Politics Plus

Last night I slept very poorly.  City street cleaning equipment was scraping the asphalt6 and making such a terrible racket that it awakened me shortly after midnight, and I could not get back to sleep.  OGIM!!!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:44 (average 7:51).  To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: The AP has a story about a Trump voter that lost her property due to foreclosure by Mnuchin.  As I predicted yesterday.  Those foreclosures screwed a lot of people including many Trump voters.  Perhaps they will learn not to vote against their own interests.  Will this be the first of many such stories?  I can hope.  How might one get a list of people foreclosed by OneWest, reportedly thousands, to find more examples of this buyers remorse?

When Donald Trump named his Treasury secretary, Teena Colebrook felt her heart sink.

She had voted for the president-elect on the belief that he would knock the moneyed elites from their perch in Washington, D.C. And she knew Trump’s pick for Treasury—Steven Mnuchin—all too well.

OneWest, a bank formerly owned by a group of investors headed by Mnuchin, had foreclosed on her Los Angeles-area home in the aftermath of the Great Recession, stripping her of the two units she rented as a primary source of income.

The buyers’ remorse is just starting, but don’t feel sorry for Colebrook. Feel sorry for the millions her stupidity is helping to destroy.

From NY Times: President-elect Donald Trump refused to release his tax returns during the campaign and there is no sign that he will, ever. He broke longstanding tradition and set a terrible precedent for future presidential candidates.

Good government groups have been wringing their hands about what to do. Now comes an excellent idea from a New York State senator, Brad Hoylman, a Democrat from Manhattan, that would could force candidates to disclose their tax returns by making it a requirement for getting on the ballot.

Mr. Hoylman says that he plans to introduce a bill that would require presidential and vice-presidential candidates to disclose up to five years of their tax returns 50 days before the general election. The state’s Board of Elections would publish the returns on its website.

Candidates who fail to provide the documents would not appear on the state ballot and the state’s Electoral College electors could not vote for them. This is a smart proposal not just for New York but for other states as well. Even if a handful of states imposed the requirement, all major party nominees would have to disclose their tax returns.

This is an excellent idea and I fully support it. I could certainly prove useful, if the US has elections in the future.

From Washington Post: Donald Trump is talking about Taiwan again — and so is China in angry and mocking comments Monday that questioned whether the president-elect grasps a core element of relations between the world’s top economic powers.

In an interview broadcast Sunday, Trump said the United States would not necessarily be bound by the One China policy — the diplomatic understanding that underpins ties between Washington and Beijing, and leaves China’s rival Taiwan on the diplomatic sidelines with the United States.

Trump suggested the policy could be revisited unless America could “make a deal,” potentially on trade between the two countries.

The remark elicited an sharp response from Beijing, with the Foreign Ministry expressing “serious concern” and a party-controlled newspaper calling the president-elect “as ignorant as a child.” By appearing to treat Taiwan as just a bargaining chip for trade deals, he may also have irked Taipei, experts said.

If I start selling NBC suits, I could make a fortune from this Republican deplorable diplomacy.

Cartoon:

Now we know what Teabag Thomas and co-Fuhrer Putin have in common.

Yesterday was a trying day.  My computer did not update properly and gave me intermittent problems all day.  My Internet connection was flaky, because of the ice storm.  The HSP with PP’s servers was acting up intermittently.  Nameless taught me that 467 is too many slideshows for one article.  😉 I lost an article, and by that time I was completely exhausted.  I’m trying to do better today.’

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:51 (average 5:51).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: Calling his action “long overdue,” President Barack Obama on Friday signed an executive order requiring that the President of the United States be a federal taxpayer.

The order, which makes a non-taxpayer ineligible to serve as President, goes into effect immediately.

“Since the President has such a large say in how federal taxes are spent, it only makes sense that he or she contribute to those taxes, too,” he said, noting that everyone who has served as President has been a taxpayer.

The President urged people “not to read too much into the timing” of his executive order. “It just seemed like the right thing to do,” he said.

Dang, Andy! I wish he would!

From NY Times: Rex W. Tillerson, the president and chief executive of Exxon Mobil, has emerged as President-elect Donald J. Trump’s top choice to become secretary of state, according to a person with direct knowledge of the search process.

The news is the latest turn in what has become the most extended drama of Mr. Trump’s transition effort, with a rotating cast of seeming front-runners to become America’s top diplomat. Choosing Mr. Tillerson would add to a long list of wealthy businesspeople in high-ranking Trump administration posts.

As Exxon’s top official, Mr. Tillerson has extensive experience working with foreign leaders. Some of his foreign relationships, especially those with Russia, could come under particular scrutiny during a Senate confirmation hearing.

It better come under scrutiny!! Tillerson is Putin’s pick for State. Tillerson recently negotiated joint ventures with Russia’s state owned oil company to drill baby drill in both the Arctic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.

From Daily Kos: There has been continuing discussion in the Kos Community on the role of the FBI in tipping the election to Trump.  www.dailykos.com/…  .  I had previously written that the FBI intervention, ( defined as Comey’s letters, FBI anti-Clinton leaks, and other anti-Clinton FBI actions) was decisive in the election. www.dailykos.com/…   Decisive means the FBI intervention changed what looked in late October like a modest Clinton victory (according to CNN Exit Polls) and a Democratic Senate majority into a split decision for Trump and a Republican Senate majority.  Obviously, there were many other reasons why Clinton was only slightly ahead at the end of October.

The belief that the FBI election intervention was decisive now seems like old news ( many have come to the same conclusion including Paul Krugman and Markos "kos" Moulitsas in his legendary post-election screed and others).  My FBI analysis is different.  I don’t believe Comey was the only problem.  I believe what happened was a deep partisan intervention in the election by a significant portion of the Agency. Further, while Comey’s removal might be called for it would not necessarily prevent partisan FBI electioneering from happening again and would in the short term impede a more thorough investigation.

When Crawford Caligula was defeated in 2008, bringing the Fourth Reich to an end, I warned that Republican "moles" were "burrowing in" to key positions in government agencies. That is temporary political appointees were being moved to permanent "nonpartisan" career jobs, based on political reliability, not qualifications. This was particularly true in the DOJ, CIA and FBI. I warned about this at the time. Those articles were lost, when we moved the site to WordPress, but I repeated my warning December 2010 that we most expose and eradicate them. Is it time for an "I told you so"?

Cartoon:

I'm starting to wonder if Portland's temperature will exceed 32° today.  We're under a Winter Storm Watch and a High Wind Warning.  Several schools are closed, including the one where Wendy works, so she's enjoying a day off.  I have my window shut all the way for the first time since March.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today's took me 4:55 (average 5:40).  That bird looked a little tough anyway.  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (TYT Network): Trump Puts Fossil Fuel Shill In Charge Of EPA

I disagree. Instead of "Every Polluters Ally", Pruitt will choose the name, "Environmental Pollution Agency."

From NBC: A federal judge who ordered Michigan to begin its recount effectively ended it on Wednesday, tying his decision to a state court ruling that found Green Party candidate Jill Stein had no legal standing to request another look at ballots.

The ruling seals Republican Donald Trump's narrow victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton for Michigan's 16 electoral votes.

Sorry America. Stein has failed.  But she may have succeeded in her attempt to detract attention from her role in electing the Fuhrer, including both winning just enough votes to tip the scale to Trump, and her collusion with Russia to discredit Hillary Clinton by regularly appearing on and parroting disinformation from RT.  She did succeed in taking advantage of our desperation to raise money to fund her future campaigns.

From The New Yorker:  In a stunning rebuke of the President-elect, a new poll shows that a majority of Americans favor keeping Air Force One and cancelling Donald Trump.

According to the poll, ninety-four per cent of Americans believe that Air Force One is qualified to be an airplane, while only twenty-one per cent feel that way about Trump as President.

When told that Air Force One has a mobile command center capable of launching a nuclear attack, a broad majority said that they would feel safer with Air Force One flying around with no one in it for four years than with Trump on board.

And, in perhaps the most troubling result for Trump, if a Presidential election were held today, Air Force One would defeat him by seventeen points.

No Satire There, Andy!!

From Daily Kos: With Biden in the chair on Jan. 3, the Senate can confirm a renominated Merrick Garland. Here's how.

Click through and read the article. It might work. Do you think they have the cojones to do it?

Cartoon:

It’s 36° in chilly Portland with a low of 25° forecast tonight.  Fortunately the heat is working properly.  I hope you survived Monday with a minimum of suffering.  Today is grocery order day, but because of a Fred Meyer event, Store to Door can’t shop and deliver until Friday.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:31 (average 4:48).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Fantasy Football Report:

Here’s the latest from our own fantasy football league, Lefty Blog Friends.

Scores:

Once again, there must be a tear in the space-time continuum, because I actually won!

Standings:

Congrats to Rob for leading the league.  I’m still in the cellar.  This coming week is the last of our regular season.  After that, the top eight teams enter three weeks of playoffs.  I actually have a long-shot chance of sliding into eighth place.

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: In his first public statement since Donald Trump chose him to be the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson said on Monday that the Bible “makes absolutely no mention of housing or urban development.”

Carson said that, when Trump initially asked him to accept the post, “the first thing I did was check the Bible to see if there was anything about housing or urban development in there, and much to my dismay there was not.”

“As you can well imagine, I did not want to be in charge of something that the Bible does not condone,” he said. “But then I realized that perhaps the Lord wants me to take this job so that I can banish housing and urban development from the earth.”

Andy, that’s not too far from the truth. He has said that forbidding racial discrimination in housing is "Communist" and must be stopped.

From YouTube (GQ Channel): Trump is Steering Us Toward International Disaster | The Resistance with Keith Olbermann

Amen Keith! God help us!

From NY Times:

Edgar M. Welch, a 28-year-old father of two from Salisbury, N.C., recently read online that Comet Ping Pong, a pizza restaurant in northwest Washington, was harboring young children as sex slaves as part of a child-abuse ring led by Hillary Clinton.

The articles making those allegations were widespread across the web, appearing on sites including Facebook and Twitter. Apparently concerned, Mr. Welch drove about six hours on Sunday from his home to Comet Ping Pong to see the situation for himself, according to court documents. Not long after arriving at the pizzeria, the police said, he fired from an assault-like AR-15 rifle. The police arrested him. They found a rifle and a handgun in the restaurant. No one was hurt.

In an arraignment on Monday, a heavily tattooed Mr. Welch, wearing a white jumpsuit and shackles, was ordered held. According to the criminal complaint, he told the authorities that he was armed to help rescue children but that he surrendered peacefully after finding no evidence that “children were being harbored in the restaurant.” He was charged with four counts, including felony assault with a deadly weapon and carrying a gun without a license outside a home or business.

Unbeknown to Mr. Welch, what he had been reading online were fake news articles about Comet Ping Pong, which have swollen in number over time. The false articles against the pizzeria began appearing on social networks and websites in late October, not long before the presidential election, with the restaurant identified as being the headquarters for a child-trafficking ring.

The articles were soon exposed as false by publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post and the fact-checking website Snopes. But the debunking did not squash the conspiracy theories about Comet Ping Pong — instead, it led to the opposite.

For the record, Comet Ping Pong is owned by a gay man and has been used as a venue for Democratic functions. That’s why Trump’s deplorables and Alt-Right Nazis at 4chan targeted it for violence.

Cartoon:

Republicans are working hard for de facto repeal.