Last Call For The King Coal Con

Donald Trump's 30-point wins in Kentucky and West Virginia, and wins in Ohio and Pennsylvania were never, ever about "coal jobs".  They were about dismantling the Obama coalition and punishing the people who voted for the current president. But Mitch McConnell gave the game away over the weekend, and nobody will care.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell hedged on Friday about when and if Republicans would be able to bring coal mining jobs to Kentucky, saying that is a "private sector activity." 

The issue has been a key campaign tool for Republicans who have accused President Obamaof waging a "war on coal." President-elect Trump promised during the campaign that he could save the coal industry in America. 

"Obama has decimated the coal industry, and we're going to bring the coal industry back,” Trump said at a speech in Louisville in March. “The coal industry is going to make a very big comeback.” 

But asked at a press conference at the University of Louisville if the GOP would be able to restore the industry that has shed jobs here and in other coal-mining states, McConnell demurred. 

"I certainly would like to see the war on coal come to an end," he said in a 20-minute press conference. "As I've said repeatedly over the last few years, the war on coal was not a result of anything Congress passed, there was no legislation. This was all executive orders or regulations that the president was involved in, unilaterally, on his own." 

The industry has been losing jobs for three decades and those losses accelerated under Obama, in part because of new environmental regulations, but more importantly, because of cheap natural gas prices. 

In 1985, there were 173,000 coal mining jobs in the United States, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. In October of this year, that number had fallen to 53,000. 

Eastern Kentucky has been especially hard hit because the easily obtained coal is gone and it costs much more to extract it from the ground there. 

"We are going to be presenting to the president a variety of options that could end this assault," McConnell said. "Whether that immediately brings business back, that's hard to tell because this is a private sector activity."

Oh.  Oh well then.  The rest of King Coal's court didn't have much more to add either.

The interim president of the Kentucky Coal Association was more direct about the future of coal mining in Eastern Kentucky. 

“I would not expect to see a lot of growth because of the Trump presidency,” Nick Carter said in an interview. “If there is any growth in Eastern Kentucky, it will be because of an improved economy for coal.” 

Experts agree that environmental regulations placed on the coal industry contributed to a rapid decline of the coal industry over the past few years, but there have been other, more important economic factors at play. 

“The issues, particularly in the eastern part of Kentucky, are more than the increase of regulations,” said Ken Troske, Sturgill Professor of Economics at the University of Kentucky. 

One of those issues is a decrease in demand for coal. 

Carter said the low price of natural gas contributes to the lack of demand for coal. As the energy industry builds new power plants, it’s more likely to build plants that run on natural gas because the price isn’t as high. 

“We don’t mind losing to natural gas because it’s the cheapest source,” Carter said.

Nat gas is good for the energy industry, but it's not going to bring back coal jobs.

That's because nothing will bring back coal jobs, and Kentucky made sure it elected people who will make sure those coal jobs will not only disappear for good, but that thos high-=paying union coal mining jobs won't be replaced by any jobs at all.

King Coal conned you, Kentucky.  But keep blaming the black guy while you have President Trump and the Democrats are wiped out in the state and across the Midwest.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article114197923.html#storylink=cpy

Black Lives Still Don't Matter, Con't

Meanwhile with all the election issues that America is neck deep in right now, it was very easy to overlook the fact yet another cop got away with killing a black man, and it happened right here in Cincy as the man accused of murdering Sam DuBose got a hung jury and mistrial last week.

After a judge ordered a mistrial in the Ray Tensing murder trial Saturday, it will be up to Prosecutor Joe Deters to decide whether or not he wants to retry the case. 

Deters said he was disappointed by the mistrial, but noted it's still a better result than a "not guilty" verdict for him and others who believe Tensing was wrong when he fatally shot Sam DuBose during a traffic stop last year.

"I am grateful for what the jury did in terms of the time and energy," Deters said. "I am very disappointed because I think we have put on an incredible case which demonstrated murder."

Tensing faced two charges in DuBose's death: murder and a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter. 

"He intentionally shot him in the head," Deters said. "And that is not, in my mind, justifiable." 

Deters has repeatedly said he believes the evidence shows that Tensing is guilty. Whether or not he will retry the case depends on whether he thinks another jury would convict Tensing on one of the charges. He said he would keep the same charges, which were the charges returned by the grand jury. 

"If I think we can win, we'll retry the case," Deters said.

Look around, Mr. Deters.  Ohio is not a state where a jury would ever convict a cop for the execution of a black person.  The voters in this state made that loud and clear on Tuesday.  We're now to the point of questioning whether there should even be a trial.

Sam DuBose's life didn't matter, so like with everything else this week, we'll be told to "get over it" and move on to the next injustice.

When does that finally stop, I wonder?  When do black lives matter?

They haven't so far in this country's long history.  What will it take to change that?

Deportations, Lickety-Split

Donald Trump's first major interview since his election was with 60 Minutes on Sunday, Lesley Stahl spent time lobbing softballs and being shocked at Trump being serious about his alt-right campaign promises.  But his immigration and deportation comments are getting the most play.

Lesley Stahl: They’re talking about a fence in the Republican Congress, would you accept a fence?

Donald Trump: For certain areas I would, but certain areas, a wall is more appropriate. I’m very good at this, it’s called construction.

Lesley Stahl: So part wall, part fence?

Donald Trump: Yeah, it could be – it could be some fencing.

Lesley Stahl: What about the pledge to deport millions and millions of undocumented immigrants?

Donald Trump: What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, we have a lot of these people, probably two million, it could be even three million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate. But we’re getting them out of our country, they’re here illegally. After the border is secured and after everything gets normalized, we’re going to make a determination on the people that you’re talking about who are terrific people, they’re terrific people but we are gonna make a determination at that-- But before we make that determination-- Lesley, it’s very important, we want to secure our border.
[Paul Ryan: We had a fantastic, productive meeting.]

Lesley Stahl: So you were with Paul Ryan, you met with the Republican leadership, what was the-- one thing that you all agreed you want to get done right away?

Donald Trump: Well, I would say there was more than one thing, there were three things, it was healthcare, there was immigration and there was a major tax bill lowering taxes in this country. We’re going to substantially simplify and lower the taxes--

Lesley Stahl: And you’ve got both Houses?

Donald Trump: And I have both Houses and we have the presidency, so we can do things--

Lesley Stahl: You can do things lickety-split.

Donald Trump: It’s been a long time since it’s happened.

So two to three million deported and "then a determination".  Healthcare and tax reform too.  And lickety-split, for you folks playing at home in Red State America.

Things are going to move fast in 2017.

StupidiNews!

• President-elect Donald Trump spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping Sunday night in a conversation demonstrating "mutual respect" for each other.
• NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg is warning that "going it alone" is not a military option for either Europe or the US as NATO countries met Sunday to discuss Trump's election.
• A major magnitude 7.8 quake rocked New Zealand over the weekend, PM John Key described the scene northeast of Christchurch as "utter devastation".
• 2016 remains on pace to be the hottest year on record as global averages are expected to set a new high mark, dangerously close to the 2 degree Celsius "tipping point".
• Las Vegas is installing solar and kinetic powered streetlights that can store battery power generated by people walking on the tiles near the light's base.

Last Call For Trump Cards, Con't

Donald Trump of course is exactly who we warned America about, and the notion that he would ever "moderate" his course was always a pipe dream, the plan that he would ever get rid of the nastier elements of his campaign team was an outright lie.  Just look at who his new top strategist is.

Less than a week after his election, Donald Trump has begun to fill out the team he plans to bring with him to the White House. The president-elect announced Sunday that he has selected Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus to serve as chief of staff in his incoming administration.

In the same announcement, Priebus' appointment shared top billing with the news that Trump campaign CEO Stephen K. Bannon will serve as chief strategist and senior counselor to the president.

"I am thrilled to have my very successful team continue with me in leading our country," said Trump said in the emailed statement. "Steve and Reince are highly qualified leaders who worked well together on our campaign and led us to a historic victory. Now I will have them both with me in the White House as we work to make America great again." 

Yes, that Steve Bannon, editor of Breitbart News, the unapologetically racist and anti-Semitic "alt-right" clown is now the person directing the Trump administration's overall strategy.  15 months ago Bloomberg's Joshua Green called him "The Most Dangerous Political Operative In America" for a reason.

It’s nearing midnight as Steve Bannon pushes past the bluegrass band in his living room and through a crowd of Republican congressmen, political operatives, and a few stray Duck Dynasty cast members. He’s trying to make his way back to the SiriusXM Patriot radio show, broadcasting live from a cramped corner of the 14-room townhouse he occupies a stone’s throw from the Supreme Court. It’s late February, the annual Conservative Political Action Conference is in full swing, and Bannon, as usual, is the whirlwind at the center of the action.

Bannon is the executive chairman of Breitbart News, the crusading right-wing populist website that’s a lineal descendant of the Drudge Report (its late founder, Andrew Breitbart, spent years apprenticing with Matt Drudge) and a haven for people who think Fox News is too polite and restrained. He’d spent the day at CPAC among the conservative faithful, zipping back and forth between his SiriusXM booth and an unlikely pair of guests he was squiring around: Nigel Farage, the leader of Britain’s right-wing UKIP party, and Phil Robertson, the bandanna’d, ayatollah-bearded Duck Dynasty patriarch who was accepting a free-speech award. CPAC is a beauty contest for Republican presidential hopefuls. But Robertson, a novelty adornment invited after A&E suspended him for denouncing gays, delivered a wild rant about “beatniks” and sexually transmitted diseases that upstaged them all, to Bannon’s evident delight. “If there’s an explosion or a fire somewhere,” says Matthew Boyle, Breitbart’s Washington political editor, “Steve’s probably nearby with some matches.” Afterward, everyone piled into party buses and headed for the townhouse.

And now he runs the Trump administration.  I was wrong about Bannon before and dismissed him as a joke. I guarantee you I am not wrong now.

This is who they are.

You Get What You Paid For

GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan, supposedly a very intellectual policy wonk and details guy, doesn't actually have time for details when it comes to his plans for eliminating Obamacare (and Medicare and Medicaid along with it).

The Wisconsin Republican promised during an interview on CNN that the repeal of Obamacare would lower the costs of health care by providing “vouchers” to poor Americans.

CNN host Jake Tapper noted that many women were paying nothing for birth control thanks to an Affordable Care Act mandate.

“Is that going to end?” he wondered.

“Look, I’m not going to get into all the little nitty-gritty details of these things,” Ryan replied curtly.

“With all due respect,” Tapper countered, “I don’t know that the average woman of childbearing years out there who relies upon contraception provided by health insurance mandated by the Affordable Care Act, I don’t know that she would think that that’s just a nitty-gritty detail.”

“You’re asking me details about legislation that hasn’t been written yet!” Ryan complained.

“Right, but would that be a principle of whatever replaces [Obamacare]?” Tapper wondered.

“I’m not going to get into hypotheticals about legislation that hasn’t even been drafted,” Ryan stated defiantly.

Except Ryan is the guy who drafted exactly the House plan to repeal and replace Obamacare as part of his budget plan which has been readily available for several years, as the GOP keeps proposing it as draft legislation.  And other legislation that Ryan has written makes it very clear where he stands on birth control and what will replace Obamacare:

Ryan has co-sponsored the Sanctity of Human Life Act, which would give fetuses the same rights as human beings. The measure would have also criminalized certain types of birth control. Ryan, who is Catholic, has called the Affordable Care Act’s birth control mandate a “threat” to poor Americans.

So yeah, if you think birth control is another one of those questions that will be left to the states, wait until the GOP talks Trump into signing laws like this.

Sunday Long Read: The Desertion By Dayton

ProPublica's Alec MacGillis writes the definitive piece on the Democratic party's epitaph in Ohio, and as I've said here many times, as goes Cincinnati and Dayton, goes the Buckeye State.  The numbers of Obama 2012 voters that flipped to Trump here are staggering.  

Yes, voter suppression worked very well, especially in Hamilton and Cuyahoga counties, where combined there were 100,000 fewer votes in 2016 than in 2012. But Clinton also lost 10 of the 17 counties Obama won in 2012, including Montgomery (Dayton) and Ashtabula (Kent State U east of Cleveland).

Overall Hillary Clinton got 510,000 fewer votes than Barack Obama did in 2012.  Half a million, where total turnout in Ohio was 250,000 less than in 2012.  So no, voter suppression did make a difference, but Clinton would have lost anyway here. And she would have lost badly because she lost voters like Tracie St. Martin.

At one small house, someone finally answered the door. Tracie St. Martin stepped out onto the porch, a 54-year-old woman with a sturdy, thick-muscled build and sun-weathered face, both of them products of her 26 years as a heavy-construction worker. St. Martin greeted the women warmly, and when they told her what they were there for she said, sure, she was considering Trump — even though she usually voted Democratic. And when they got talking, in the disjointed way of canvassers making a quick pitch, about how Trump was going to bring back the good jobs, St. Martin was visibly affected. She interrupted them, wanting to tell them about how she had, not long ago, worked a job that consisted of demolishing a big local GM plant. Her eyes welled up as she told the story and she had trouble continuing.

The canvassers gave her some materials and bade her farewell. But I doubled back a little later and visited with St. Martin in her kitchen, which she was in the midst of tidying up, with daytime TV playing in the background. Space in the kitchen was tight due to the treadmill she recently bought to help her get into better shape, which she hoped might make her less dependent on the painkillers for the severe aches she got from her physically demanding job, pills that had gotten a lot harder to obtain from her doctor amid the clampdown on prescription opioids.

St. Martin apologized, unnecessarily, for her emotions on the porch and expanded on what she had told the women from Buffalo: She was a proud member of Local 18 of the operating engineers’ union, which had been urging its members to support Hillary Clinton. The union provided her health insurance and decent pay levels, and trained her for demanding work, which, just months earlier, had required her to hang off of a Pennsylvania cliff face in her dozer as part of a gas pipeline project.

She came from a staunch Democratic family and had voted for Barack Obama in 2008, before not voting in 2012 because, she said, she was away on one of her long-term jobs. She was a single mother with three grown daughters. She had experienced all manner of sexual discrimination and harassment on very male-heavy worksites over the years.

She was, in other words, as tailor-made a supporter as one could find for Clinton, a self-professed fighter for the average Jane who was running to become the first woman president.

And yet St. Martin was leaning toward Trump.

Her explanation for this was halting but vehement, spoken with pauses and in bursts. She was disappointed in Obama after having voted for him. “I don’t like the Obama persona, his public appearance and demeanor,” she said. “I wanted people like me to be cared about. People don’t realize there’s nothing without a blue-collar worker.” She regretted that she did not have a deeper grasp of public affairs. “No one that’s voting knows all the facts,” she said. “It’s a shame. They keep us so fucking busy and poor that we don’t have the time.”

When she addressed Clinton herself, it was in a stream that seemed to refer to, but not explicitly name, several of the charges thrown against Clinton by that point in time, including her handling of the deadly 2012 attack by Islamic militants on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya; the potential conflicts of interest at the Clinton Foundation; and her use of a private email server while serving as Secretary of State, mixing national security business with emails to her daughter, Chelsea.

“To have lives be sacrificed because of corporate greed and warmongering, it’s too much for me — and I realize I don’t have all the facts — that there’s just too much sidestepping on her. I don’t trust her. I don’t think that — I know there’s casualties of war in conflict, I’m a big girl, I know that. But I lived my life with no secrets. There’s no shame in the truth. There’s mistakes made. We all grow. She’s a mature woman and she should know that. You don’t email your fucking daughter when you’re a leader. Leaders need to make decisions, they need to be focused. You don’t hide stuff.

“That’s why I like Trump,” she continued. “He’s not perfect. He’s a human being. We all make mistakes. We can all change our mind. We get educated, but once you have the knowledge, you still have to go with your gut.”

Ohio's unemployment rate was 11% in January 2010. By September 2016 it was down to 4.7%.  And yet half a million voters left Clinton, and at least 100,000 went to Trump.  They bought the four years of attacks on Clinton wholesale and literally said that Donald Trump's legal and ethical issues didn't matter to them at all.

As I said yesterday, for Barack Obama to have policies to help people of color was one thing.  For Hillary Clinton to continue those policies cost her the Midwest.  They voted against Romney because he was obviously out of touch.  But they voted against Clinton because they were made to.

But the harder truth is Ohio voted for Trump by a larger margin than Georgia, and about the same as Texas.  It's time to stop considering Ohio as swing, and start thinking of it like Indiana with more people.

It's a red state now and will be for a long time.

Professor Obama And The New Kid

I did not write this, but I wish I had, I found this on Tumblr last night and I'm posting it here in its entirety because this explains everything about Donald Trump's visit to the White House this week to meet President Obama.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the meeting between Trump and Obama at the White House, and here’s the thing.

Obama used to be a law professor. This is key.

Law school is so, so different from college.

In college, everyone expects there to be a “syllabus day,” kind of a grace period where they can show up and get the lay of the land, figure out the bare minimum that they can get away with, the TA gives everyone their office hours, there’s an introductory lecture, and everybody leaves a few minutes early to go take a nap or something. You do the bullshit assignments, you say something in class now and then to get your participation check mark, and figure out how badly you can do on the final and still pass.

But see, in law school, all the methodologies you’ve spent the last 17 years operating under go out the window. Day one of law school is you being thrown into the deep end of the pool—you’ve had a homework assignment for two weeks now, and it’s to read the first 200 pages of your casebook. And now it’s you and the teacher (who is usually as smug as Alex Trebek) gauging and assessing what you managed to absorb while you skimmed through all those pages of reading so you could hurry up and get to the other 150 pages of reading for your next period class, in front of 50 people who are all smarter than you. And if you fuck up, or you didn’t do the reading, you are at the mercies of not just the professor, but the silent satisfied judgment of your peers.

Law school is hard, and it will make you feel stupid and tongue-tied and like you don’t know anything and can’t form an argument—because you don’t, and you can’t. Everybody there has had a 4.0 since birth. Everybody there was the smartest kid in their class, and you’re all rabidly competing for a sliver of a chance at something down the road. It’s petty, and savage, fiercely entrenched in a culture of formalities and ceremony, and exactly like Washington DC.

Yesterday when I was driving home, the NPR reporter talking about the Oval Office meeting mentioned that Trump had thought it was going to be a “getting to know you” type meeting, but that he was surprised when Obama stretched their talk out to 90 minutes before sending him along to the Capitol building where he met with congressional leaders for more lengthy meetings and stuff he didn’t want to do.

And he hasn’t even gotten to the actual job yet.

So think about that as we go into this.

Trump walked into the Oval Office like a two-pump-chump freshman thinking it was syllabus day, and what he got was the first day of law school, and he hadn’t done the reading like everyone else had, and Professor Obama decided to put him in the hot seat.

This was Obama’s chance for the most perfect revenge that would never be picked up on as revenge at all. He was gracious, polite—everything he needed to be for a peaceful transition and a good review from the press. And that would continue when the doors were closed, because that’s the key. Not a Come to Jesus meeting, oh no. If Obama were smart—and he is very smart—he would have treated Trump like an equal, and brought the discussion to a level that assumes far more of Trump than anyone has so far. Assumes that he’s an adult who’s been paying attention. Statistics, esoteric minutiae about the executive branch procedure, economic growth numbers, labor figures, domestic policies, countries Trump has never even heard of, shit that would never in a million years have been in Trump’s campaign soundbites or digestible summaries.

No way to escape. No aides to remember any of it for him. Just the two of them.

Because that’s what would strike a precise chill into Trump. The thundering realization that he’s woefully unprepared for the hard, boring, thankless reality of this, and Obama’s version of a smooth transition won’t and shouldn’t include remedial civics.

That’s what I saw when they shook hands and Trump stared at the floor instead of looking back into Obama’s face. He’s just figured out how little he knows about any of this.

And that should give you a small glow of satisfaction, because after those meetings, Trump definitely has the 1L Terror Shits. In January, the night sweats and insomnia will show up, but for these first few weeks—nothing but diarrhea and self-doubt.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, explains precisely why Donald Trump wants to split his time between the White House and Trump Tower, why Republicans are begging him to leave policy to Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, and why everyone assumes Mike Pence will be the actual President of the United States in all but name because he's already running things.

It's because the worst-kept secret in America is that Donald Trump will be, by an order of magnitude, the least-qualified president America has ever had.  Everybody on Earth knew that except for Donald Trump.

And President Obama is the person that made Donald Trump realize just how unqualified he is for this job.  As a service to this nation, this meeting may have been the most important in Barack Obama's presidential career.

And yes, Mike Pence is, in many ways, going to be a far worse President than Trump.  Sadly, Pence is at least familiar with how the executive branch of an American state is supposed to work (theoretically) and because of that Pence is much more dangerous in the long run, much like Cheney was to Dubya (only worse).

But President Obama probably saved the planet on Wednesday morning.

At least in the short term.

Last Call For The Jackpot Years

Legendary science fiction author William Gibson wrote The Peripheral in 2014, a book split into two possible futures, a bleak near future maybe 20 years out from now, and a further one in the 22nd century after a mutli-decade long systemic collapse of human civilization called the "Jackpot".

Gibson defines the Jackpot here:

William Gibson defines the Jackpot Years from m1k3y on Vimeo.

"Something that...struck me that I never noticed before is that our cultural model of the apocalypse is uni-causal and of very brief duration. So, Triffids come, world ends. Post-apocalypse. United States and U.S.S.R nuke each other to mutual destruction. Post-apocalypse. Like it's one thing and it happens.

And I thought "What if the apocalypse were multi-causal, complexly systemic, and took 40 or 50 years?" Actually, I initially thought "What if it took 400 years or 500 years?"  But that was too much time for my story, so I got it...down to 40. There's no reason why that wouldn't happen, that I can see. And actually, that's a lot more likely than a brief, uni-causal event.

But...I don't think we have the cultural equipment to hold that idea readily in our heads. It's not part of our mythology, despite the possibility that we might be already living in it. And that that fact may account for these creepy feelings that some of you have been having (laughs). Myself included!

"Jackpot" is of course a term of bitter irony, where all the wheels of fate came up perfectly in a once-in-an-epoch spin that left most of humanity dead after a systemic cascade failure scenario, one event led to a "new normal" and another even followed that, and another followed that, and by the time people realized what was going on the avalanche was in motion and nothing could stop it. The Dark Ages after all didn't just happen one idle, sunny Thursday

Probably the best parallel historically we have here is the US Civil War, merely the culmination of a number of events that began in the 1820s with states entering the Union after the Missouri Compromise, which led to Nat Turner's rebellion in 1831, the Mexican-American War, and so on, multi-causal, systemic, and deadly, costing 2.5% of the country's population over 40 years.

Are we in a Jackpot years scenario now?  I don't honestly know.

Worth thinking about though.

That's Real White Of You Donald, Con't

Never forget that given a choice between electing America's first woman president with a long list of accomplishments and a serial sexual harasser who has never held political office that white women overwhelmingly chose Trump.

The Clinton campaign and many commentators suggested that Clinton’s attempt to break the nation’s “highest, hardest glass ceiling” would draw strong support from women across the country. But in interviews, white women who support Trump said his record as a businessman and his policy positions resonated with them more strongly than Clinton’s candidacy as a woman.

Aimee Riley, a 34-year-old orthopedic surgeon from Richmond, Virginia, said she did not want the government to raise taxes on top earners. “I have worked so hard to get out of poverty,” she said. “I was raised to earn my own success, and feel strongly that I deserve every dollar I will now earn as a surgeon.”

In her everyday hospital work, Riley said, she saw many people “who think they deserve a handout and aren’t willing to do the work they are capable of”. Trump is “business-minded and not handout-minded, and I think this will instill a sense of effort and hard work in our country”, she said.

Like other Trump supporters, white women emphasized the importance of having a president who would nominate the right kind of supreme court justice. “I was delighted to vote for Donald Trump, because he’s a pro-life advocate,” said Laurie Jones, 45, outside a polling station in New York City. Jones was accompanied by her seven-year-old daughter.

Jones, a nutritionist who lives in downtown Manhattan, hoped that Trump’s selection of supreme court justices would be able to overturn Roe v Wade and return the question of abortion rights to the state.

“I voted for Trump because America has struggled with simple economics and needs a change,” said Lizzie Whitmire, 35, a Catholic mother of two from Dallas. “I also want someone who is angry about terrorism and radical Islam.”

After the publication of a video that showed Trump boasting about how he could get away with kissing and groping women because he was famous, followed by accusations of sexual assault from 12 different women, the received wisdom was that Trump had lost the female vote.

But white women who voted for Trump downplayed his behavior to different degrees. Some said they believed he fundamentally respected women. Others said they did not, but thought his sexism would not undermine his ability to carry out the change they wanted.

Jones called Trump an “imperfect person, like all of us”. She said: “I do believe he does like women. He cares for his daughters and wife and female employees. He does respect women.”

Trump got 45% of white women with college degrees, and two-thirds of white women without them. And he STILL lost the popular vote.  But that was enough to give him electoral college wins in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania (and very nearly Minnesota.)

And in the end they voted for the sexual criminal because "he was one of ours and would hurt those people instead."  That's precisely why they voted for him, to hurt people of color, to hurt LBGTQ people, to hurt Muslims (and let's be honest, Jews).

If this was a "change" election, Republicans in charge of the House and Senate and state legislatures would have been nuked too.  No, this was a "Go back to 1955" election.

And white women led the way.  The Republican War on Women has been won by the GOP, and now the real pain begins.

Or, to put it simply:

Folk don't understand that HRC was more threatening to White supremacy than PBO was b/c she called it out explicitly as a White person.

— Propane Jane™ (@docrocktex26) November 12, 2016

And that's why she lost the Midwest and the election.  Period.

The King Of The Useful Idiots

Bernie Sanders makes the case for what the Democrats need to do now, and absolutely reinforces the false notion that Democrats lost on "economic anxiety" rather than overt racism, misogyny and white identity politics.

Millions of Americans registered a protest vote on Tuesday, expressing their fierce opposition to an economic and political system that puts wealthy and corporate interests over their own. I strongly supported Hillary Clinton, campaigned hard on her behalf, and believed she was the right choice on Election Day. But Donald J. Trump won the White House because his campaign rhetoric successfully tapped into a very real and justified anger, an anger that many traditional Democrats feel.

I am saddened, but not surprised, by the outcome. It is no shock to me that millions of people who voted for Mr. Trump did so because they are sick and tired of the economic, political and media status quo.

Working families watch as politicians get campaign financial support from billionaires and corporate interests — and then ignore the needs of ordinary Americans. Over the last 30 years, too many Americans were sold out by their corporate bosses. They work longer hours for lower wages as they see decent paying jobs go to China, Mexico or some other low-wage country. They are tired of having chief executives make 300 times what they do, while 52 percent of all new income goes to the top 1 percent. Many of their once beautiful rural towns have depopulated, their downtown stores are shuttered, and their kids are leaving home because there are no jobs — all while corporations suck the wealth out of their communities and stuff them into offshore accounts.

Working Americans can’t afford decent, quality child care for their children. They can’t send their kids to college, and they have nothing in the bank as they head into retirement. In many parts of the country they can’t find affordable housing, and they find the cost of health insurance much too high. Too many families exist in despair as drugs, alcohol and suicide cut life short for a growing number of people.

President-elect Trump is right: The American people want change. But what kind of change will he be offering them? Will he have the courage to stand up to the most powerful people in this country who are responsible for the economic pain that so many working families feel, or will he turn the anger of the majority against minorities, immigrants, the poor and the helpless?

Yes Bernie.  Turning "the anger of the majority" against people of color, Latino immigrants, and the politically weakened is exactly what his entire campaign was about.  And now that message has shown that it can still win, it's going to be what his entire presidency is about as well.

And you helped him more than any other liberal in the country.

You are the King of the Useful Idiots, Bernie.  Thanks for nothing.

It's Payback Time, Con't

Adam Serwer grimly notes that the GOP having unfettered control of the federal government means the move to obliterate President Obama's legacy and render him a Carter-like footnote is now in full effect.

The federal government currently protects people’s ability to find a home, to make a living, to cast a ballot, to worship freely, to drink clean water and breathe clean air. A Trump administration can leave these rights unprotected for the people most vulnerable to having them denied because of the color of their skin or their faith, before having to ask Congress for a single vote on legislation. 

The conservative backlash against Obama limited much of his agenda after the first two years to things that could be achieved by the executive branch. Trump can easily reverse these steps, beginning, as Bloomberg reports, with Obama’s extension of relief from deportation to undocumented immigrants. That will affect some 750,000 people. Trump can shift deportation priorities so that undocumented immigrants previously considered a low priority for deportation––mothers with U.S. citizen children, for example––no longer will be. That proposed ban on Muslim immigration? He won’t even need Congress.

The entire civil-rights enforcement apparatus of the federal government will be under the control of a candidate who campaigned on using the power of the state against religious and ethnic minorities, proposing to ban Muslim immigration, establish a “deportation force” to purge the country of America’s largely Latino population of undocumented immigrants, and establish “national stop and frisk,” a policy that has targeted black communities. The Obama administration’s aggressive enforcement of anti-discrimination law in housing, employment, and voting is likely to suffer. The Obama era saw an unprecedented rise in the Justice Department’s efforts to combat racial discrimination in local policing. Trump campaigned with the explicit support of unions representing law enforcement, and on “giving power back to the police.” 

Will a Trump administration continue to enforce federal religious-freedom laws in cases where local jurisdictions attempt to prevent mosques from being built? Will it advocate for Muslim women who are told by their employers they are not allowed to cover their hair at work? Would a Trump Equal Opportunity Employment Commission continue Obama’s aggressive interpretation of civil-rights law protecting LGBT workers? Should women who are sexually harassed by their bosses expect that a president who bragged about sexual assault will defend their rights? Will the strict rules on sexual assault on college campuses to survive in the Trump Department of Education? In each of these cases, the Obama administration moved to use federal power to protect the rights of minorities; absent the same commitment, they will not enjoy similar protections under Trump.

The Obama administration promulgated strict rules under the Clean Air and Clean Water acts. Republicans have already indicated their intention to revoke them, consequences that will be borne by everyone, but most explicitly by the poor and people of color.

All of this will almost certainly vanish by the end of next year.  We will be told that such executive actions were always immoral, illegal, and unaffordable, and the massive austerity cuts coming will be necessary because Obama "bankrupted" America.

But mostly it's minority groups who will have to pay the most.  And some will pay with their lives.

Last Call For Losers, Losers and Losers

With Republicans now with unfettered control of most of America, President-elect Trump is wasting no time in letting everyone know that social programs, guarantees of health care, and reproductive rights are in for massive, generational-defining changes.

Tell the majorities of white women and white Millennials, both of whom who voted for Trump what they've won, Bob!

President-elect Donald Trump outlined some pieces of his health-care program, largely following ideas he laid out during his campaign, from a repeal of Obamacare, his predecessor’s signature health law, to language indicating opposition to abortion.

The brief, 310-word plan gives few details about how Trump will replace the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, except that it would include health savings accounts, and an ability for insurers to sell coverage across state lines.

The document, posted Thursday on the presidential transition website, is the first look at Trump’s plan since the election. It includes protecting “innocent human life from conception to natural death” and gives states a big role in regulating health insurance and in running their Medicaid health-insurance programs for the poor.

Bye, Obamacare.  Bye coverage of birth control under insurance.  Bye pre-existing condition protection.  Bye Medicare and Medicaid as we know it.

Bye, abortion.  And if you don't believe Trump, believe House Speaker Paul Ryan who will finally get 100% of his budget austerity plan.

During the campaign, coverage of the issues was blotted out by coverage of Hillary Clinton’s emails and Donald Trump’s broad suite of sociopathic tendencies. And of the issues that did receive any attention, a conspicuously missing one was Paul Ryan’s plan to push Medicare beneficiaries into private health insurance. Reporters just assumed that, since Trump never talked about it, it won’t happen. But Paul Ryan still wants it to happen. And in a Fox News interview with Bret Baier, Ryan said Medicare privatization is on.

“Your solution has always been to put things together, including entitlement reform,” asks Baier, using Republican code for privatizing Medicare. Ryan replies, “If you’re going to repeal and replace Obamacare, you have to address those issues as well. … Medicare has got some serious issues because of Obamacare. So those things are part of our plan to replace Obamacare.”

You'd better believe that Republicans are going to put block grants and massive cuts to Medicare and Medicaid on the docket.  What Democrats can do to stop them is apparently to "hope Donald Trump isn't such a bad guy."

Let me know how that works out for you.

Pitmaster Trump's House Of BBQ

As David Roberts reminds us, limiting Earth to just two degrees of global average temperature gain was going to take a Herculean effort on the part of any administration that followed President Obama's.  Now that we know it will be a Trump administration, any hope of limiting catastrophic climate-based damage to merely "immorally awful"has gone up in smoke.

The truth is, hitting the 2-degree target (much less 1.5 degrees) was always a long shot. It would require all the world’s countries to effectively turn on a dime and send their emissions plunging at never-before-seen rates. 

It was implausible, but at least there was a story to tell. That story began with strong US leadership, which brought China to the table, which in turn cleared the way for Paris. The election of Hillary Clinton would have signaled to the world a determination to meet or exceed the targets the US promised in Paris, along with four years of efforts to create bilateral or multilateral partnerships that pushed progress faster. 

With steady leadership, the US and China would exceed their short-term goals. Other countries would have their willpower fortified and steadily ratchet up their commitments. All this coordinated action would result in a wave of clean energy innovation, which would push prices down lower, which would accelerate the transition. 

The promise of US leadership was never about tons of US emissions; they are only 15 percent of the world’s total. (Though, as Chris Mooney notes, pledged US reductions accounted for about 20 percent of total reductions pledged in Paris.) It was about the US acting as a catalyst that sparked a virtuous, self-reinforcing cycle of escalating ambition, eventually building up the momentum necessary for a chance at 2 degrees. 

That story is gone now. Dead. The US will not provide leadership — it will be an active, and very powerful, impediment. Under unified Republican leadership, progress on lowering emissions in the US will halt and reverse and US participation in international efforts to combat climate change will cease. (I will have more to say on the scope of the coming Republican policy disaster in another post.)

There is a small sliver of hope as far as fostering climate technology innovation: blue states.

Yes, there will still be plenty of action to cheer. California and other West Coast states will continue to move forward, as will New York and a few more. Cost reductions in clean energy will continue, though they will likely slow down. The broad, tidal forces pushing for decarbonization will continue. But speed is of the essence, and the best chance for speed is now gone. 

For all its troubles, the US is an indispensable leader of the free world. Its official posture is now going to be hostile to climate action. 

Under those circumstances, the story about the world unifying to take bold, dramatic action on climate change, beyond what was pledged in Paris, has gone from unlikely to utter fantasy. The best climate activists can hope for is that Trump loses in 2020 in a giant Democratic wave that involves redoubled commitment to climate action.

And that's looking like an even longer shot than limiting the carnage to just two degrees worth of damage.

It's Payback Time!

Understand that the regular order of business in the Trump administration is going to be revenge against slights both real and imagined, no matter how petty.  This is a man that has a long history of holding personal grudges and using the levers of power to satisfy those grudges, and now he's going to be President of the United States of America.

But first things first: the Orangenacht for the Never Trump movement.  He cannot wait to get out the long knives on that action and his team is letting everyone know that if you backed the wrong side, there's going to be a price.

Trump surrogate Newt Gingrich is being considered for Secretary of State or Health and Human Services secretary, Politico reports. And he wants to make it absolutely clear that a Trump administration will not be bowing to the forces of reason. 

On Fox News Wednesday, the former speaker of the House told Sean Hannity, “Their technique will be to say ‘Oh, be reasonable. Don’t push too hard. Don’t force the issue. Find a compromise with Democrats,” Gingrich said. “Maybe he shouldn’t name one of the justices who are conservative who’s on his list. Maybe he should find a nice moderate acceptable to the Democrats. Down that road is a disaster. And so we have to be aware that the danger is not that they’re going to actively fight. The danger is that they’re going to opt for honeyed words of subversion that undermines the entire movement to make America great again.” 

Perhaps Democrats are going to have a few problems working with a Trump administration, just saying.

Speaking of honeyed words, Gingrich also had a message for #NeverTrump Republicans who opposed the President-elect (and who, to be fair, have been pretty quiet post election). 

“The little, whiny, sniveling negative cowards who were ‘Never Trumpers’ are beneath our paying attention to them. Let them drift off into the ashbin of history while we go ahead and work with Donald Trump and with the House and Senate Republicans to create a dramatically new future.”

Yep.  Democrats are definitely going to be punished.  Never doubt for a moment that the Trump administration will gleefully work to dismantle the civil rights era in every aspect.

But the Never Trump GOP is getting tossed in the trash first.  And the message is going to be pretty clear that Trump plans to assemble his Legion of Doom cabinet without interference from Republicans who suddenly might want to "keep him in check".

So if you're counting on Lindsay Graham, John McCain, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, etc to move to block Trump, that's not going to happen.  They'll fold just like they have done in the past, and with Trump calling the shots, they'll fall in line in short order.