January 2017

Corporatist Clinton bitter-enders vs populists -- The Elephant in the Room Is a Donkey (Reflections on Kamala Harris) (Gaius Publius, Down with Tyranny)

Sam Seder once wisely said that during the Bush era, almost every Democrat and Democratic supporter looked like a solid progressive. It's only when Obama becomes president that you can see the difference between the Ezra Kleins of the world and the Elizabeth Warrens (my paraphrase).

But the recent Democratic primary widened those rifts — between the austerity-loving corporate enablers and the actual populists — and they may not close this time under the next Republican president. After all, in the face of real defeat — yes, I know, "she won the popular vote," but still, defeat pretty much up and down the line — the battle still rages in the Democratic Party. And it should.

Identity politics wrangling -- Nascent Anti-Trump Coalition Already Fracturing? (Nat Parry, Essential Opinion)

One early sign of the anti-Trump coalition’s fracturing came when a group of women decided after Hillary Clinton’s defeat that they would organize a “Million Women March” to commiserate the first major-party female presidential nominee’s electoral loss to Donald Trump, a misogynist.

The day after the election, a Hawaii woman named Teresa Shook created a Facebook event and invited a few dozen of her friends to march on Washington on Jan. 21, the day after Trump’s inauguration. The idea was picked up by a Hillary Clinton Facebook fan page called Pantsuit Nation, with more than three million members, and suddenly there were multiple event pages with thousands of women signing up.

The original name of the march, however, was hastily dropped after the organizers were accused of “cultural appropriation.” Apparently the organizers hadn’t considered that the name “Million Woman March” was already used in 1997 by a demonstration organized for black women.

We need to pull together to fight orange hitler! But wait, who is "we"?

A friend emailed a poorly-written Paul Krugman (NYT) column about Trump/Russia. The Clinton camp first floated this "Russian hacking" meme to distract from the unfavorable DNC leaks and now it's expanded to cover the entire election.
My reply:

I can't tell if you're being serious in your last message, but please don't send me any more emails with the words "Putin" or "Russia."
The DC elite's attempt to revive the Cold War in the aftermath of the election seems foolish.
Watching the entrenched Washington cliques fight it out with the incoming billionaire posse is fun but not with geopolitics (and nukes) involved.
Krugman should know this but his unabashed Clinton support has thrown him "off his nut."
I hope all is well, otherwise.
Best, Tom

If you read the Huffington Post (not advised), the president-elect is either a fascist... or a Nazi.
If you read certain other publications, he will be the designated bag-holder when the economy blows up.

James Howard Kunstler (subtle as ever):

The American people have been punked by their own government and their central bank, the Federal Reserve, for years and the jig is now up. In 2017 both will lose their authority and legitimacy, a very grave matter for the survival of this republic.

Insiders surely have seen this coming for a long time. The people running this so-called Deep State of overblown and overgrown institutions probably acted at first with the good intentions of keeping the national lifestyle afloat. But in the end (now approaching) they stooped to too much duplicity and deceit in the desperate attempt to not just preserve the system, but to protect their own reputations and personal perquisites. And now there ought to be some question with the election of 2016 that they have engineered all of this system fragility to blow up on Mr. Trump’s watch, so they can blame him for it. It was going to blow up anyway. But had Hillary Clinton won the election, at least the right gang would have had to take the blame — the people in charge for the past twenty years. Instead, Donald Trump has been elected Designated Bag-Holder.

Nomi Prins:

In November, Donald Trump’s victory further elevated stock markets, especially sectors most likely to be deregulated by the incoming billionaire club administration, like banks.

Yet, the idea that any President can control the economy with a tweet and a set of disparaging or aggrandizing comments is foolish. Once the hype of a reality TV show president subsides into prevailing political and economic uncertainty, stock and bond markets will end the year crumbling in the dust of broken promises.

But Keith Olbermann said he was Hitler...