Trump

[Phoebe]

Free hot cocoa with purchase, code COCOA, free shipping on orders $30 plus. Or I guess they have some physical stores too.

Here's a short, informative comment on the Sessions pick for AG:

All the supposedly non-racist Trump voters are never going to account for this. The problem is not that I want to blame them; the problem is that they did this to our country and now a lot of real human beings will suffer for it. For it to change, some number of them have to wake up and grasp that they can't call themselves non-racist and still do this. For heaven's sake, in this article Sessions' associates are saying they never saw a racist side of him, even as he was persecuting elderly black voters. What does it take? I don't care how pure you think your heart is, if these are the actions and words.

[Phoebe]

Good news: none of the extended family visited over the Thanksgiving holiday voted for Trump, so there was peace in our valley. Surprise and delight.

Bad news: that dude who writes Slate Star Codex, who normally is the very picture of systematic OCD attention to detailed facts in a way that pleases, lost his marbles at least temporarily to write a big rant about how Trump isn't personally a racist and therefore everyone who's scared for, you know, their neighbors or electricians or students who are perhaps going to be deported by this time next year, should just shut the hell up because it is scaring people. I could almost feel the respect I had for the guy leaking out of my from the eyes physically while I read it.

I see that the President-Elect is now on Twitter very upset about the election recount in Wisconsin. There is no way that this one state flipping could alter his victory so I'm not really sure what the problem is, unless he's concerned it could lead to other states being recounted (they're running out of time for that, I should think). But they'd have to flip at least three anyway. Maybe I shouldn't be so blase about it, seeing that Wisconsin election officials who were running a shoddy operation are now scrambling to cover their asses from the bright daylight - or how else should we interpret the sudden re-do of vote totals before the recount even starts, taking thousands away from Trump? The margin is under 25k, I believe. The recount is a fabulous idea regardless of outcome because it might make county-level officials up their game to the standards demanded by decent citizens in a democracy. On the other hand, it's a crappy idea if Jill Stein gets a dollar from it.

New op-ed nonsense by the dozens lamenting the GOP/DEM divide and urging us to get out of our bubbles. People, I live amongst Republicans. I was surprised that more of my own family members did not vote for Trump (though I know many of them still did). I talk to Republicans basically every single day of my life. Often we talk about current events, especially this past year. I understand their worldviews, I hear their reasoning, I know why THEY claim to think the things they do. The problem is not lack of exposure to a thing I have been exposed to my whole life; the problem is that I don't like it and never will, and the consequences of these views for other people are increasingly horrid.

[Stan]

[Zen]

Do they offer Cyber Monday deals on vote recounts?

[Phoebe]

What I really enjoy is that when Trump says things like "millions of illegal votes" in CA, VA, NH, we have NO IDEA whether he's coming up with that spontaneously, or after reading an email someone forwarded him from a website with two degrees of separation from Alex Jones, or after having an actual intelligence briefing with people who know things we do not. At this point he could tweet almost anything and we will not be able to figure that out.

"The Russians are working in collusion with ... "

" ... has newly developed a long-range nuclear missile - lots of missiles, the best missiles!"

" ... developed based on technology taken from alien vessel ... "

" she was programmed by the lizard-people ... "

We will have no idea.

[Phoebe]

Can I ask what this means?

"If Cuba is unwilling to make a better deal for the Cuban people, the Cuban/American people and the U.S. as a whole, I will terminate deal."

Does this mean he's going to cut off diplomatic relations? Tighten recently loosened travel restrictions?

[Cazmonster]

Unless it helps Trump, Trump is going to fuck it up.

That is going to be my working theory until at least 2020.

[Phoebe]

[Phoebe]

I also went back recently and re-read the thread that was on the old forums about this topic, from a year ago. It helped provide some perspective on the journey from there to here. A lot of people keep commenting to me that they feel like they are in some sort of Twilight Zone episode or a weird dream they will wake up from soon. I totally get that. How can any of this really be happening? I mean, come on. How is this real? Are we all dead? Is this like "Lost" and we have to find a cave, do an emergency appendectomy on someone, and then fall into a cement bunker concealed by trees? W. T. F. is even happening in this alternate reality. The bus left without me, the sliding doors slid the wrong way, and I've been dumped into the wrong timeline.

[Mrs.Darcs]

I started reading about last night's votes on the ACA and I got too nauseated to continue. We have insurance through our jobs, but what happens when budget cuts or job losses happen and my type one diabetic husband aND my preexisting thyroid disease isn't covered. This plan has helped so many and they are gonna throw it away for NO OTHER REASON THAN THEY DIDN'T LIKE THE GUY IN CHARGE WHEN IT PASSED?!?! I can't even. I'm sure the new administration is gonna tear away my funding so I'm sure I won't have a job in like 3 or fewer years when our grant expires since no one he's considering believes in science. Sorry this makes no sense, I'm literally in the middle of an anxiety attack and can't focus my thoughts or slow my heart rate.

[Mrs.Darcs]

Also, serious question for someone who actually understands political science and constitutional law. How exactly are they stopping president Obama from getting someone on the Supreme Court? Like under what authority? Why didn't/couldnt he do it while the Congress was in recess? I just don't understand how this works. The last political science course I took was where I was headed when the news of 9/11 happened so that's all we talked about the whole semester in that class.

[Mike]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's the cloture vote with Supreme Court nominees.

You only need 51 votes to approve a new justice, BUT debate remains open until you get a cloture vote to agree to end discussions. Cloture requires 60 votes. So if you don't have 60 votes, then you never end the discussion, and you never get the actual vote. In practice, the cloture vote has become the place where the real approval vote is.

[akiva]

Obama could have made a recess appointment, but I think he didn't because of perception. The Obama strategy was to portray the Senate as partisan, unprecented, and in violation of standard practices of government. Using a recess appointment for the a Supreme Court would look like a partisan, unprecedented, and non-standard use of power, undercutting their criticisms of the Senate.

[akiva]

[Tahlvin]

[Mrs.Darcs]

I agree that it is far from perfect, but repealing it/removing programs without something else in place is short sighted and cruel.

[Mrs.Darcs]

Thank you Mike and Akiva, that part makes more sense now at least legally.

[Phoebe]

My mom was once misdiagnosed and misprescribed Coumadin/Warfarin.* This meant no insurance company would cover her in the gap years when she went off my dad's coverage when he retired. Yeah, the poor (but not so poor as to get medicaid) can just die. Wealthier ones can pay their own medical bills, except providers charge individuals many times more for identical service than they charge big insurance companies or medicare/aid. Seems like a fair, functional system.

* I mention this only because it's how we learned about this system, and not because those who really do need blood thinners can twist in the wind...

[akiva]

If is true, it's staggering: the U.S. intelligence community views Trump as a security risk.

[Tahlvin]

I read somewhere that there's a bit of a bit a struggle going on between some of the intel services (CIA, DIA, NSA) with regards to who will be the top dog for international intelligence. The CIA wants it, Trump (via some of his appointments) is favoring the DIA, so the CIA is trying to undermine him to keep things in their court. So when I see stuff like that, I can't help but think about what else might be going on behind the scenes.