to make profits from the ruins of the housing bust. In 2009, he put together a group of billionaire investors and bought a failed California-based bank, IndyMac. It had been taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. after its sketchy mortgage loans went bad.

The next housing bubble and economic meltdown is probably not going to be remotely recoverable. Not with Trump's team of crooks at the helm.  It's going to be brutal when it goes.

And it's the fault of idiot voters like Rex and Rose Schaffer.

Rex Schaffer, 86, and his wife Rose were among those who lost their homes, in a OneWest foreclosure. After living nearly 50 years in their home in La Puente, Calif., the Schaffers took a home equity loan but struggled to make the payments. They say they qualified three times for a government assisted modification, but OneWest failed to modify the loan.

"It was a disaster dealing with those people," Rex Shaffer says. "We'd have a different person every time we called in." He counted 33 OneWest employees, in all, and each one would give him "a different story." 

Facing threats that their home would be auctioned off, the Schaffers finally got through to a OneWest vice president. According to Rex Shaffer, the VP said, "I'm going to get you a 60-day extension on the sale date, so we can work this thing out." That was on Feb. 17, 2011. But the next day, the Schaffers' house was sold without their knowledge. "We didn't even know it — didn't have the faintest idea," Rex Shaffer says. 

They voted for Donald Trump, but Rose Schaffer says they're praying he doesn't choose Mnuchin as his Treasury secretary. "If he can't run his own little bank," she asks, "how can he handle a large thing for the United States?"

Spoilers: he can't.  But hey, the Schaffers are in their 80's.  They're not going to have to spend 50 years dealing with the next economic collapse, and they live in California, where their vote for Trump wasn't directly responsible for his election.

Guys like me, well,  It was nice knowing all of you.