Category Archives: Government
Bitter Clingers, Deplorables, and Fox News
On the campaign trail President Obama attempted to transfer his base of support to Hillary Clinton. He pleaded,”I’m not on the ballot but my policies are.” And he warned that he’d take it as a “personal insult” if African Americans failed to turn out for her. Well, Obama Nation didn’t show and Hillary lost. Trump was elected president with majorities in the House and Senate.
Another shellacking.
In a Rolling Stone interview the president analyzed the shellacking. And he concluded his lost legacy was due to a failure to communicate with middle America. That would be the Coal miners he and Hillary promised to put out of work. The Bitter Clingers. The Deplorables.
Fox News
That and Fox News. “Part of it Obama said, “is Fox News in every bar and restaurant in big chunks of the country.” Personally, I hardly noticed Fox in bars and restaurants in my midwest chunk of the country. But maybe that’s just me.
Progressives are also blaming Fake news for Hillary’s upset.
A month ago a federal court ruled that Rolling Stone defamed a University of Virginia administrator with malice. The administrator was awarded $3 million.
The magazine had published a fake news story about rape.
Nancy Pelosi House
Nancy Pelosi won 134 votes to Tim Ryan’s 68 to hang on as House Minority Leader. Ryan is taking credit for giving her a scare. But winning 68% of the vote sounds like a landslide to me.
Maybe they should demand that Jill Stein do a recount.
Nancy Pelosi
And maybe Nancy Pelosi should give the Democratic party a scare. Under her leadership they lost 63 House seats in 2010 and 13 more in the 2014 midterms.
Republicans now own “the White House, and the Senate, and the House, and 33 governorships and 68 (of 98) state legislative chambers.”
Stand Up Guy
In 2009 President Obama tried a “reset” with Russia.
During a 2012 campaign debate, Mitt Romney called Russia the “biggest threat” to The United States. To which Obama cracked wise, “the 1980s are calling, they want their foreign policy back“. He tutored Romney that the cold war was over.
Stand Up
Also in 2012, Obama whispered to Russian President Medvedev that he could be more flexible after the election. Medvedev promised to transmit the message to Vladimir.
Now, after the 2016 election, he’s lecturing the world that Trump needs to “stand up to Putin.”
“I don’t expect that the President-elect will follow exactly our approach,” Mr Obama said.
“But my hope is he does not simply take a realpolitik approach and suggest that … if we just cut some deals with Russia, even if it hurts people or even if it violates international norms or even if it leaves smaller countries vulnerable, or creates long-term problems in regions like Syria, that we just do whatever’s convenient at the time.”
Obama Turns Over National Security Apparatus Keys
The Daily Beast is alarmed by the massive national security apparatus The President is turning over to The Donald. It kills by drone and fights wars without congressional approval.
Whenever George W. Bush started a war he made sure to to pack a Congressional resolution. President Obama, not so much.
Obama ended “torture” of enemy combatants. Instead he blows them up by drone. Even American citizens make the hit list.
He also engineered a nuke treaty with Iran without Senate approval. He simply deemed it not a treaty.
Now all that power is in the tiny hands of President-elect Trump.
National Security Apparatus
Here’s Jameel Jaffer, the director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University:
“Many Americans were willing to invest broad power in the presidency because they trusted the president. But obviously the powers that we invest outlast any particular president, and now those powers are available to Trump.”
Oh.
Trump Binding Wounds
Donald Trump was gracious in his acceptance speech. He called on the country to bind it’s wounds.
Binding Wounds
So, the president-elect got busy binding wounds of his own party by inviting Reince Priebus to join him onstage.
Until last night plenty of people thought he would kill his adopted party. On October 9 Ezra Kline at Vox wrote, “Trump doesn’t give a damn about what the Republican Party needs.” And that he’s willing to destroy the party for a chance to win.
Yet, as of early this morning, Republicans control the House, the Senate, the majority of states, and the White House.
