You are in a bedroom, and you are thinking, “Where the f#&@ are my pants?” and you haven’t had a date that is one for the ages.
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Year: 2016
Knowing is Worse than Not Knowing
Remember when I said that I would not be speculating on Trump cabinet appointments because it just made thing worse and drove me crazy?
I may have been excessively optimistic.
Trump has announced that he will be nominating a racist dirtbag for US Attorney General (Jeff Sessions), a right wing lunatic who was fired as head of the DIA for his incompetence and an abusive management style as National Security Adviser (Michael Flynn), and a Teabagger who is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Koch brothers as as C.I.A. Director (Mike Pompeo).
Charlie Pierce has the details.
Of particular note here is that this appears to be putting the stake through the heart of whatever faint hope there was that Trump would not buy into the mindlessly bellicose national security consensus.
We are in for more, and possibly stupider, wars during the Trump Administration.
Our Narcissistic Press
Donald Trump is an iconoclast who blithely ignores the norms of civil society.
It appears that the only time that the press cares about this is when he President elect ditches the 4th estate for a steak dinner:
On Tuesday night, Donald Trump committed a huge no-no. This was nothing trivial like empowering white hate groups or waging public and legal vendettas against his enemies—he’s been doing those things all along. For the first time since winning the presidency last week, he sneaked away from the pool of reporters tasked with knowing his whereabouts all day every day to dine at a fancy Manhattan steak house.
This may sound like a minor infraction, but it is actually a matter of incredible importance, as many journalists have explained in the hours since.
Trump had traduced yet another vital norm, except instead of simply noting an objection to the violation, and assuming the importance of the broken protocol, reporters have been at pains to defend it. ………
………
When Trump announced that white nationalist publisher Steve Bannon would be his chief strategist next year, the political media wasn’t entirely sure how to process it. Early reports depicted Bannon, the executive chairman of the racist agitprop website Breitbart, not as a hero figure to white supremacists and neo-Nazis but as a “combative” strategist or a “conservative firebrand.”
………
For most readers here, and probably for most Americans, it’s self-evident why the “no white supremacists in the White House” norm should stand. People generally grasp that racism is a horrifying value, even if they’re unfamiliar with the kind of violence and subjugation that occurred when white supremacists controlled government in the past.
The author, Brian Beutler, goes on to exhort that the press observe when norms are being violated and explaining why this is a bad thing.
He’s an optimist, and I am a pessimist, so I see it as efidence of an insular and cynical press which is only concerned about the violation of norms when it’s their ox that is gored.
We saw this in 2009 when Republicans decided to filibuster everything coming down the pipe in the Senate, and within a few weeks, the reporting was that 60 votes were required for passage.
We also saw this with torture, signing statements, and a whole range of other mischief.
I do not expect this to change, particularly given increasingly corporate nature of the major news outlets and the decades of working the refs by Republican operatives.
I expect to see the press swooning over some staged commander codpiece moment engineered by Trump’s at some point in the next 18 months.
It’s the sort of bullsh%$ that the press eats up: It’s easy writing for the reporter, and click bait for the publisher.
Snark of the Day
Syrian child disappointed she won’t get to be drone-striked by the first female president
Brilliant!
Headline of the Day
Donald Trump’s Cabinet—with Giuliani, Kissinger, Rick Scott and John Bolton—Is an IKEA Assembly Disaster
HAMP: the Gift That Keeps on Giving
Foreclosure Rates
Swing states
There appears to be an interesting correlation between rates of foreclosure and states where Hillary Clinton underperformed.
This is not a surprise. Tim Geithner admitted that all of the foreclosure aid programs were about helping the banks by screwing the ordinary people. as I’ve occasionally noted over the years:
I don’t expect anyone to really come up with the perfect explanation for why Clinton lost and Trump won the presidential election. But I do spend some time looking at these maps:
………
I was involved, to a small degree, with homeowners, activists and lawmakers that tried to deal with the issues and problems in the foreclosure crisis, some of which is documented in David Dayen’s excellent new book, “Chain of Title“. As Dayen documents, the government response to the issues was ultimately terribly unsatisfying and at best, had the effect of sweeping the issue under the carpet.
The consequences of the government’s response played out in this presidential election.
Clinton was aware of the problems caused by the wave of foreclosures: last fall the NY Times reported that the campaign was frustrated that the crisis had displaced so many homeowners that their database of voters was disrupted. Perhaps this is why the campaign’s get out the vote efforts in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and other states were much less effective than the campaign had hoped for. Some reports were that up to [25%] of the voters the campaign contacted were actually Republicans or potential Trump voters. In fairness, Clinton was probably concerned about the economic plight of affected homeowners and communities than she was about the technological issues it caused, but that was hardly the dominant campaign message.
How much of an impact would a compassionate outreach have had on these neighborhoods? It’s also worth remembering that the people hit by the foreclosure crisis were generally middle class – prior to the crisis they owned homes, held jobs, were members of the community. Where were they by the time the 2016 election came around?
Certainly, it’s a complicated issue and made more complicated by the fact that the Obama Administration didn’t cover themselves in accolades during the mess.………
………
Of course, it’s easy to second guess the campaign now. I, and many others, spend hours over several years trying to get the Obama Administration or state governments to improve their response to the foreclosure crisis. By 2016, many of the people I worked with back in 2011 to 2013 on housing issues were exhausted and frustrated. I can only imagine how the people living with the foreclosure crisis must have felt.
Still, a few thousand votes in three key states would have been enough to change the outcome of the election. And when you compare these maps, it’s hard not to see the lost opportunities.
In choosing between the banksters and their victims, Obama went with the banksters, and Hillary Clinton, with her close ties to Wall Street, was in a situation where the optics were particularly indefensible.
Headline of the Day
Elite, White Feminism Gave Us Trump: It Needs to Die
The thesis is that priviliged identity politics ignores the very real needs of ordinary folks who don’t get 6 figure payments for speeches from the Vampire Squid.
Identity politics and class politics tends to be mutually exclusive, as Jesse Jackson once said when asked how he might get white steelworker votes, “By making him aware he has more in common with the black steel workers by being a worker, than with the boss by being white.”
The Upside of the Measles Outbreak in California
It appears that parents are now looking for pediatricians who refuse antivaxxers as patients, because they are affraid of their wee bairns picking up something in the waiting room from unvaccinated kids:
Pediatricians around the country, faced with persistent opposition to childhood vaccinations, are increasingly grappling with the difficult decision of whether to dismiss those families from their practices to protect their other patients.
Doctors say they are more willing to take this last-resort step because the anti-vaccine movement in recent years has contributed to a resurgence of preventable childhood diseases such as measles, mumps and whooping cough. Their practices also have been emboldened by families who say they will only choose physicians who require other families to vaccinate.
Here’s hoping this this becomes far more wide spread.
The science is bad, and they are putting other people’s lives at risk.
How about a nice cup of shut the F%$# Up, Johnnie?
One of the truisms of the DC political scene is that John McCain thinks that he should be President, and that whoever has become President had better listen to him, or he will throw a tantrum and hold his breath until he passes out.*
The press, largely because of McCain’s tradition of giving them booze and palling around with them, seems to think that this is “Mavericky”, but it appears to be an exercise in arrested development to me.
Case in point, the overcooked potato from the state of Arizona is trying to dictate Russia policy:
Sen. John McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent his first shot across the bow of President-elect Donald Trump’s national security plans Tuesday, saying that any attempt to “reset” relations with Russia is unacceptable.
“With the U.S. presidential transition underway, Vladimir Putin has said in recent days that he wants to improve relations with the United States,” McCain (R-Ariz.) said in a statement released by his office.
It’s really depressing what qualifies as an elder statesman in DC.
*No sh%$. At age 2, the only way that his parents could get him to stop was to put him in an bathtub full of cold water.
Wisdom from Katz’s Deli
For those of you who don’t know, Katz’s Deli is an institution located on Katz’s Delicatessen located at 205 East Houston Street in Manhattan.
Their pastrami is considered to be akin to a religious experience, and the 3rd generation owner gave an interview just chock full of profound wisdom.
- There’s only one way to eat a hot dog, with mustard and sauerkraut. None of that Chicago dog nonsense: no relish, no pickles, no salad garnish, no ketchup. Well, ketchup is okay—if you’re under six years old. Don’t hate me, Chicago. I was rooting for the Cubs, but you don’t know how to eat a goddamn hot dog. [Katz’s hotdog is also considered to be sublime]
- Pastrami is meant to be eaten with mustard.
- Interact with the guys that cut the meat. [May apply in New York City only]
- When you say white bread, I think of Wonder Bread, which is … I don’t know what it is. But it should be illegal.
- If we’re calling a spade a spade, a reuben is not a real sandwich. No true Jewish deli would have had cheese [with meat], ever. So how could you make a reuben without cheese? The short answer is, you can’t. It’s a fictional sandwich.
- My goal is to make the world’s second best latke; your first should be made by a family member.
I would suggest reading the rest. It is a hoot.
Good Riddance
Mary Jo White has resigned as head of the SEC.
Normally, when a Democrat resigns from a regulatory leadership post and is replaced by a Republican, it is an unalloyed tragedy, but in the case of the the soon to be former SEC Chair, who after a mildly promising start, has proved to be a complete tool for the banksters. (The conflicts of interest with her husband’s law firm working for Wall Street didn’t help.)
Don’t let the door hit your butt on the way out, you Wall Street stooge.
We’ve Just Seen a Real World Consequence of Trump’s Policy Shift
The day after Putin and Trump have a conversation about, “Regulating conflict,” the Russians and the Syrians began a major new offensive in Syria:
Pro-Assad forces have intensified attacks on Syrian rebels, launching a fierce aerial bombardment of besieged eastern Aleppo and missile strikes from a Russian aircraft carrier stationed off the coast, the day after Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin spoke on the phone.
The US president-elect and Russian president discussed “regulating the conflict in Syria” and the need to combat “international terrorism and extremism”, Putin’s office said in a statement.
This is a message from both Trump and Putin that the attempts to Persian Gulf potentiates and tje US state security apparatus to engineer regime change that this Great Game sh%$ needs to end.
I am sick to death of hair brained regime change schemes.
I don’t know why this is happening, whether it’s some sort of man-crush of Trump on Putin, or if it’s that he has looked at Syria and decided that it is a losing proposition, but in either case, this is a positive development for everyone but the foreign Jihadists in Syria.
Do You Want some Cheese With That Whine?
PNAC co-founder, and charter member of the frothing for more war crowd, vehemently condemned Donald Trump because he was not sufficiently warlike during the campaign.
Now that Trump has “won” the “election”, he offered his services as a foreign policy expert.
The Trump transition team told him to go Cheney himself:
A former George W. Bush official warned Republicans hopeful of earning a federal appointment from President-elect Trump Tuesday to “stay away” from his “angry” and “arrogant” team.
Eliot Cohen, a senior counselor for the Bush State Department from 2007 to 2009, had counseled conservatives offered positions in the Trump administration following the election to “say yes,” despite recognizing potential pitfalls, in an open-letter published in The American Interest. But on Tuesday, Cohen changed his tune, posting on social media that an interaction between him and Trump’s staff had made him change his mind.
“After exchange w Trump transition team, changed my recommendation: stay away,” he tweeted Monday morning. “They’re angry, arrogant, screaming “you LOST!” Will be ugly.”
I would note that in his “open letter,” he stated that Trump was worse than Clinton, because, I guess, Trump has expressed occasional reticence in wasting American treasure and blood on foreign soil.
Now that Trump has won, they are all screaming, “We’ve gotta protect our phony baloney jobs!”
I am experiencing near toxic levels of schadenfreude right now, but it feels good.
These guys have been wrong about everything, particularly in their vociferous support of overthrowing Saddam Hussein, and in a sane world, they would already have been run out of town on a rail years go.
Nah Gah Nah Do It
There has been a lot of speculation about who Donald Trump will appoint to his cabinet.
At this point, all that has been confirmed is that the obscure tropical disease known as Reince Priebus will be his chief of staff and that racist antisemitic nutbag Steve Bannon has been his chief strategist and Senior Counselor.
You will note that neither of these positions require the advice and consent of the Senate.
I’m not commenting on any appointments until they are officially announced, not out of any respect for the Trump transition team, but rather out a concern for my own sanity.
All this speculation is driving me batsh%$.
If You Want to Observe the Wonders of the Unfettered Free Market, fly Allegiant Air
But if you would rather live, perhaps you might want to choose some other airline:
Lisa Cozzolino started to panic as Allegiant Air Flight 844 circled over Pinellas County, burning off fuel for an emergency landing. “All the bad things I’ve done in my life,” she said to her sister, “and now I’m going to die.”
………
All major airlines break down once in awhile. But none of them break down in midair more often than Allegiant.
A Tampa Bay Times investigation — which included a first-of-its kind analysis of federal aviation records — has found that the budget carrier’s planes are four times as likely to fail during flight as those operated by other major U.S. airlines.
In 2015, Allegiant jets were forced to make unexpected landings at least 77 times for serious mechanical failures.
………
None of the 77 incidents prompted enforcement action from the Federal Aviation Administration, which doesn’t compare airline breakdown records to look for warning signs.
To create such a comparison, Times reporters built a database of more than 65,000 records from the FAA.
………
When the Times first reached out to Allegiant officials for this story, they declined to speak with reporters. Then, after the newspaper presented them with its findings, they asked for a meeting. During five hours of interviews at the company’s Las Vegas headquarters and training center, they acknowledged their planes break down too often and said the airline is changing the way it operates.
………
“Allegiant is probably going to have an accident,” said former FAA inspector Richard Wyeroski, who became a whistleblower in 2002. “That airline should basically be grounded and re-evaluated for their certificate.”
………
For this story, the Times used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain mechanical interruption summary reports for the 11 largest airlines in the United States. Then reporters connected the reports with records of unexpected landings from the U.S. Department of Transportation and FlightAware, a company that collects aviation data.
The result is the best available picture of how often mechanical problems cause midair emergencies at major airlines.
BTW, kudos to the Tampa Bay Times for a very good shoe leather reporting:
How we did the story: To compare the 11 major U.S. passenger airlines, the Tampa Bay Times set out to build the most comprehensive database of in-flight mechanical breakdowns ever created. A team of journalists used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain records of mechanical problems known as “mechanical summary interruption reports” from the Federal Aviation Administration. Then they connected those records with data from the U.S. Department of Transportation and the aviation tracking company FlightAware. Working through 65,000 records, they identified midair incidents caused by mechanical breakdowns by matching tail numbers, flight numbers, origin and destination and date fields. In cases where those details didn’t match up, the incidents were discounted. The database was built by Times staff writers Neil Bedi, Anthony Cormier, Carolyn Edds, Connie Humburg, Michael LaForgia, Nathaniel Lash, William R. Levesque, Eli Murray, Adam Playford and Eli Zhang.
This is old school journalism.
Take a look at public records, look for patterns, and don’t waste your time sucking up to anonymous sources with dubious agendas.
And Europe Goes Even More Pear Shaped
In both Bulgaria and Moldova have elected pro-Russian Presidents.
In the case of Bulgaria, this has brought down the current Prime Minister, and as Bulgaria is an EU member, (and has a pro Russian history) it makes the extension of sanctions against Russia that much less likely.
Victoria Nuland’s gift in the Ukraine just keeps on giving.
Guess Who Got Sued over Violations of Obama’s Overtime Rules
Yep, employees of the DNC have sued the DNC for unpaid overtime:
A Democratic campaign organizer filed suit in federal court in Philadelphia on Wednesday, saying that she and others were forced to work 80 to 90 hours a week and were not paid overtime by the Pennsylvania Democratic Committee, and through it, the Democratic National Committee.
“I don’t want to harm the Democratic Party,” Bethany Katz of Rosemont said Thursday. “I just want it to stand up for the principles it puts forth.”
Katz said she’s a Democrat who believes in “Hillary Clinton’s cause,” which is why the 21-year-old college graduate with a degree in history and political science took a job as an organizer for the Democratic National Committee over the summer, from June to August. She earned $3,000 a month.
………
No one gets overtime on political campaigns, said Neil Oxman, founder of the Philadelphia-based Campaign Group, who has worked on “hundreds and hundreds of races” on the national, state, and local levels.
“I’ve hired hundreds and hundreds of people. I’ve watched thousands of people work on campaigns. People know these jobs are 80- to 100-hours-a-week jobs. No one asks for overtime. If they did, people would think they were joking.
Yes, humor as a defense against the law, what a concept.
It appears that they think that Obama’s new overtime rule shouldn’t apply to them:
Katz’s suit comes at an interesting time in labor law. On Dec. 1, new regulations will go into effect that will require everyone who earns $913 a week or less to receive overtime, no matter whether their duties are managerial in nature or routine.
Oxman said that when the law goes into effect, most campaign groups will respond by hiring organizers as independent contractors.
“There is an irony here,” said [Katz’s lawyer, Justin L.] Swidler: The Democrats campaigned on raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour so workers would be paid fairly, yet “despite pushing these principles, they weren’t following them.”
I would note that Mr. Oxman’s suggestion of making organizers independent contractors would fall afoul of the law as well, since, according to the IRS, independent contractors cannot get the specific assignments, or extensive demands for detailed information.
Needless to say, the irony of this lawsuit is rather intense.
I would also note that these employment practices are a classic example of class privilege, since poor kids cannot afford to put in that much unpaid time, much in the same way that unpaid internships screen out the poor and minorities.
F%$# Me! I F%$#ing Agree with F%$#ing Donald F%$#ing Trump!
It appears that Silicon Valley freaking out because Donald Trump said that the H1B program has driven down wages, and that he does not like it:
Before he was elected to be the next US president, Donald Trump had garnered the support of just one prominent billionaire in Silicon Valley: Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal and Facebook board member.
The US technology industry had been shocked that one veteran from the Valley, which prides itself on liberal values, had supported, funded and even spoken for Mr Trump at his convention — and is now part of the president’s transition team.
………
But amid a feeling of bewildered detachment from the rest of the US, a serious business problem emerged — that Mr Trump’s plan for a wall to keep out illegal Mexican immigrants could end up hurting Silicon Valley’s growth prospects. The industry is worried he could stall their hiring programmes dependent on H-1B visas or make it harder for them to fund foreign start-up founders.
Of course, they could just pay more, and they would get the talent, but instead they want to bring over slave laber kept captive by the remote possibility of an eventual green card.
Here is the classic bullsh%$ scare quote:
“Given the rate of growth we are seeing in so many different tech companies from Facebook to Uber to Google or a company like Box, there’s simply a shortage of really great talent,” Mr Levie said. “When you have incredible talent that wants to work in your organisation but you are preventing them from doing so, that is disastrous to innovation and competition.”
Amit Kumar, chief executive at Trimian, an app developer with employees in Silicon Valley and India, said a restriction of H-1B visas for skilled guest workers could push tech companies to invest more in overseas offices, like manufacturers who had moved abroad.
The cost of moving IT overseas is astonishingly small.
It’s not much more than the cost of moving it across the street.
If it was all about saving money, they would already be in Bangalore, you would pay less for programmers, secretaries, grounds keepers, office space, etc.
What’s more, I have it on good authority that there are some good curry places there.
The H1B and L1A programs have been thoroughly corrupt for at least 3 decades, and it needs to be torn down.
Reality Has a Well-Known Liberal Bias
It appears that Facebook has given up on trying to prevent fake news from showing up on its users feeds because said fake news overwhelmingly comes from right wing sources, and they are too terrified of the flying monkey crowd to tweak their algorithm:
It’s no secret that Facebook has a fake news problem. Critics have accused the social network of allowing false and hoax news stories to run rampant, with some suggesting that Facebook contributed to Donald Trump’s election by letting hyper-partisan websites spread false and misleading information. Mark Zuckerberg has addressed the issue twice since Election Day, most notably in a carefully worded statement that reads: “Of all the content on Facebook, more than 99 percent of what people see is authentic. Only a very small amount is fake news and hoaxes. The hoaxes that do exist are not limited to one partisan view, or even to politics.”
Still, it’s hard to visit Facebook without seeing phony headlines like “FBI Agent Suspected in Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead in Apparent Murder-Suicide” or “Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President, Releases Statement” promoted by no-name news sites like the Denver Guardian and Ending The Fed.………
According to two sources with direct knowledge of the company’s decision-making, Facebook executives conducted a wide-ranging review of products and policies earlier this year, with the goal of eliminating any appearance of political bias. One source said high-ranking officials were briefed on a planned News Feed update that would have identified fake or hoax news stories, but disproportionately impacted right-wing news sites by downgrading or removing that content from people’s feeds. According to the source, the update was shelved and never released to the public. It’s unclear if the update had other deficiencies that caused it to be scrubbed.
“They absolutely have the tools to shut down fake news,” said the source, who asked to remain anonymous citing fear of retribution from the company. The source added, “there was a lot of fear about upsetting conservatives after Trending Topics,” and that “a lot of product decisions got caught up in that.”
………
In a Facebook post published after the election, former Facebook product designer Bobby Goodlatte blamed the social network for boosting the visibility of “highly partisan, fact-light media,” and for not taking bigger steps to combat the spread of fake news in the lead-up to the election. “A bias towards truth isn’t an impossible goal for News Feed,” he wrote. “But it’s now clear that democracy suffers if our news feeds incentivize bullshit.”
Yeah ……… That whole free market saving the world thing? ……… Not so much.
Linkage
- It was the rise of the Davos class that sealed America’s fate (The Guardian) Naomi Klein observes that that the internationalist high finance types have created Donald Trump.
- President Trump: How America Got It So Wrong (Rolling Stone) Matt Taibbi explains how people, including himself, missed the underlying mood of the country.
- Hillary Clinton’s Celebrity Feminism Was a Failure (New Republic) Even though it has an uncertain future, TNR is immeasurably better than it was under the racist Marty Peretz.
- I said Clinton was in trouble with the voters I represent. Democrats didn’t listen. (The Washington Post) Debbie Dingell offers another data point of hubris and stupidity from the Clinton campaign.
- How Letting Bankers Off the Hook May Have Tipped the Election (New York Times) From the department of, “Well duh!”
- Clinton campaign blames FBI director for election loss(Business Insider) No, you lost because you f%$#ed. The fact that you are alibiing like this makes you a pathetic loser.
- These Rust Belt Democrats Saw the Trump Wave Coming (Mother Jones) Arrogant and clueless, yet another data point.
No vid, because this image says it all: