Because of Trump, have you Lost Respect for the Office of the Presidency?

A great, great, GREAT read over at Mock, Paper, Scissors –

I read this morning’s headlines knowing that as the day wears on, my news alerts will descend into madness, from Trump’s tweets, new discoveries about Russia, the healthcare plan, and more destructive actions against Americans and the world. Trump is the reason America is unsafe. Trump is a terrorist threat to the world. His ignorance and need for vengeance is terrifying.I don’t know where to go from here… Do you?

Source: Because of Trump, have you Lost Respect for the Office of the Presidency?

Blog Runnning – Why Democrats Lose – ‘Without a path from protest to power, the Women’s March will end up like Occupy’

Do you remember Occupy?

From The Guardian :

“Shortly after Donald Trump’s shock election victory, I received an urgent call from one of the co-creators of the Women’s March on Washington”.

“She was concerned at a moment you might expect her to be ecstatic. Hundreds of thousands of women in 17 countries had already signed on in solidarity, and the numbers kept growing”.

“Yet despite the tremendous momentum, she confessed a nagging skepticism about the effectiveness of the protest”.

“I’m not that interested in the march itself but in what comes afterwards,” Fontaine Pearson confided to me”.

“I admire her candor because I know it takes courage to voice such a concern. It is her difficult question – what comes the day after? – that every supporter of the Women’s March should be earnestly figuring out today”.

“Without a clear path from march to power, the protest is destined to be an ineffective feelgood spectacle adorned with pink pussy hats”.

“It is exciting when a protest meme leaps from social networks to the streets, capturing the imagination of millions, prompting this very website to proclaim that the forthcoming protest could be among the biggest in American history and Vogue to commission glitzy photos of the core organizers dressed up like Eileen Fisher models”.

“But it is all too easy to succumb to the false hope that a big splash is a transformative tsunami”.

From : https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/19/womens-march-washington-occupy-protest

Blog Running – ‘Tinkle, tinkle little czar…Putin put you where you are’

From Jack Cluth over at What Would Jack Do…..

(sincerest apologies to George Takei)

From : http://whatwouldjackdo.org/2017/01/15/tinkle-tinkle-little-czar-putin-put-you-where-you-are/

Blog Running – “Manmentum!”

 

Great Great post over at Hullabaloo by digby.

‘Eric Trump sent a fundraising email out to supporters Wednesday morning titled “Momentum,” and included this map’.

“As one of the most dedicated grassroots leaders in the country you know, momentum matters,” the email reads. “And right now all the momentum is on our side.”

‘Trump called on supporters to donate money to help fund aggressive ad blitzes and “get-out-and-vote operations.”

“We’re making huge gains against Crooked Hillary that you can see for yourself,” Trump wrote before the image of the above map.

The problem is that map from Nate Silver is this’:

‘Yes, if just men voted, Trump would be winning in a landslide. There are a lot of white guys in this country who love him. But until they manage to repeal the 19th Amendment, that’s not going to be possible’.

‘As you might imagine, the map would look very different if only women were allowed to vote. Let’s just say they don’t love Trump as much as the men do. Even white women’.

From : http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2016/10/manmentum.html

 

Blog Running – ‘The Election In a Simple Analogy

 

‘Louis C.K.’:

“It’s like if you were on a plane and you wanted to choose a pilot. You have one person, Hillary, who says, ‘Here’s my license. Here’s all the thousands of flights that I’ve flown. Here’s planes I’ve flown in really difficult situations. I’ve had some good flights and some bad flights, but I’ve been flying for a very long time, and I know exactly how this plane works.’”

“Then you’ve got Bernie, who says, ‘Everyone should get a ride right to their house with this plane.’ ‘Well, how are you going to do that?’ ‘I just think we should. It’s only fair that everyone gets to use the plane equally.’”

“And then Trump says, ‘I’m going to fly so well. You’re not going to believe how good I’m going to fly this plane, and by the way, Hillary never flew a plane in her life.’ ‘She did, and we have pictures.’ ‘No, she never did it.’ It’s insane”.

From : https://politicalwire.com/2016/06/13/the-election-in-a-simple-analogy/

Blog Running – ‘I THINK SANDERS JUST TURNED INTO RICK LAZIO’

Rick Lazio walks to Hillary during Senate debate.

Form Steve M. over at : No More Mister Nice Blog –

‘My feeling is that it just came down to tone’.

‘As the campaign went on, Sanders increasingly seemed to despise Clinton’.

‘His anger seemed personal’.

‘I wonder how many voters felt as if they were watching a rerun of every attack on Hillary Clinton since the 1990s’.

‘You can say what you want about her policy preferences and the choices she’s made in her career, you can argue that she’s too conservative and too compromised, but when someone pounds on her, she seems human and vulnerable — and unless you loathe her, it’s hard not to feel something in response to that kind of pounding’.

‘The race seems divisive, but polls show that the vast majority of Democrats would vote for either of the candidates in November — yet the Sanders message seemed to be that Clinton is history’s greatest monster’.

‘If you were an older voter who’d ever felt solidarity with Hillary Clinton at any time in the past quarter century, Sanders was asking you to repudiate yourself’.

‘If you’d ever been inspired by the thought of Hillary breaking through the glass ceiling, you were being told that you were a dupe and a Wall Street pawn, so snap out of it’.

‘Sanders has a vision of a better America, but anger was pushed into the foreground. That might work with Republicans. It didn’t work with New York Democrats’.

From : http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2016/04/i-think-sanders-just-turned-into-rick.html

Blog Running – Feeling The Bern – ‘Democrats Are In Serious Trouble After Iowa and New Hampshire’

‘This idea surrounding the “hype” on the
Democratic side that success is bound to a
monumental turnout from “progressives” is just
that; an idea founded on hype’.

‘Remember, in America 24 percent of the people
self-identify as Democrat, and of those only 14
percent claim to be progressives; 40 percent of
Americans are Republicans and the remainder
decline to state; but Republicans outnumber
Democrats and they always turn out to vote’.

‘Progressive are not going to drive this
election for Democrats, but they can be the
impetus to put a Republican in the White House’.

‘It is noteworthy that among one candidate’s
supporters, Sanders, 20 percent said if their hero is not
the nominee, they will sit out the general
election’.

—————–

‘Despite the errant hype about how energized the
left is to put their champion in the White
House, and a populist movement never before seen
in American history, in both the Iowa caucuses
and New Hampshire primary Republicans garnered
significantly more votes than Democrats who were
‘super energized’ and enthusiastic’.

‘In fact, in both Iowa and New Hampshire numbers
for Democrats were well below what they were in
2008′.

‘What should terrify Democrats even more is the
Republican turnout in New Hampshire nearly broke
the record set by Democrats in 2008 that was a
record year of incredibly high voter turnout for
Democrats’.

———————

‘Most Americans who follow politics, even
casually, understand that making use of
hyperbole, feigning self-righteous indignation,
and angry rhetoric is part of the game
regardless that a fair amount of what is said is
hardly ever true; by design’.

‘One of the Democratic candidate’s supporters
are energized over an as of yet unknown kind of
“political revolution.”

‘Apparently the revolutions’ plan entails
changing Koch and tea party Republicans’ hearts
and minds to embrace what they have always
labeled tax and spend socialism’.

‘According to the narrative, after their
champion sweeps to victory as a Democrat, the
entire Congress will embrace the revolution and
“pass this massively transformative package of
legislation without delay.”

‘It is an exciting prospect and has energized a
large number of Democrats’.

‘The results of the Iowa caucuses and New
Hampshire primary fairly prove that Democrats,
both old and new, had better come to grips with
reality immediately or get ready for a
Republican president and Koch supermajority
Congress’.

From : http://www.politicususa.com/2016/02/17/democrats-trouble-iowa-hampshire.html

Blog Running – ‘blogroll amnesty day is here again’!!!

From the great people over at Skippy The Bush Kangaroo….

we are reminded by our good friend batocchio to remember that this is the 8th anniversary of the original and the 9th year of commemorating the traditional al weisel/jon swift memorial blogroll amnesty day memorium and celebration.

an explanation of the history and motivations behind this celebration can be found here. the rules, set out by blue gal, are here. ego satisfaction in the form of a meme-orandum post when this tradition was really taking off can be found here.

photo RIPBlogRollAmnestyDaycopy2.jpg

short version: blogtopia (and yes, we coined that phrase) only works if we support each other (no, it’s not very libertarian of us, thanks for noticing). so it behooves us all, even if we don’t have hooves, to give attention in the form of linkage to our favorite blogs that don’t get as much traffic as our own (paying it downward, as it were).

blogroll amnesty day will be celebrated here all weekend long. so please feel free to email us with any and all posts about b.a.d. and we will happily link to them.

be sure to stop by and say hello to

vagabond scholar
bad tux the snarky penguin
mike the mad biologist
naked capitalism
whiskey fire
the field negro
simply left behind

and we’d be remiss without thanking

john, susie, mike and the whole team at crooks and liars
blue gal
tengrain
driftglass
athenae and her gang at first draft
(existential shout out to former first draftian holden caufield, who used to blog here at skippy’s, and now no longer appears on the internet anywhere ever, by his own choice… how j.d. salinger of him!)
jesse over at pandagon

and of course, our one and only cookie jill

remember, blogging is like herd immunity. it doesn’t work unless we all participate!

From : http://xnerg.blogspot.com/2016/02/blogroll-amnesty-day-is-here-again.html

Blog Running – ‘5 Things America Will Lose If Conservatives Win In 2016’

‘Here are five things we’re going to lose horribly on if we just keep signing useless petitions and being outraged by the latest stupidity from the conservative media’.

5. ‘A woman’s right to choose: Emboldened by the Tea Party wave in 2010, women’s reproductive health has been a huge target for right-wing conservatives across the United States’.
‘If Republicans continue to keep control of state governments, as well as Congress, it’s only going to get worse’.

4. ‘Worker’s rights: In Texas and Oklahoma, companies can opt-out from worker’s compensation programs and determine their own payouts for workers who are injured or even killed while on the job’.
‘ An investigation by NPR and ProPublica found that almost 1.5 million workers in those states are subject to compensation plans that are not regulated by the government, and usually offer less benefits to those who are injured’.
‘Other states are likely to adopt these opt-out programs and it will only benefit corporations, not the working class’.

3. ‘Planned Parenthood: Even though abortion is legal and it is a small fraction of the services Planned Parenthood performs annually, the GOP wants to eliminate funding for the organization altogether’.
‘In Texas, Alabama and other states, conservative lawmakers have cut off Medicaid funding to the organization – in violation of federal law’.

2. ‘Voting rights: As we’ve seen in Alabama, voting rights are under attack across the country’.
‘Conservatives know that their policies are unpopular with a majority of the population, so they have to do whatever it takes to make it hard for people to vote’.

1. ‘Government assistance programs’:
‘Current GOP frontrunner Ben Carson has proposed eliminating Medicare and Medicaid if he is elected’.
‘Other candidates have proposed raising the retirement age and doing away with Social Security in favor of privately-run programs, because to Republicans, privatizing a government program is the answer to everything’.

From : http://www.forwardprogressives.com/5-things-america-will-lose-if-conservatives-win-in-2016/

 

Blog Running – ‘KILL ‘EM ALL … BUT DON’T DO ANYTHING WARLIKE’

 

From the great people over at  No More Mister Nice Blog…..

‘So to sum up’:

‘When it comes to ISIS, Americans don’t want ground troops’,

‘don’t want special forces’,

‘and are skittish about increasing the number of airstrikes –‘

‘but they’re solidly in favor of a more aggressive military response’.

‘60% of Americans supported investing more in the military campaign against ISIS’.

‘76% oppose deploying regluar grounds troops’.

‘65% oppose dispatching special forces’.

‘A slim majority favoring increased airstrikes’.

From : http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2015/11/kill-em-all-but-dont-do-anything-warlike.html