From the Los Angeles Times:
Americans who voted against Trump are feeling unprecedented dread and despair
Dread of the Trump presidency is weighing on many American families.
Dec 21, 2016I have never seen anything quite like the grief being felt by the majority of American voters who did not vote for Donald Trump.
Back in 1980, there was disappointment among Democrats when Ronald Reagan won. In 2000, after the long Florida recount and the intrusion of the Supreme Court into the decision, there were plenty of upset people who thought Al Gore, not George W. Bush, deserved to be president. But the losing voters in those elections were not despondent. They were not breaking out in tears weeks later. They were not waking up each morning with feelings of dread about what was to come.
This time it is different and, in my experience, unique. This is not simply a case of Hillary Clinton supporters being bad losers. For most of those who feel traumatized by what happened on Nov. 8, this is not about the candidate who won the popular vote, yet lost the election. It is about the candidate who was picked as president by the electoral college on Monday. People are mourning because the fate of their country will now be in the hands of an intellectually disinterested, reckless, mendacious narcissist.
It is not just Democrats. There are plenty of conservatives and Republicans among those feeling depressed. Their party has been captured by a man who has no bedrock belief in any principle; a man whose only allegiance appears to be to himself.
I absolutely agree with this.
A youtuber that I listen to says that The Hunger Games are upon us.
I believe that she is correct.
I can be called a political junkie. I accept that I am more involved in politics than the Average American. What I can’t accept is that a group of ignorant people cast their ballots, or didn’t cast a ballot at all and the rest of us must suffer the consequences of their actions, all the while, they’re coming up with excuses about what they did.
This is not 2000, where the left, and their accusations of what they believed George W. Bush would do were just theories.
This is not 2004, where we knew what they were about, in how they had exploited 9/11 and failed to bring this country together. How they used it to try and divide us, and allowed a demonization of Muslims, not only here but around the world to foment.
It’s also not 2000, because it was an internal matter ‘settled’ by one of the branches of the division of powers set forth by the U.S. Constitution. It went against the grain, of all that we knew instinctively, but, we swallowed it.
No. 2016 is something altogether different.
It’s a major political party, in concert, with a foreign power, to undermine the sovereignty of the United States of America. How is that not treason?
They are so utterly consumed with power, that they would allow this country’s sovereignty to be undermined by a foreign country.
They are not loyal Americans. Not in any sense of the word.
So, yes , we are offended as patriotic Americans.
Another reason why we are offended is because WE KNOW the extent of the EVIL in their political will.
There is no guessing as to what they will do.
We see what they will do . We’ve seen what they’ve done on the state level.
They poisoned an American town, and deliberately sabotaged the means by which that town could get recourse.
They stripped away democracy in Michigan.
They voter suppressed Americans.
They are trying to eliminate not only a woman’s right to an abortion, but also birth control, so that she cannot determine for herself when she will have a child.
They are willing to harm MILLIONS of Americans by taking away their healthcare.
The attack on Planned Parenthood is an attack on access to decent, affordable healthcare for millions of low-income women – and they don’t care.
They want to sell off our natural parks to the highest bidder, instead of preserving them for future generations.
They want to get us into untold wars, which will kill our wonderful members of the military.
They want to destroy the American Social Safety Net : Social Security and Medicare.
These aren’t theoretical. These are actual things that they’ve proposed, voted on, and tried to do on a state level.
The only ones holding them off from the Hunger Games have been Senator Harry Reid, when he was Senate Majority Leader, and President Barack Obama.
But, now, with the illegitimate election of a racist, fascist , sexual predator on November 8th….
THIS is the EVIL that you hath brought to us.
These next four years ARE going to be as horrible as we can imagine them to be.
He is stocking his cabinet with people as wretched as himself.
Our very existence is being threatened.
EVERYTHING we take for granted, from safe water, to safe food, to banks being on a leash, to the basic understanding that we should NEVER use nuclear weapons..
All that is out the door.
There is no middle ground here.
There’s nothing that we have in common.
They’re offended that those of us, you know, the MAJORITY OF THE VOTERS WHO VOTED FOR HILLARY CLINTON..
Have absolutely no interest in finding common ground with people’s whose purposes are nothing but evil.
The Muslim Registry?
I don’t think so.
The repeal of Obamacare, which will affect 20 million Americans?
No.
The destruction of Planned Parenthood and the loss of those crucial medical services to women across the country?
No.
The deportation of a million DREAMers from the only country they can remember?
No.
Working with a man, who is racist in word and professional deed as the Chief Law Enforcement Officer of this country?
No.
Working with a man, as Secretary of State, whose allegiance is not to this country, but to an oil company?
No.
Working with a woman to dismantle public education, and she tries to sell the sham and fraud of charter schools – looting the public trough for them?
No.
Working with them, as they try and sell that bullshyt infrastructure plan, which is nothing but another privatization of public assets scheme?
No.
There IS no common ground.
And, don’t try the bullshyt of ‘respect the Office of the President.’
We will give him the same amount of respect that the GOP gave to President Barack Obama II over this past 8 years.
The respect of meeting on January 20, 2009, in the midst of the greatest Economic Downturn since the Great Depression and CHOSE ECONOMIC TREASON AGAINST THIS COUNTRY, rather than work with this President to try and correct the economic ship.
EVERYTHING President Obama has achieved, has been IN SPITE OF the GOP, not because they worked with him on anything.
We will show the level of respect that was shown as member upon member of the GOP peddled the unadulterated RACISM of BIRTHERISM, while NONE of the GOP leadership would call these people out. They played fast and cute. Well, we saw you.
We will show the level of respect that was shown when GOP Party member after member, attacked not only this President, BUT HIS ENTIRE FAMILY.
We will show the level of respect that was shown when GOP Senators went against the Precedent that the American PRESIDENT makes foreign policy, and wrote the letter to the mullahs of Iran.
PHUCK.OUTTA.HERE.
With you remotely trying to pull the ‘ respect the Office of the President’.
We are offended by THAT MAN – as a HUMAN BEING.
He offends and disgusts – as a HUMAN BEING.
So, no, take your ‘ respect of the Office’ and shove it.
We have 8 years of receipts, and NOBODY is playing with you.
NOBODY is rolling over for you.
And, the Democrats in office better understand that too.
https://www.facebook.com/Africbook/videos/1055263387924239/?hc_ref=SEARCH
hat tip-TPV
Some good news and human kindness! Secret Santa Donates 3,500 Pounds of Steak For Homeless Christmas Dinners.
Thanks to an anonymous Secret Santa, hundreds of homeless men, women, and children were able to eat a hardy meal for the holidays. A mystery donor gave 3,500 pounds of rib-eye steak to Union Gospel Mission shelter in Seattle, Washington.
“Thanks to our generous donors, we were able to serve 1,350 children and adults a Christmas feast that included steak, shrimp, a loaded baked potato and some herb roasted carrots!” wrote the organization. “It was quite the merry night at all of our shelters!” Union Gospel Mission has been providing emergency care and services to the homeless community since 1932. Though they reportedly serve about 1,000 meals a week to people living in property, the steak was a rare treat. “This meal means a lot – it’s the first Christmas I’m sitting down having a sober meal with my kids and new sisters and making new memories,” said one of the guests.
Chris Christie Doesn’t Understand His Fate
by Martin Longman
December 27, 2016 1:55 PM
Chris Christie is back in New Jersey and badly wounded. He just failed to convince the legislature to relax ethics laws to allow him to profit from writing a book. Gonorrhea and chlamydia are more popular than he is in the Garden State, and the series of public humiliations he’s endured from the Trump camp since the election have been enough to make the Cleveland Browns blush.
At one time, he was in charge of the Trump transition team, but that plum position was yanked and his loyalists were largely purged from the lists. It was a predictable end if you knew that Christie had gone out of his way to humiliate the father of Trump’s son-in-law when he prosecuted him in 2005. The experience was traumatic enough for Jared Kushner, who was then working in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, that he gave up his aspirations to become a prosecutor himself.
………………………….
Yet, Christie is still in deep denial about what has happened to him, and why.
It could very well be that Trump’s first team is a disaster and that he’ll be looking to bring in some savior to rescue his presidency, but his son-in-law is not going to get dumped for the guy who put his father in prison and held a press conference to make it as brutal as he could make it.
I would not be shocked in the least to see Attorney General Jeff Sessions overseeing the prosecution of Christie for Bridgegate or some other transgression. I definitely see it as more likely than Christie ever getting invited into Trump’s inner circle or to become his chief of staff.
Boy BYE!
The way things come full circle.
I mourn Carrie Fisher.
Just called Peanut’s Grandmother and told her to tell Peanut that ‘ Chanel #3’s mother has died.’
Her connection to Carrie Fisher is through her daughter, Billie Lourd, who is in Scream Queens.
Found this at BJ:
January 2, 2017 Issue
Michelle Obama and Us
The tenure of a First Lady who leaves the White House as one of the most popular political figures in recent memory.
The reason why I said yes was because I am tired of being afraid,” Michelle Obama told a crowd in Council Bluffs, Iowa, during the State Fair, in August of 2007, explaining why she had signed on to a long-shot campaign to elect her husband, Barack Obama, President of the United States. She stood in a middle-school gym, surrounded by a mostly white audience that was only beginning to know her husband and had an even vaguer idea of who she was. The stage was a small, low platform, but Obama, dressed in black pants and T-shirt, with her hair pulled back in a bun, occupied it like a dancer, punctuating her seven-minute address with appealing turns and pauses, as her listeners responded. The decision to run, she said, had not been an easy one, particularly with two young daughters, and as she and her husband discussed it with others she had noticed a common theme. “They were afraid,” she said. There was “fear that we might lose. Fear that he might get hurt. Fear that this would be ugly. Fear that it would hurt our family.”
Nine years later, Michelle Obama ends her time as First Lady as one of the most popular political figures in recent memory. So it’s worth looking back on those fears, both to take the measure of her accomplishments and as a reminder of a certain national capacity for blindness. In a recent interview with Vogue, she said that, as a teen-ager on the South Side of Chicago, she had been told at school that she wasn’t “Princeton material.” During that first campaign, Obama, a graduate of Princeton and of Harvard Law, heard that she was not First Lady material. She was “angry,” “abrasive,” “nontraditional,” too big, too black, not someone Americans were “ready” for—not a lady, like Cindy McCain, the wife of her husband’s eventual Republican rival. When, in February of 2008, in a rare misstep, Obama said that her husband’s success in the early primaries had meant that “for the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country, because it feels like hope is really making a comeback,” Mrs. McCain let it be known that she would never say such a thing. Following an event at which Michelle joked about Barack’s breakfast-making skills, Maureen Dowd wrote, in the Times, “Many people I talked to afterward found Michelle wondrous. But others worried that her chiding was emasculating.”
Sometimes, the message came in the form of a hint, but often it came in an outright slur. Future scholars of American conspiracy theories may be puzzled by the bizarre case of the “Whitey tape.” In the spring of 2008, there were widespread, and false, rumors of a video in which Michelle, furious (or whining, or scheming, or smug), used that word to incite a black audience and promised racial revenge. Referring to the tape, the Republican operative Roger Stone told Fox News, “I believe a network has it.” Stone later became an adviser to Donald Trump. While the birther movement, which Trump championed, painted Barack Obama as foreign, there was an effort to confine Michelle to a very American place: the ghetto.
There were echoes of that assumption even when the intent was to praise her. “Michelle Obama is by now so well assimilated that she can wear a dress and pearls that are photocopies of the clothes and jewels worn by Jackie Kennedy—and pull it off with grace and panache,” Newsweek observed in March, 2008, as if being a facsimile would, for someone like Obama, be the pinnacle of success. After eight years in which she has been acclaimed as an author of style, that sounds absurd……
Her success in the White House has had as much to do with her comfort with herself as with what might be her central precept: never believe that there is a room you have no right to walk into. It’s a message that she has delivered in speeches at historically black colleges and in her mentorship of girls. It has also come across in her work, with Jill Biden, to support military families. As the stages got bigger, Obama’s oratory became more dominant and yet, at the same time, more intimate. In one of her enduring speeches, given at the 2012 Democratic National Convention, she revisited her fears that the Presidency would change her husband. What she had realized, she said, was that power doesn’t change who you are—“it reveals who you are.”……..
Her iconoclasm gains strength from its fusion with irreproachability. She has been cheerfully scrupulous about White House traditions and rituals, including such niceties as designing what will be known as the Obama China. The trim color is Kailua Blue, an homage to the waters off Honolulu, where her husband grew up. She brought out the new china for tea with Melania Trump, two days after the election. “Melania liked Mrs. O a lot!” President-elect Trump tweeted afterward. Indeed, Melania, in her Convention speech, had photocopied Michelle.
In Council Bluffs, Obama said, “I don’t want my girls to live in a country, in a world based on fear.” At the time, Malia was nine; Sasha was six. Obama was still imagining what the future held for her daughters, and for the daughters of all Americans, when she said, in a speech in October, that Trump’s comments about women had “shaken me to my core.” She became one of Hillary Clinton’s most tireless advocates in the final weeks of the campaign. Given the outcome, there may be something melancholy about the echoes of the Iowa speech in the pleas she made to voters, urging them not to give in to the fears that Trump’s candidacy thrived on. Perhaps they did. But no one should doubt that Michelle Obama’s courage has left an indelible mark. Her time as First Lady changed this country and clarified its vision. And she has been one of the revelations. ♦
Yes
https://mobile.twitter.com/anne_theriault/status/813808116236226565
And, if President Obama had tried this?
Uh huh
Uh huh
Breaking News: CNN reporting Actress Carrie Fisher is dead at age 60
Can’t imagine Debbie Reynolds’ grief right now.
that was my thought too. No parent wants to outlive their child, even if that child is 60 years old. :(
This is so sad, but I was afraid this might happen. How many days left in 2016?
What a year.
It’s been brutal.
Listening to the Star Wars soundtrack 😥😥😥
Saw ‘Rogue One’ last Friday, AMAZING
Facing Down Laughably Hypocritical Demands We Respect Republican Donald Trump
By Unshaken Defiancerss
POLITICS
I don’t think so. Nope, not after how the GOP treated Obama as they did. Fox News. Trump himself went birther. I will show Donald Trump all the respect the racist bankrupt and crooked real estate shyster shows Muslims, Islam, Mexicans, immigrants and others simply not as white and (allegedly) wealthy as he.
Chicago Tribune
Now the GOP, that orange POS & his supporters have looked up the definition of RESPECT?
We obviously aren’t using the same dictionary. GTFOH ALL THE WAY OUTTA HERE.
NEVER.GOING.TO.BE.MY.PRESIDENT
NEVER
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfVpvZbnphM
Axelrod: But, but, what about that HOPEY CHANGEY THANG?!
PBO: The speech was all about what could be, DUH!
Carrie Fisher has died.
“It is with a very deep sadness that Billie Lourd confirms that her beloved mother Carrie Fisher passed away at 8:55 this morning,” Family spokesman Simon Halls said in a statement. “She was loved by the world and she will be missed profoundly. Our entire family thanks you for your thoughts and prayers.”
RIP, Carrie. Condolences to the family.
2016 is going out, just like it came in, with the deaths of some of our mot cherished, talented, and beloved fellow American.
Folks need to quit…
LOL
I can’t find my charger to my phone. I’m going to be in trouble in a minute….
Been there, SG2. Get several chargers for your phone. I have at least 4. One in my car, one at work, one in my purse, and one in my bathroom at home.
The little kids are the culprits.
Chuck Schumer AIN’T SHIT
ND THERE YOU HAVE IT.
WE DON’T TRUST TRUMP, AND WE NEVER WILL.
NOT.MY.PRESIDENT.
NEVER
WHEN FOLKSS TELL YOU WHO THEY ARE….
BELIEVE THEM1
Media Alert:
The Kennedy Center Honors is on tonight on CBS, beginning at 9pm EST.
Thanks for the reminder, Rikyrah. Got my hot cider and popcorn ready to go!
BTW, how’s Peanut?
Fever is broken, and she’s getting ready to go out with her Grandma :)
This Is Not Woodstock
by Martin Longman
December 27, 2016 10:59 AM
The guy would be named Boris.
I suggest that we adopt “This Is Not Woodstock” as the unofficial name of Trump’s inauguration and associated balls. It works on every level that we need it to work on, and you can probably make a killing if you print up a bunch of hats, pins, and t-shirts and sell them in D.C. during the festivities.
The mouth-breathers will embrace it for its explicit rejection of patchouli and Birkenstocks and all the values associated with modernism. The rest of us will get the joke that this will be the unhippest, uncoolest, least worthy celebratory gathering in national history.
The joke will still be on us, unfortunately, but at least we’ll get a laugh out of it.
So the Root is PEDDLING this GARBAGE
https://twitter.com/theGrio/status/813786573254914049
I like the hashtag.
THAT’S IT.
FLOTUS didn’t want NO PARTS of your AZZ, Missy Sally!!
Eiihaas, where are you?
They were social, Sally..
JUST NOT WITH YOU!!
https://twitter.com/AshleighHNews/status/813783666421796864
https://twitter.com/WRDW_WAGT/status/813778591636983808
But TRUMP THO, MAKE AMERICA GREAT! Don’t be surprised if we see more and more of these kinds of domestic violence incidents from WHITE MALE elected reps.
Black Girls Rock!!
https://twitter.com/okayafrica/status/813761625656168448
https://twitter.com/theGrio/status/813776533571731456
https://twitter.com/BlackYouthProj/status/813774698442067970
https://twitter.com/thehill/status/813703736401002498
https://twitter.com/TheRoot/status/813738874920992768
https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/813766165298315264
The shade…the shade….
D.L. Hughley Comments on White Complaining: ‘You’ve Wasted Your Whiteness’
By Ricky Riley – December 23, 2016
During the Dec. 21 edition of comedian D.L. Hughley’s radio program, Hughley comments on conservatives claim that the Left wants to strip power from the white establishment.
The outspoken comedian and writer said that white people have essentially wasted their white privilege for wanting to return to the “good old days.”
“If you are broke and you are white, you have wasted your whiteness … [And] it’s spoiled. You’ve tainted it.”
His rant aimed at the white working class was sparked by Bill O’Reilly’s claim that the Left wants to get rid of the Electoral College to weaken the “white establishment.”
“Talking Points believes this is all about race,” O’Reilly said during the Dec. 20 telecast of “The O’Reilly Factor.” “The Left sees white privilege in America as an oppressive force that must be done away with. The Left wants power taken away from the white establishment. … Taking voting power away from the white precincts is the quickest way to do that.”
However, Hughley believes white people’s frustration and commitment to upholding white supremacy is a reflection of their own personal shortcomings.
“But your assertion is to make America great is to roll it back to the industrial age. You want to bring factories back rather than learn,” Hughley says. “If your a– can’t buy a house in the Rust Belt, you did something wrong. They talk about the white working class, … You blew it.
“If the white working class is not working, they weren’t working when they were supposed to. In other words, they weren’t educating themselves.”
Telling the TRUTH:
“If the white working class is not working, they weren’t working when they were supposed to. In other words, they weren’t educating themselves.”
a thousand acre forrest of SHADE
Look at this ISH, y’all
https://twitter.com/FOPLegislative/status/811607999190077440
THUGS!
The FOP thinks they are riding high in Donald Trump’s America.
BULLIES & THUGS!
Woman charged with hate crime after stabbing transgender man who offered his train seat in Harlem
A Manhattan woman stabbed a transgender man who had offered her a seat on a Harlem subway Christmas night after declaring, “I don’t want to sit next to black people,” police sources said.
Stephanie Pazmino, 30, was riding a southbound No. 4 train with her cousin by 125th St. and Lexington Ave. at about 11:05 p.m. when Ijan DaVonte Jarrett, 44, who is black, offered to give up his seat. She refused, then told her cousin in Spanish that she didn’t want to sit next to a black person, sources said.
“I got up anyway and said to her that she didn’t have to sit next to me,” said Jarrett, a hairstylist on his way home from a Christmas Day job in Bayonne. “I took a seat across from her and just forgot all about it.”
When Pazmino got up to leave the train, she started punching him, he said. He didn’t realize he was being stabbed, he said, until another man rushed in to help.
Netanyahu Brought This on Himself
by Martin Longman
December 26, 2016 12:30 PM
Donald Trump can change our nation’s foreign relations with Israel, but he can’t undo the latest UN Security Council Resolution condemning Israel’s settlement activity in East Jerusalem and the West Bank as “a flagrant violation under international law” that is “dangerously imperiling the viability” of a two-state solution. The Security Council voted unanimously, 14-0 with the United States abstaining, and then broke out in self-congratulatory applause.
Nancy Pelosi gently criticized the vote, while Chuck Schumer said, “It is extremely frustrating, disappointing and confounding that the administration has failed to veto this resolution.” But their discomfort won’t change the result, either.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should look in the mirror before he criticizes anyone else. It would have been one thing if he had limited himself to playing the role of bad cop to Obama’s good cop as the U.S. negotiated a nuclear agreement with Iran. But he came to Washington and addressed Congress in an attempt to sabotage the negotiations. That was an extraordinary display of disrespect, and it removed any leg he had to stand on as he accuses the president of betrayal.
More broadly, Israel needs to consider the unanimity of global opinion now arrayed against it.
FUCK Bibi, Schumer too! With Chuckl as Minority Leader, Bibi think he has a FRIEND.
The lament of sadness in this one got to me:
For this comment, I say AMEN:
Some interesting comments from BJ….this one from Kay….if the MSM doesn’t get the story it wants, it moves on until they can get the story…..
Morning Everyone😃😃😃
#Netanyahu got his ass cold cocked. That’s what he gets for going behind Potus back to speak to Congress & criticizing a president in his own country. Fuck you!
https://twitter.com/haaretzcom/status/813516030781759489
Wah Wah Wah …..STFU #Netanyahu
Israel threatens to give Trump ‘evidence’ that Obama orchestrated UN resolution
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israel-threatens-to-give-trump-evidence-that-obama-orchestrated-un-resolution/ar-BBxAxCJ?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=U348DHP
Israel has escalated its already furious war with the outgoing US administration, claiming that it has “rather hard” evidence that President Barack Obama was behind a critical UN security council resolution criticising Israeli settlement building, and threatening to hand over the material to Donald Trump.
The latest comments come a day after the US ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, was summoned by Netanyahu to explain why the US did not veto the vote and instead abstained.
The claims have emerged in interviews given by close Netanyahu allies to US media outlets on Monday after the Obama administration denied in categorical terms the claims originally made by Netanyahu himself.
However, speaking to Fox News on Sunday, David Keyes – a Netanyahu spokesman – said Arab sources, among others, had informed Jerusalem of Obama’s alleged involvement in advancing the resolution.
“We have rather iron-clad information from sources in both the Arab world and internationally that this was a deliberate push by the United States and in fact they helped create the resolution in the first place,” Keyes said.
Doubling down on the claim a few hours later the controversial Israeli ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer, went even further suggesting it had gathered evidence that it would present to the incoming Trump administration.
“We will present this evidence to the new administration through the appropriate channels. If they want to share it with the American people, they are welcome to do it,” Dermer told CNN.
Good morning, everyone!
Whew lawd! Rikyrah pulled out the paddle on Trump and the GOP. Nasty. Filthy. Ass whupping.
I wake up, sit down with my cup-o-java, and read today’ post.
Rikyrah ready for bear!
bwa ha ha ha ha ha