Author: wrongologist

Saturday Soother – January 28, 2017

We’ve made it to Saturday, all the while trying to sort through the blizzard of executive orders issued by our Orange Overlord. As we cruise into the weekend, we need to reflect on Sen. Jeff Sessions, Trump’s nominee for Attorney General. The Senate Judiciary Committee will probably vote on the nomination on Tuesday, after which it will go to the full Senate for a confirmation vote.

Wrongo agrees with Charlie Pierce:

At a moment like this one, it simply will not do to have someone in the attorney general’s office who was deemed too racist to be a federal judge 30 years ago. It will not do to have someone in the attorney general’s office who launched a dirty-tricks prosecution of voting-rights activists when he was a U.S. Attorney in Alabama. It will not do to have someone in the attorney general’s office who greeted the gutting of the Voting Rights Act in 2013 by noting that it was “good for the South.”

Pierce says that no (zero) Democrats should vote for Sessions:

There is no room for compromise or horse-trading. The Democratic Party should stand for the expansion of the franchise and for a greater ease in exercising it.

Voting rights will be at risk if Sessions is confirmed. The AG will follow Trump’s lead and focus on a “voter fraud” investigation in the big liberal states and urban areas that do not vote Republican. This is something the right wing has been doing for years. From what Trump said this week to David Muir on ABC, he believes that the problem exists only in places he didn’t win. He told Muir that every one of the alleged 2 million to 3 million illegal votes went to Hillary Clinton.

If it isn’t clear by now, this is a powerful new national campaign of voter suppression coming down the road to a polling place near you. We don’t know at this point who will be heading Trump’s “investigation,” or what form it’s likely to take, but Jeff Sessions is just the man for the job.

We could also tell our Senators that they should not vote to confirm Betsy DeVos and Tom Price, but both will probably get a few Dem votes. Wrongo isn’t arguing for complete resistance as the only response to Trump, but we can’t appoint Sessions.

Will even a single Republican Senator have the backbone to vote against the president’s hand-picked bigot? The prospects are not heartening.

Glad that’s off of Wrongo’s chest. Time to grab a cup of Bengal Spice Chai tea, and mellow out with the Saturday Soother. Today we are going acapella with the University of North Carolina Clef Hangers. They have been around for 35 years, and have released 17 studio-produced albums. Here are the Clef Hangers doing “You Never Need Nobody”, a song by the Brooklyn NY-based The Lone Bellow:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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Are Donald Trump and Andrew Jackson Soul Mates?

President Trump has hung a portrait of Andrew Jackson in the oval office. Several of Trump’s spokespeople have heaped praise on Jackson, so Trump has picked Old Hickory as his populist role model.

Really? Did anyone on Trump’s staff even read the Cliffs Notes about Andrew Jackson? Here is the surface view:

A presidential candidate who strikes a wide range of observers, including leaders of his own party, as dangerously abrasive, arrogant, and racist. Partly because of those qualities, the candidate appeals stylistically to common-man voters who feel threatened by change, despite his being one of the super-rich himself. While this is Donald Trump in 2016, it also describes Andrew Jackson in the 1820s.

According to Benjamin Studebaker, when Jackson was elected, the accepted view was America needed strong economic growth to compete with Europe. Most thought the country needed to be industrialized quickly to turn us into an independent power. Tariffs should protect infant American industries from their established British competitors. Infrastructure investments should be directed towards transportation.

Jackson was uninterested in industrialization. He won the election because of slaveholding, agricultural states. The southern states had not industrialized, and they hated tariffs. Tariffs made British manufactured goods expensive, and made the price of Southern cotton uncompetitive. South Carolina attempted to nullify the tariffs, which led to tough talk and threats by Jackson to invade. But, ultimately, he signed legislation to reduce the South’s tariffs.

At the time, Jackson was praised for averting a violent confrontation, but his compromise left the issue of nullification unresolved. This eventually led to our Civil War.

The Second Bank of the United States (created by John Q. Adams, Jackson’s predecessor), was designed to stabilize prices and facilitate commerce. Jackson refused to renew the charter of the Second Bank of the US. Public monies were then directed to state banks, called “pet banks” since they were located in states that were Jackson’s core base of support. This deprived the industrial northeast of the investment funds it needed to grow.

The favored state banks began lending the new money feverishly, inflating land prices, and exposing the banks to undue risk.

Jackson blamed the resulting inflation on paper money, so he issued the “Specie Circular”, an executive order requiring all land purchases from the federal government to be made in gold and silver. This destroyed the value of the country’s paper currency, causing land prices to crash.

Executive orders can come back to bite you, Donald.

There is supreme irony that Jackson waged war on the Second Bank of United States, but he is on our $20 bill. Jackson found support for his economy policies among white men who felt threatened by changing from an agrarian to an industrial economy. But his war on the Bank, and the Democrats’ commitment to limited federal government helped propel the country into a four-year depression after the Panic of 1837.

Jackson created the spoils system. Thereafter, newly elected presidents would purge the civil service and hand out government jobs to friends, supporters, and even relatives. Jackson fired 10% of the federal workforce, replacing experienced hands with his buddies and lackeys. This practice continued for decades, ensuring that the federal government was consistently full of incompetents.

Jackson drained the swamp, and then recharged it with camp followers. Just like Trump!

Many on the right revere Jackson for the same reason they admire Donald Trump – he acts like a badass. Jackson killed people in duels. He spoke his mind. He may have rolled over on tariffs, but he used the word “treason” to describe South Carolina before he compromised. That made him seem tough.

The Right lets Jackson’s tough manner obscure the reality, that often he had little notion of the consequences of his actions. He sank the country’s economy for a decade, and handed its civil service over to generations of mismanagement.

A reappraisal of Jackson’s presidency forces us to look at the now-infamous policy of Indian Removal, whereby Jackson approved the confiscation of Native lands and then forcibly evicted them to the far West. He ignored John Marshall’s Supreme Court ruling that his Removal policy was unconstitutional.

He thought those in the abolitionist movement were traitors. His Postmaster General suppressed their mailings, and his party passed the Gag Rule in 1836 suppressing all antislavery petitions and discussion in Congress.

Trump’s new Gag Rule on Abortion limits the funding of global family planning providers if in any aspect of their work, they recommend, discuss, or even mention abortions to clients.

In most ways, it’s a fool’s errand to compare Trump to Andrew Jackson. Although there are gross similarities, Trump isn’t Jackson. Jackson was a military hero, but a failure at national policy. Trump has no heroic resume, and the jury is out on the success of his national policy.

For one thing, Trump confuses military school with military service.

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All Aboard The Bailout Train

In February 2014, Wrongo alerted that hedge funds and other Wall Street firms had been buying up single family homes, many of which had been foreclosed on during the housing crisis between 2007 and 2010:

Most rental houses in the US are owned by individuals…but a new breed has emerged: Wall Street-backed investment companies with billions of dollars at their disposal. In just the last two years, large investors have bought as many as 200,000 single-family houses and are now renting them out.

Tim G, a Wrongologist reader who is an expert in mortgage finance, commented at the time that he hoped that:

Fitch/Moody’s and any other rating agencies learned their lesson from 2007, and won’t (as you suggested) just slap AAA ratings on these. By definition these rental properties carry much more risk, since if they are vacant for any period, the incentive to keep paying drops quickly.

Well, slap they did. You know the drill from 2008; the new game was just like the old game: The new bundled securities were AAA rated by the same rating agencies. The bonds were sold to those seeking high yield without commensurately high risk.

Now we have a new wrinkle. Wolf Richter is reporting that Invitation Homes (owned by private equity giant, Blackstone) today owns 48,431 single-family homes. This makes Invitation Homes the largest landlord of single-family homes in the US. They just obtained government guarantees for $1 billion in rental-home mortgage backed securities. From Richter:

The disclosure came in an amended S-11 filing with the SEC on Monday in preparation for Invitation Homes’ IPO. Invitation Homes bought these properties out of foreclosure and turned them into rental properties, concentrated in 12 urban areas. The IPO filing lists $9.7 billion in single-family properties and $7.7 billion in debt.

The plan is to have a successful IPO, and then refinance some of the debt with the sale of $1 billion of government-guaranteed rental-home mortgage-backed securities.

Fannie Mae, a government-sponsored entity (GSE) that was bailed out, and then taken over by the US government during the 2008 financial crisis, is providing the guarantee of bond principal and interest, and the offering documents call them “Guaranteed Certificates”. More from Wolf: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

This is the first time ever that a government-sponsored enterprise has guaranteed single-family rental-home mortgage-backed securities, issued by a huge corporate landlord. It’s an essential step forward in financializing rents: taxpayer backing for funding the biggest landlords.

These government guarantees allow Invitation Homes to pay lower interest rates. The bottom line is that Invitation will have cheap financing for future home purchases, and thus lower costs and greater profits.

It’s a sweet deal: low-cost funding made possible by government guarantees, is a special gift that was agreed to by the Obama administration. Other corporate landlords will want to follow in Blackstone’s footsteps, and it is difficult to see how Fannie Mae will choose not to guarantee the other firms.

Bloomberg reported on a Dodd-Frank mandated stress test conducted by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. It showed that during the next severe economic downturn, Fannie Mae and its sister Freddie Mac would need between $49 billion and $126 billion in taxpayer bailout money.

Socialize the losses, Part Infinity.

The Blackstone deal looks like new policy: The government subsidizes the largest landlords, helping increase their profits from renting out the same single-family homes that individual homeowners lost to the same financial thugs during the housing foreclosure crisis. The mission of Fannie Mae is to promote home ownership, not to give real estate entrepreneurs a way to limit their losses.

This guarantee was worked out under Obama’s watch, but Blackstone did not make it public until it updated its filing with the SEC this week. The timing is curious. The public disclosure comes after the Trump team is in charge, meaning Obama wouldn’t face criticism, and the Trump Administration will certainly let the deal stand.

This is worse than the government’s gift of TARP to Wall Street. That at least had optics that said it protected Main Street. But, this securitized mortgage market doesn’t involve Main Street, and the market isn’t even in big trouble.

This isn’t a bailout. It’s a grift. The Kleptocracy is now more entrenched than in 2008.

How ironic. Big business gets a sweetheart government deal, while the GOP moves to cut social programs.

Will this add new jobs to the Trump economy?

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First Person Report From the Women’s March

(Below is a guest post from Nicole Dodd, a recent graduate from UC Santa Barbara. She has moved to Washington DC to begin a career in government service. The photos below are ©Nicole Dodd)

“Women’s rights are human rights.” – Hillary Rodham Clinton, 1995

This past Saturday, I was one of almost 500,000 women and men participating in the Women’s March on Washington. From 8 am until well after 8 pm, the streets were crowded with women wearing pink ‘pussy hats,’ carrying indignant signs, and chanting out against our newest president.

The movement was powerful, and greatly exceeded expectations: the Washington March itself had almost 2.5x the amount of people it was projected to have, and the sister marches across the States and the world had incredible turnout. After having seen so many red “Make America Great Again” caps and rioters in the streets just twenty-four hours earlier, I was encouraged to see an influx of pink hats participating in a protest that remained peaceful and could spark a global movement.

From an outside perspective, it may seem that the Women’s March had no direction and no goal. Millions of people took to the streets to protest, but for what? On the Women’s March website, it lists the ‘unifying principles’ of the march: ending violence, reproductive rights, LGBTQIA rights, worker’s rights, civil rights, disability rights, immigrant rights, and even environmental justice. From what I saw, participants in the March held signs that advocated for each of the unifying principles of the March. However, the heart of the matter is this: President Trump was elected without a majority popular vote, and while he has promised to be ‘a president for all Americans,’ his words and actions have proven that he will not.

While January 21st was an important first step in the fight against the Orange Overlord’s administration, the fight in no way stops here. As a pragmatist, I realize that many women and men will walk away after this weekend thinking that they’ve completed their democratic duty by simply showing up and chanting angrily for a few hours.

Despite this, I am extremely hopeful. Many speakers at the Washington March implored the participants to get politically active. We were told to write our representatives every single day, join and become active in the organizations that we were working to support, and finally, to run for public office. Protesters held signs echoing those same sentiments, urging us to vote and to get involved. To top it off, the Women’s March website published an article outlining what exactly we can do during Trump’s first 100 days to make sure our voices are heard in the Capitol.

In the same way that it is our democratic responsibility to vote in local, state and national elections, it is also our democratic responsibility to peacefully protest and make sure that our representatives are accurately representing our interests. It’s hard to evaluate if the Women’s March will lead to concrete actions – the commitment of the crowd could easily be attributed to mob mentality, and people lose resolve over time. Still, the Women’s March was the largest protest to ever occur over the inauguration of a US President, and that fact cannot go unnoticed. My hope is that, with clear guidance and resources from the Women’s March administrators, the majority of participants in Saturday’s movement will abandon their excuses and take it upon themselves to exercise their democratic rights and responsibilities.

I can promise you that this protester will refuse to sit by idly, and will take action.

My favorite chant from Saturday sums up the movement perfectly:  “This is what democracy looks like”. Here are a few photos from the DC March. This one shows size of the crowd:

Sign from person near the Smithsonian:

One of the main purposes of the March was to address reproductive rights:

“I’m with her” sign shows marchers’ solidarity. View towards the Washington Monument:

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Trump’s Revealing Visit to the CIA

“And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” John 8:32, (Etched into the wall of the main lobby of the CIA)

On his first full day in office, President Trump spoke at the CIA headquarters, in front of the hallowed CIA Memorial Wall. The wall memorializes over 100 CIA persons who died while on duty.

Trump gave a rambling, self-serving speech suggesting that the media had created a feud between himself and the intelligence agencies (except he created it). He complained that the media had mischaracterized the crowd size at his inauguration. Then he crossed a bright line:

Probably almost everybody in this room voted for me…But I will not ask you to raise your hands.

CIA personnel do not speak about policy, only about analysis. Policy, they feel, belongs to politicians. Trump bringing up whether they voted for him, set off alarm bells inside the agency, according to ex-CIA chief John Brennan. The CIA’s concern is that last time intelligence was highly politicized, the pressure came from Bush and Cheney. It produced the notorious National Intelligence Estimate on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that the Agency hasn’t lived down.

The most alarming thing Trump said, however, regarded Iraq: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

The old expression [is] to the victor belong the spoils. You remember, you always say keep the oil. I wasn’t a fan of Iraq, I didn’t want to go into Iraq. But I will tell you, when we were in, we got out wrong. I always said…if we kept the oil you probably wouldn’t have ISIS because that’s where they made their money in the first place…But, okay. Maybe we’ll have another chance. But the fact is, we should have kept the oil…

And Trump was wrong again. From Juan Cole:

The UN Charter and other treaty instruments that are part of US law actually abolished the principle of ‘to the victors go the spoils.’ Conquering states in a war are not allowed to annex territory from the vanquished as of 1945.

That wasn’t all. Saying that the US should “take the oil” in Iraq creates a yuuge issue for the 6,000 US troops in Iraq. Trump’s unthinking talk could put them in danger from Iraqis. Why would they continue to see us as allies against ISIS, when our president says “take the oil”? This isn’t speculation. Juan Cole quotes Borzou Daragahi of Buzzfeed who says that some Iraqis are now indeed ‘pissed’ and ready to fight to keep their oil away from the US.

Trump has no idea about Iraq’s political geography. Most oil in Iraq is either in Shiite territory (the South) near Basra (the vast majority of the oil that Iraq pumps) or up in Kurdish-held territory near Kirkuk. ISIS in Iraq had relatively little access to Iraqi petroleum.

His idea about ISIS profiting from oil might be true in Syria, but he was speaking about Iraq.

Trump doesn’t realize that you can’t export oil against its people’s will. They have too many ways to sabotage the effort. Moreover, you’d have to overthrow the current Iraqi government (who would never agree to Trump taking the oil), and then re-occupy Iraq.

And if the US ‘took’ Iraqi oil in a way that reduced oil profits for Iraqis, it would enable ISIS to overthrow the then weakened government and install an ISIS Caliphate, the exact opposite of our current policy!

In any case, the US doesn’t need Iraq’s oil. China’s economy has slowed enough that world oil demand has leveled. Fracking in the US has also lowered our needs for more imported oil. So the fact is, US petroleum companies wouldn’t want to “take” Iraqi petroleum.They don’t need it, and wouldn’t want the security hassles it would create.

At 7:35 AM on Sunday, Trump tweeted: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Had a great meeting at CIA Headquarters yesterday, packed house, paid great respect to Wall, long standing ovations, amazing people. WIN!

CBS reported that there were about 40 Trump invites and, while the front rows were senior CIA who were not cheering (on the video you can see their heads pivot to the cheers and laughter while not joining in). The cheers came from the Trump claque.

No standing “O”. No truth.

And worst of all, no thinking before speaking.

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Monday Wake Up Call – January 23, 2017

After the Women’s March, both Trump and his press bunny, Sean Spicer, said that the numbers of attendees at the Trump Inaugural was the largest of all time. How can Spicer explain this?

Why bother explaining? From Media Matters:

In a surreal turn, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer tonight denied reality, lashed out at the press for its supposed “shameful and wrong” coverage of the size of the crowd that attended President Trump’s January 20 inaugural festivities, instructed the White House press corps on what they “should be writing and covering,” declared that the administration intended to “hold the press accountable,” and left the briefing room without taking questions

For those who think they can trust Spicer, here are a few more links:

Trump inauguration crowd: Sean Spicer’s claims versus the evidence (Guardian)

White House Disputes Inauguration Attendance Estimates (WSJ)

Trump inauguration draws nearly 31 million U.S. television viewers (Reuters) Absolute numbers were fewer than Obama, better than Clinton and both Bushes.

Trumpism Corrupts: Spicer Edition (Weekly Standard)

With False Claims, Trump Attacks Media on Turnout and Intelligence Rift (NYT)

If Spicer wanted to avoid a confrontation, he could have shut down the discussion by saying that Trump’s supporters had to work on a Monday, because of the terrible jobs situation in America. But he tried ju-jitsu instead.

We should be very concerned about the lying and the angry effort to turn the tables on the press by Trump and his press secretary. They wouldn’t even tell the truth for something that is totally knowable, and then they attacked those who reported truthfully.

It is clear that the Trump administration plans to bully the press until: a) they stop attending press conferences, and/or b) stop digging for the real facts behind any bald-faced Trump administration assertion.

There are just three choices here:

  • You think lying is wrong
  • You think lying is OK
  • You are a hypocrite who moves between options 1 & 2 depending on whether you’re benefiting from the lie, or being harmed by it

The Overlord thinks he has no need to speak the truth, because he can just deny that whatever he disagrees with is true, and have some 20 million of his diehard twitter followers re-trumpet that he is correct.

This is a real threat to democracy! It is looking like Trump will be the Bullshitter-in-Chief, broadcasting a daily smokescreen of “fake news” (formerly, propaganda) while his cabinet of billionaires work to enrich themselves and Trump’s friends, and the Republican Congress tries to turn America into Paul Ryan’s granny-starver version of Ayn Rand’s paradise.

Bush’s and Rove’s “we manufacture our own reality” ultimately failed, and it seems Trump is trying the same thing but with a much weaker hand. We thought that Bush was incompetent and couldn’t do the job, and he was well on his way to proving that when 9/11 happened, and suddenly everyone was “rallying around our president“. Trump would also be seen as a terrific leader by a majority if he was talking through a bullhorn from the top of a pile of rubble.

And Trump won’t miss any opportunities to tweet glowing assessments of his performance. Thus, he has no need to engage in an honest evaluation of anything when a quick, preemptive hit works so well for him.

So time for the press to wake up and flay the Trump administration whenever they dissemble. The press now has a new organizing principle called the quest for truth. Something that has been missing for nearly 30 years.

To help them wake up, here are the Eagles with “New Kid in Town” from their 1976 “Hotel California” album. Released as the first single from the album, the song became a number-one hit in the US. Glenn Frey died late last year. He is missed. Here is “New Kid in Town” in a live version from their show in Washington, DC in 1977 at the old Capitol Center:

Time to hold the new kid responsible for his lying.

Sample Lyrics:

There’s talk on the street, it sounds so familiar.
Great expectations, everybody’s watching you.
People you meet they all seem to know you,
Even your old friends treat you like you’re something new.

Johnny-come-lately, the new kid in town,
everybody loves you, so don’t let them down.

There’s talk on the street, it’s there to remind you
That it doesn’t really matter which side you’re on.
You’re walking away and they’re talking behind you.
They will never forget you till somebody new comes along.

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can view the video here.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – January 22, 2017

Did everyone remember to turn their clocks back by 50 years last night? The dust has settled on the Women’s March on Washington. The turnout was very impressive, not only in Washington, but in other cities across the US. Let us remember that women protesting ultimately led to them getting the right to vote. They helped bring about civil rights legislation, a minimum-wage, and the abolition of child labor in this country. This is both their right and their obligation.

Women’s March outdraws the Inauguration:

And people said Clinton’s slogan “Stronger Together” was terrible:

What to expect after inaugurating the Overlord:

The torch was passed:

There was a chill in the White House on Trump’s first day:

Most federal regulations exist to implement legislation. Certainly there are regulations that aren’t working as intended, that are more burdensome than needed to address the problem, that prove counter-productive in practice, and so need fixing. But ideologues have no interest in rational governance. Anti-regulatory zeal is like religious dogma to them, but driven by greed.

Trump’s real change is to make Monopoly great again:

 

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Saturday Soother – January 21, 2017

Did Wrongo miss anything yesterday? We had multiple meetings, and thus, no chance to see the “You Bet Your Country” reality show that premiered in DC.

Look on the bright side, there are now only 1,459 days left in the reign of DT, so two things to focus on:

  • Work hard to save the ACA, and
  • Remember to toast to the health of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer every day.

Today is the Women’s March in Washington DC. Two days in a row of firsts for our Orange Overlord. Yesterday, he was sworn in as the 45th president. Today, he sees his first mass protest in the form of the Women’s March, and companion marches (600 at last count) around the country and the world.

New York Magazine tweaks the main stream media’s coverage thusly: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

…the media’s treatment of the [women’s] march has been so fretful that you’d be forgiven for thinking that this grass-roots demonstration of hundreds of thousands on behalf of women’s rights is an example of feminism in crisis and disarray.

Whenever there are protests from the left, we’re always adjured that we’re doing it wrong and/or that our “message” is defocused or unclear. Leftwing protests get little coverage in the MSM. Wrongo has observed that when there are rightwing protests, they are typically universally covered by the MSM. Plus their “message” is always described as clear, and unequivocal.

There have been protests at most recent inaugurals, but they have been generally along the parade route, as there were in DC today. The car and trash can burnings made today’s DC protests look more like what we see in European capitals.

What the Women’s March envisions is a protest that creates as much buzz as the inauguration itself. That means the organizers are attempting to create a widespread, and diverse coalition for this event. The hope is: (1) a huge crowd shows up to protest; (2) the protest is marked by its size and the quality of its direct action (without violence); (3) the obvious fissures in the coalition remain unclear to the public until long after the march.

The March on Washington in August, 1963 was one of the largest political demonstrations in American history. The organizing idea was a protest for “jobs and freedom”. You may not remember that John Lewis’s original speech at the March on Washington was highly controversial. Now, 54 years down the road, no one cares, because of the power of Lewis’s personal history, and the fact that the march ultimately led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The March on Washington was broadcast on TV, because we had not yet become jaded about protests, and the White House was vulnerable from both sides of the racial divide. The Women’s March is only expected to be live-streamed via cell phone. The networks will give us highly edited snippets on the evening news.

The value of these large public protests are in building a more unified opposition movement. Perhaps it will happen this time, although there is a risk that it fizzles like the Occupy Movement did.

The Tea Party began building their national presence with a rally of maybe 7000 people in tri-corner hats, enabled by a few Congress Critters. That was enough for the media to legitimize their birth. Perhaps it will work for the Women’s March: it will become a viable movement only if the commitment to messaging and building a national presence in Congressional districts and statehouses is carried through.

What will be more significant for the future are the state capitol and major city rallies once the protesters leave Washington. Resistance IS the message: The voters did not deliver Trump an overwhelming mandate to do the things his juggernaut is planning to shower on America.

Handled correctly that could make Trump and the GOP vulnerable. The Wrongologist will post a first-person report from an attendee at the Women’s March, on Tuesday.

But today is Saturday, and you need to mellow out a little. Here is something radically different, yet completely familiar. This is the Austrian brass ensemble Mnozil Brass performing Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”. What better tribute to Freddie Mercury? These guys are demonstrably horny and have lots of brass. High energy, and completely entertaining:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJTIJRoEWPE

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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January 20, 2017 – Trump Inaugural Edition

Today is the Trump Inaugural. So many preparations, and so much detail for the transition team to worry about. From the no stone left unturned department, comes this from the WSJ:

 Workers preparing for the Trump Inaugural have taped over the name of the company — “Don’s Johns” — that has long supplied portable restrooms for major outdoor events in the nation’s capital…Virginia-based Don’s Johns calls itself the Washington area’s top provider of portable toilet rentals. But the name apparently strikes too close to home for inaugural organizers.

Too close to Donald John for Donald John Trump? Of course. Somebody placed blue tape over the company name on dozens of portable restrooms installed near the Capitol for the inauguration. The company says they didn’t do it. But, the company’s name is clearly blocked from the TV cameras:

Once Donald J. Trump becomes the 45th president of the US, he will certainly push the agenda that got him elected. We all will need a way to sort the signal from the noise that we will hear from both his partisans and his opposition (which includes the Wrongologist). When you hear people raising reasoned questions and objections to Trump’s proposed policies, odds are that you’re listening to the kind of dissent that’s essential to our democracy, and you ought to take it seriously. For the kinds of arm-waving, emotional, knee-jerk support (or criticism) that you will hear every day, feel free to ignore that. You will know the knee-jerk stuff, since it will be sung in harmony by all the other partisans. And the media will repeat it often for your consideration.

Wrongo has serious problems with Trump, but is hopeful that his administration will:

  • Live up to his populist domestic promises, and
  • Simplify our country’s confusing foreign policy

If he normalizes relations with Russia, extracts us from the messes in Iraq and Syria and if he encourages domestic jobs growth, Wrongo will likely sign up for all of that. If he pushes through a big infrastructure bill that isn’t a wealth transfer to corporations, Wrongo will probably go along with that as well.

Wrongo does not trust Trump or the GOP on health care insurance. He worries that Republicans will throw a number of Americans under the bus, causing a great deal of unnecessary pain.

You can be sure that Trump is going to try to do some terrible things over the next four years, such as appointing ideologues to the Supreme Court. But, Congressional Republicans will clearly attempt far worse things than will The Overlord.

So the terrible fact is, we have to count on Trump to rein in the worst of the GOP’s ideas and instincts.

Needing to trust Donald Trump is enough to frighten anyone.

Trump tweets continually to rally his supporters while simultaneously manipulating the media. It’s unnerving. Saying that Trump is terrifying, while correct, is useless. The most obsessive of his opponents focus on worst-case scenarios that are designed to rally (and raise money from) the anti-Trump troops among us. Sadly, that strategy largely guarantees that the opposition will look disorganized and fragile. It also causes the American center-left to be fragmented issue by issue, and therefore, unable to broadly challenge the GOP, at least in the short run.

The Dems need to coalesce around only the potentially win-able issues. Otherwise, they should “just say no” to any Trump legislation intended to weaken or break our social contract. Sen. Schumer is correct when he says that the GOP needs to own 100% of the pain they cause the average person, whenever they break the contract. Any Democrat that breaks ranks to support issues like cuts to Medicare or privatization of Social Security must be challenged from the left in the next primary.

Democrats did not believe they would be in this political mess. They are trying to find their footing, but establishment Democrats want to simply tweak the message, and stay the course.

However, the battle against Trump and the GOP majority must move from “Republican Lite” to a fight to put social justice and progressivism back on the table as viable options for all Americans.

Otherwise, it will be a precipitous fall from political relevancy for Democrats.

Establishment Democrats who profit from the status quo, have no incentive to come up with an agenda that appeals to people who are suffering because of that status quo. The great weakness of Hillary Clinton’s campaign was that she aimed her appeals at the minority of voters who would benefit from the established neoliberal order, while largely ignoring those who suffered under it.

That decision could cost the Dems for a generation.

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Is It Legitimate To Say Trump’s Not Legitimate?

“As our case is new, we must think anew and act anew” – Lincoln

Everybody’s been talking about the dust up between Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) and Donald Trump. Lewis’s statement that Trump is not a legitimate president obviously hit our Overlord-elect in a soft, squishy spot, and he immediately lashed out at Lewis.

Advocates from both sides rushed to defend their guy’s actions. Lots of people are saying “not my president”, which doesn’t necessarily imply illegitimacy as much as disapproval, but many like the sound of saying Trump is illegitimate:

  • There are misguided people who sincerely think that Trump wasn’t elected in a fair election, that votes were somehow stolen from Hillary Clinton, despite the lack of evidence to support that contention.
  • There are others who think the result was unfairly influenced by outside forces ranging from the FBI here at home, to foreign governments, principally Russia. If you believe that FBI Director Comey’s actions were illegitimate, or that Russia intervened, you could conclude that the result may be illegitimate.

But, most think the election results reflect what happened in the voting booth; that the outcome was how people voted, and Trump won according to the rules.

Charles Blow in the NYT defined two types of legitimacy: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

It is true that Donald Trump is, by all measures of the law, the legitimate president-elect and will legitimately be inaugurated our 45th president on Friday…There simply is no constitutional or statutory mechanism to nullify the installation of an elected president based on election influencing, even by a hostile state actor. The framers of the Constitution had no way of anticipating digital warfare being used in a propaganda attack. The Constitution was ratified before electric lights were invented.

But there is another way of considering legitimacy, another test that his election doesn’t meet: That is when legitimacy is defined as “conforming to recognized principles or accepted rules and standards.”

Here, [John] Lewis and his fellow believers are on solid footing.

Trump overreacted to Lewis, saying that John Lewis’s Congressional district is poverty stricken, and all Lewis does is talk, Trump is simply wrong on the facts. Lewis’s district includes a combination of prosperous and less prosperous bits of Atlanta. From Atrios:

But basically this is Trump’s view that all black people live in hellholes and all urban areas not within 15 feet of his golden palace in the sky are hellholes…Which is fine, he’s entitled to his preferences. But 70 years on this Earth and it seems like he’s seen his penthouse, some golf courses, the occasional glance out his limo window, and that’s it, other than 24/7 cable news. Strange life, given his resources.

Charles Blow reminds us: (brackets and emphasis by the Wrongologist)

[Trump is] A lecher attacking a legend; a man of moral depravity attacking a man of moral certitude; an intellectual weakling attacking a warrior for justice…Trump attacks Lewis as, “All talk, talk, talk — no action”; Lewis, who repeatedly thrust his body unto the breach for justice, who was arrested, beaten and terrorized, including during the time that young Trump was at his well-heeled schools, receiving draft deferments from the Vietnam War.

In fact, one of Trump’s five deferments was in 1965, the same year as the Selma marches and “Bloody Sunday,” during which Lewis was struck so violently by a state trooper wielding a billy club that Lewis’s skull was fractured.

Let’s stop focusing on whether the Overlord-elect is “legitimate”.  The important thing is that we now have a president who wants to help Putin destroy the European Union. He wants to dismantle NATO, tear up the Iran Nuclear Agreement, and confront China.

At home, we will lose the ACA. There will be malicious surgery to Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid. Corporate and personal income taxes (at least for the wealthy) will go down. (In fact, the rash of corporate commitments to build new production facilities in the US may be in anticipation of a corporate tax deal). We may see a Value Added Tax (VAT) of 20%-30% to pay for it all. VAT’s fall disproportionately on the middle and lower classes.

There will be ideologically-driven Supreme Court appointments as well.

It is worth emphasizing that Trump has the most conservative Senate and House since at least 1930. Part of the reason he is dangerous is that the restraint centrist Republicans once placed on Republican Presidents is largely gone.

America’s center and left are so weak, they can’t stand against the programs that conservative Republicans, the Tea Party and the alt-right coalition that will govern us, are now preparing.

The question shouldn’t be whether Trump was elected legitimately, that ship has sailed.

But how will we derail his program?

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