https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-big-infrastructure-plan-its-a-trap/2016/11/18/5b1d109c-adae-11e6-8b45-f8e493f06fcd_story.html?utm_term=.d0491138f65b

By Ronald A. Klain November 18
Ronald A. Klain served as assistant to President Obama and oversaw the team implementing the American Recovery and Renewal Act from 2009-2011. He was an adviser to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign. The views expressed here are solely his own.

As the White House official responsible for overseeing implementation of President Obama’s massive infrastructure initiative, the 2009 Recovery Act, I’ve got a simple message for Democrats who are embracing President-elect Donald Trump’s infrastructure plan: Don’t do it. It’s a trap. Backing Trump’s plan is a mistake in policy and political judgment they will regret, as did their Democratic predecessors who voted for Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts in 1981 and George W. Bush’s cuts in 2001.

These sound like wise words to me. When will the Dems learn. And the article details lots of ways the plan is likely a boondoggle that won't create many jobs.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/11/donald-trump-building-team-of-racists.html

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign bludgeoned modern norms about the acceptability of racism. The candidate proposed a religious test for immigrants, and called a federal judge unfit on the grounds of his heritage. Trump could have decided to put the racial demagoguery of the campaign behind him, and it could have been remembered as a divisive ploy to win that did not define his administration, like George Bush’s manipulation of white racial panic to defeat Michael Dukakis in 1988. But Trump, perhaps predictably, is making a different choice. His early staffing choices are redefining the boundaries of acceptable racial discourse in Republican politics.

Michael Flynn, Trump’s new national security adviser, would be disqualified from a normal administration on multiple grounds. He is paid by authoritarian regimes in Turkey and Russia, as well as Russia’s propaganda apparatus. Multiple figures who worked with him in the military describe him as “unhinged,” a highly negative quality for a primary foreign-policy adviser.

The singular belief that lies at the core of Flynn’s worldview is indiscriminate hatred of Islam. George W. Bush’s administration took pains to distinguish terrorists who use Islam to justify murder from the peaceful majority. Since then, most Republicans have adopted the irresponsible talking point that it is essential to use the words “radical Islam” rather than phrasing calculated to win over Muslim moderates. Flynn takes this reasoning several steps further. He openly endorses indiscriminate fear of the entire religion:

Jeff Sessions, Trump’s new attorney general, originally had the political profile of a white reactionary Alabama politician in the Old South mode. The Senate rejected his bid for a federal judgeship in 1986 over a series of racist remarks he’d made, some of which he confirmed. Sessions called the NAACP “un-American” and accused it of “forcing civil rights down the throats of people,” and he allegedly called a black lawyer “boy” and warned him to be careful how he addressed white people.

THIS MUST NOT STAND

To us, the results of the election were freaking shocking. How could anyone vote for that crazy, awful Trump?

But I realized that a significant number of people just don't pay that much attention to the election until the last week or so. They don't follow all the ins and outs, details of what stupid crazy thing Trump said.

They might hear, oh, he said something controversial, or it's a crazy election season-- but nothing negative will really sink in to them.

It's hard to imagine such undecided people, but they are definitely out there.

ALSO, the public has a short memory.

So in the last couple weeks of the campaign, the media had really normalized Trump. They just acted like he had a normal campaign, and he was going all over the place having huge rallies. He was still saying some crazy stuff but the media didn't report it. Then the Comey announcement brought the email scandal back to life, and it had to be a blow that hurt Hillary with last minute voters.

And after 8 years of Obama, there will be a bias to go to the GOP for swing, undecided voters.

First of all, it was just a bad cycle for Dems. It's historically hard to hold onto the WH after 8 years for the same party. The sad realization I had last night was how for so many people-- maybe you could call them low information partisan voters-- the only really important thing in this recent election was that their "team" won after they had to put up with the other "team" for eight years.

Second of all, clearly it was a weird year, with Trump. Despite his horrible behavior, he played the media like a fiddle and we definitely under-estimated how much voters would be turned off by him. And he was clearly helped by the media and a lot of unfortunate hacking that was out of our control.

Third, while I strongly think Hillary was massively and unfairly smeared in this campaign, she was just not the best candidate for various historical reasons. We under-estimated how much the email scandal hurt her.

Fourth, there is a lot of chance in elections, and you can't plan everything out. Sometimes you get lucky with a candidate, such as Obama, and sometimes you get totally screwed, such as with Hillary and Al Gore.

Fifth, we are still a very closely divided country politically, between liberal and conservative.

Sixth, this was a close election, mainly decided by a few percentage points in rust-belt states.

Seventh, overall the Democratic candidate did very well in getting votes but lost in the electoral college-- this was not some major repudiation of the Democratic party or "neoliberalism".

Eighth, from other races that occurred this cycle, there's no sign America is ready to shift to socialism (single payer lost HUGELY in CO) or even that this was such a big "change" election (most incumbents voted back in). Americans are perpetually upset by DC and want change, there was nothing new in that, except after 8 years of one president, this was felt more acutely by the right.

The bigger issue right now, I think is, what is the best way for Dems to deal with the incipient fascism from a Trump presidency. I'm not sure working with him is the best idea.

Great stuff.

I think it was bogus, most Dems do too.

But MANY people really think she broke the law and got off by being an elite in the government (never mind Trump's own corruption).

Nonetheless, maybe it was a huge mistake for Bernie to blow it off early on in the primaries.

If he'd taken it seriously, perhaps he could've won, or gotten her to have a better explanation for it.

Granted, I think there were so many factors against her, and I think she was royally screwed no matter what-- the election was rigged. But it is ironic that Bernie shot down the one thing that could've helped him and maybe helped us win.

Autocracy like in Russia?

Pure kleptocracy to enrich himself and his kids?

Or something much darker, like pure fascism or even purging of non-whites?

Is genocide out of the realm of possibility?

Personally I wouldn't put anything past this monster. He's easily the sickest, most sociopathic person elected president in my lifetime.

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/11/watch-keith-olbermanns-urgent-election-day-plea-a-vote-for-trump-is-national-suicide/

"Clinton directed her maid to print out classified materials"
http://nypost.com/2016/11/06/clinton-directed-her-maid-to-print-out-classified-materials/

It certainly sounds bad taken at face value, but almost no news outlets have picked it up.

Of course the right is going bananas over it.


My question is-- is it just completely bogus, or is there some element of truth to it? Is there a debunking on it somewhere?

Overall, it sounds kind of hard to believe. My guess is it's disinfo put out by some FBI agents, similar to the wild stories put out during the Clinton WH years.

-- they just hate Hillary a lot.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/clinton-voters-arent-just-voting-against-trump/

The latest ABC News survey reveals that, in fact, Clinton’s voters feel about as positively about their candidate as any candidate’s supporters have felt about their own preferred candidate since 1980. Trump voters are less enthusiastic about him: Since 1980, no group of supporters has been less affirmative in its support for its candidate.

And why would they like him, anyway? He's a creep in every possible way.