AIDS Free Pittsburgh - World AIDS Day 2016

Today is World AIDS Day. For information in Pittsburgh, please watch the video below (definitely worth seeing Alaska Thunderfuck followed immediately by County Exec Rich Fitzgerald) and go to AIDS Free Pittsburgh.

 

Pennsylvania Recount Challenge in Allegheny County Headed to Court Tomorrow!

Some people who filed an affidavit for Allegheny County in the Pennsylvania presidential recount received a big, fat surprise today: Notification that there will be a hearing, tomorrow, in the Court of Common Pleas.

A two inch stack of papers containing a copy of everyone who filed an affidavit was sent by the Law Offices of Meyer Unkovic & Scott and attorney Ronald L. Hicks, Jr.(a self-described "Pennsylvania business and oil and gas rights trial lawyer)". These are the same folks who represented the Republicans who attempted to squash the recount in the first place.

The hearing will be held, tomorrow, December 2, 2016 at 11:00 am at the City-County Building, 414 Grant Street, Room 707. It will be presided over by the Honorable Joseph M James (notable for having struck down Pittsburgh sick leave and security guard training ordinances).

While many who filed have received the packet, so far, not all have.

I assume the mainstream media will be there...

It's worth noting at this time that this past summer, Steve Bannon (chief strategist and senior counselor to President-elect Trump and former chief curator of the "alt-right") somehow “knew” precisely which swing states Donald Trump would flip (Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan).

More background here.

President-elect Trump Certainly DOES Have Some Deplorable Followers

From the Southern Poverty Law Center:

Just a week before the November 8th election, attackers set a church in Greenville, Mississippi, on fire. The historically black church was targeted in what authorities believe was an act of voter intimidation, its walls spray-painted with the phrase “Vote Trump.”

“This kind of attack happened in the 1950s and 1960s,” Greenville’s mayor said, “but it shouldn’t happen in 2016.”

The incident was just a harbinger of what has become a national outbreak of hate, as white supremacists celebrate Donald Trump’s victory.* In the ten days following the election, there were almost 900 reports of harassment and intimidation from across the nation. Many harassers invoked Trump’s name during assaults, making it clear that the outbreak of hate stemmed in large part from his electoral success.

I'd like to remind all the Trump voters out there that this is, in part, what you voted for:

“I have experienced discrimination in my life, but never in such a public and unashamed manner,” an Asian-American woman reported after a man told her to “go home” as she left an Oakland train station. Likewise, a black resident whose apartment was vandalized with the phrase “911 nigger” reported that he had “never witnessed anything like this.” A Los Angeles woman, who encountered a man who told her he was “Gonna beat [her] pussy,” stated that she was in this neighborhood “all the time and never experienced this type of language before.” Not far away in Sunnyvale, California, a transgender person reported being targeted with homophobic slurs at a bar where “I’ve been a regular customer for 3 years — never had any issues.”

You may not have intended it but it's there (partly) because of you.

You remember when candidate Clinton said this:

You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic -- you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people -- now 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks -- they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.

and she caught hell for it?

Tell that to this mother as quoted by the SPLC:

My 12-year-old daughter is African American. A boy approached her and said, “Now that Trump is president, I’m going to shoot you and all the blacks I can find.”

Or these folks:

People also have been harassed in their homes. Many have reported receiving threatening messages on their front lawns, slipped under their front doors, left on their porches, and taped onto their windshields. A Sudanese-American family in Iowa City, Iowa, for example, found a note attached to their door that read, “You can all go home now. We don’t want niggers and terrorists here. #trump.” A lesbian couple in Austin, Texas, came home to find “DYKE,” “Trump,” and a swastika spray-painted onto their door. One residence in Pittsburg, California, draped a banner proclaiming to neighbors: “You can hang a nigger from a tree equal rights he’ll never see.”

Or these:

Since the election, LGBT people have experienced harassment by those who allege that the president-elect shares their anti-LGBT sentiments. In Brighton, Michigan, a woman was approached by two white men who told her, “Just so you know, we hate fucking dykes and so does our President.” In Russellville, Arkansas, a woman found a note written on a piece of trash taped to her door, which read, “Trump says get back in the closet, fags!”

In Sarasota, Florida, a 75-year-old gay man was ripped from his car and beaten by an assailant who told him, “You know my new president says we can kill all you faggots now.”

America, fuck yeah!
Comin' again to save the mother fuckin' day yeah!

Trump voters, you might not think so (or want to) but you voted for this.  This is yours.  This is your new normal.  I will resist your new normal.

Meanwhile Outside...

No matter what President-elect Pussy-Grabber has to say, this is what the science says:

The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for October 2016 tied with 2003 as the third highest for October in the 137-year period of record, at 0.73°C (1.31°F) above the 20th century average of 14.0°C (57.1°F). This is 0.26°C (0.47°F) cooler than the record warmth of October 2015 when El Niño conditions were strengthening and 0.50°C (0.90°F) cooler than the all-time record warmth of March 2016 when the El Niño was near the end of its peak. Including 2016, the past three Octobers have been the three warmest in the historical record; however, October 2016 also marked the lowest monthly departure from average for any month since November 2014, which was 0.69°C (1.24°F) above average.

It's still getting warmer out there.

Meanwhile in Trumpistan:

In an interview with the New York Times last week, President-elect Donald Trump appeared open to accepting “some connectivity” between human activity and climate change.

But the man who claimed numerous times that climate change is “an expensive hoax,” “a concept...created by and for the Chinese” and “bullshit” still believes it is “a bunch of bunk,” according to his incoming chief of staff, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus.

Meanwhile, also in Trumpistan:

Trump infamously tweeted that global warming is a “hoax,” and has selected Myron Ebell of the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment, an outspoken climate skeptic, to lead his EPA transition team.

Myron Ebell is the guy who (as I've written before):

Though he likes to bash scientists for working outside their degreed fields, Ebell, it turns out, isn't a scientist at all. He majored in philosophy at the University of California in San Diego, then studied political theory at the London School of Economics and history at Cambridge.

 And:

"I'm not claiming to be a climate authority—the way Jim Hansen is, or Robert Corell," says Ebell. "Every interview I do, when I'm asked about scientific issues, I say I'm not a climate scientist."

While the planet's temperatures continue to rise, in Trumpistan our continually dishonest President-elect has chosen Myron Ebell to help dismantle the EPA.

This is the new normal.  Resist the new normal.

A Real President (Elect) VS A Fictional One

Donald Trump, this morning:

Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag - if they do, there must be consequences - perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2016

And a fictional president a couple decades ago:


I weep over the fact that the real one is real but the fictional one is right.

Is it still only November?

I can't even. Is it still only November? Is he trying to get us completely burned out before he's even sworn in?

Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag - if they do, there must be consequences - perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2016

Donald Trump Still Believes The Lie That The Election Was Rigged Against Him (Even Though He Won And Even Though There's No Evidence For It)

For Keith Olbermann, it's a sign of serious mental illness:

This has long since transcended politics.

This has long since transcended diversions from his corruption or from the FBI or from foreign interference.

This is not left versus right or liberal versus conservative or alt versus inclusive or any of the excuses that newspapers and television made Sunday and Monday in hopes of preserving the political media complex.

This is not funny and this is not ego and this is not how "He just speaks his mind."

This is an existential threat to the United States of America.

The president-elect Donald Trump is manifestly profoundly and dangerously psychologically imbalanced.

The sooner we acknowledge this the greater the chances we have of averting a disaster which could threaten the safety of every American indeed of everybody on this planet.

That was yesterday, November 28.  Wanna know the real sad part?

Donald J. Trump is still doing it:

President-elect Donald Trump fired off a series of tweets late Monday and early Tuesday criticizing CNN for reporting that his claims about voter fraud are baseless -- which they are.

Shortly after 9 p.m., Trump began retweeting supporters who had criticized CNN's Jeff Zeleny because he accurately reported that there was no evidence -- nor has the transition team provided any-- to support Trump's claim that millions of fraudulent votes had been cast for Hillary Clinton.

I have a question for our nation's law enforcement community. Given the obviously imbalanced nature of Trump's psyche and the fact that in a few weeks he's set to become incredibly powerful, what are your plans to protect us, The American People, from him?

Do you have any?

This is the new normal. I will not adapt to the new normal.

Pittsburgh City Councilors Gilman and Kraus to Introduce Conversion Therapy Ban

Via Press Release:

GILMAN AND KRAUS TO INTRODUCE CONVERSION THERAPY BAN 

Legislation would prohibit harmful practice for minors within Pittsburgh 

Sent 11/29/2016 @ 7:04 am 

PITTSBURGH, PA (November 29th, 2016)- During today’s regular meeting of Pittsburgh City Council, Councilman Dan Gilman and Council President Bruce A. Kraus will introduce legislation to ban conversion therapy for LGBTQIA+ youth within Pittsburgh. 

“The City of Pittsburgh bears the responsibility to protect all of its residents and this legislation defends LGBTQIA+ youth against the destructive psychological and physical impact of forced conversion therapy,” said Councilman Gilman. “By passing this legislation, the City is standing up for equality and ensuring that Pittsburgh is a welcoming city for all.” 

“Protecting LGBTQIA+ minors from those who would seek to rob the very essence of one's being is foundational to this legislation,” said Council President Kraus. “Ensuring safe places for discovery, self acceptance, and growth for LGBTQIA+ youth must now and always be our focus." 

Conversion therapy, which seeks to convert one’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression, is formally opposed by a host of mental health, medical, and social work organizations, including American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, American Medical Association, American College of Physicians, and the National Association of Social Workers. 

Regarding the Pennsylvania Recount

I've been informed by someone involved in the PA recount that:

- The deadline for voters to file notarized affidavits is now 4:30 PM today (for Allegheny County), November 28th (of course ASAP is best).
- The State has pushed back their meeting to certify the vote to December 12th because of the number of petitions that they are receiving.

(Personally, I still believe that a recount is particularly useless in PA given the convoluted process, our machines that have no paper trail, and the margin Trump won by.)

UPDATE: The Post-Gazette has a story up now on this here: "Allegheny County holds off on certifying election results"

Trump Lies. (How Many Times Is This? How Many More Can We Expect?)

From The Washington Post:

In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2016

Clinton didn't really win the popular vote, he's arguing, because millions of votes were invalid. This is one in a series of efforts to dismiss Clinton's popular-vote victory, efforts that have hinged on misreading CNN election results or random tweets underpinned by no actual data.

We should note that the phrase "underpinned by no actual data" is a very diplomatic way of saying, "THIS IS A LIE."

The President-elect is lying to you.

Trump Torture Update

It's going to be a tough 4 years.

The current narrative on whether President-elect Donald J. Trump and waterboarding is found here with this piece at the Washington Post:

[In an interview with the New York Times] Trump signaled another shift on the question of how to treat terrorism suspects. During his presidential campaign, he had said that he would reinstate the use of waterboarding and similar interrogation techniques in the questioning of suspected terrorists.

“Don’t tell me it doesn’t work — torture works,” Trump said in February at a retirement community in South Carolina. “Okay, folks? Torture — you know, half these guys [say]: ‘Torture doesn’t work.’ Believe me, it works. Okay?”

But Tuesday he suggested he might have changed his mind after interviewing a leading candidate for secretary of defense, retired Marine Corps Gen. James N. Mattis, who headed the U.S. Central Command.

Mattis argued that he had never found harsh interrogation techniques “to be useful,” Trump said, adding that the retired general preferred building trust with “a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers.”

“I was very impressed by that answer,’’ Trump said.

The only problem with this narrative, according to this piece at Slate, is that it's completely wrong.

Let's go directly to the Times transcript.  When asked "where he was" on waterboarding, President-elect pussy grabber said:

So, I met with General Mattis, who is a very respected guy. In fact, I met with a number of other generals, they say he’s the finest there is. He is being seriously, seriously considered for secretary of defense, which is — I think it’s time maybe, it’s time for a general. Look at what’s going on. We don’t win, we can’t beat anybody, we don’t win anymore. At anything. We don’t win on the border, we don’t win with trade, we certainly don’t win with the military. General Mattis is a strong, highly dignified man. I met with him at length and I asked him that question. I said, what do you think of waterboarding? He said — I was surprised — he said, ‘I’ve never found it to be useful.’ He said, ‘I’ve always found, give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers and I do better with that than I do with torture.’ And I was very impressed by that answer. I was surprised, because he’s known as being like the toughest guy. And when he said that, I’m not saying it changed my mind. [Emphasis added.]

So while he's impressed with what the retired Marine Corps General said, what was said still hasn't changed his mind that torture works.

In a Trump administration, torture is the new normal and I refuse to accept this new normal.

Another Thanksgiving Tradition (Jerry Bowyer Revives His Thanksgiving Hoax)

I wrote this in 2013:

Besides the traditional traditions like Turkey, the newer traditions like Turducken, and the localized traditions like Alice's Restaurant, we're now seeing a new political narrative explaining how "first Thanksgiving was a celebration of abundance after a period of socialism and starvation."

This year is no different as local Conservative Jerry Bowyer (again) pushes the myth/hoax/political propaganda on the cyber-pages of The Christian Post.

A few reasons from Slate why it's BS:

As Kate Zernike of the New York Times pointed out in 2010, the timeline doesn’t quite work. The first Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1621. The system of collective ownership known as the “common course” was abandoned in 1623. And it was abandoned not because of famine but because the settlers wanted to make more money.

And:

Communal farming arrangements were common in the pilgrims’ day. Many of the towns they came from in England were run according to the “open-field” system, in which the land holdings of a manor are divided into strips to be harvested by tenant farmers. As Nick Bunker writes in 2010’s Making Haste From Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World, “Open field farming was not some kind of communism. All the villagers were tenants of the landlord.”

There was no local baron in Plymouth, but it was a commercial project as much as a religious one, and the colonists still had to answer to their investors back in England. It was this, not socialist ideals, that accounted for the common course. Bunker writes, “Far from being a commune, the Mayflower was a common stock: the very words employed in the contract. All the land in the Plymouth Colony, its houses, its tools, and its trading profits (if they appeared) were to belong to a joint-stock company owned by the shareholders as a whole.”

He continues: “Under the terms of the contract … for the first seven years no individual settler could own a plot of land. To ensure that each farmer received his fair share of good or bad land, the slices were rotated each year, but this was counterproductive. Nobody had any reason to put in extra hours and effort to improve a plot if next season another family received the benefit.”

The pilgrims’ transition—which, again, happened after the first Thanksgiving—can indeed be used to illustrate the benefits of individualism or the tragedy of the commons. But the Rush Limbaugh crowd should note that the settlers at Plymouth were rebelling against the rules set by a corporation, not against the strictures of some Stalinist collective farm or a hippie commune.

Jerry, tell me again how the Pilgrims "had changed their economic model from a communist one based on the pagan philosopher Plato to a private property one based on the teachings of Moses in the Torah"?

It's still BS, Jerry, no matter where you post it, no matter how many times you repeat it.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

When I was a boy in New England (where you can find the best pizza on the planet) every year on Thanksgiving day it was a tradition for at least one New York radio station to play one particular 18 minute piece of music - some time around noon.

This piece of music.

Lyrics are here.

You can buy a copy here.

You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving OR How The Trib Braintrust Misquotes Harry S Truman

From today's Tribune-Review editorial page:

Editor's note: As has become our custom, a reprint of a special editorial on this special day.

They published the Truman Thanksgiving editorial again so I guess we'll have to deconstruct it again.

In 2012, I wrote:

Our good friends on the Tribune-Review's editorial board, even with a "feel good" Thanksgiving editorial, can't resist invoking "religious freedom" to assert their wish to authorize of one faith (presumably theirs) over all.

They could have quoted one somewhat recent president declaring to a congregation that:

We in the United States, above all, must remember that lesson, for we were founded as a nation of openness to people of all beliefs. And so we must remain. Our very unity has been strengthened by our pluralism. We establish no religion in this country, we command no worship, we mandate no belief, nor will we ever. Church and state are, and must remain, separate. All are free to believe or not believe, all are free to practice a faith or not, and those who believe are free, and should be free, to speak of and act on their belief.

By the way, this was Ronald Reagan (yes RONALD REAGAN) speaking before the Temple Hillel and Community Leaders in Valley Stream, NY in 1984.

Instead, Scaife's braintrust quotes a less recent president speaking before a different congregation:

“In Thanksgiving,” President Truman said, “we have a purely American holiday — fashioned out of our own history and testifying to the religious background of our national life. That day expresses what we mean when we say that our form of government rests on a spiritual foundation.

“It is from a strong and vital church — from the strength and vitality of all our churches — that government must draw its vision,” he continued. “In the teachings of our Savior, there is no room for bigotry, for discrimination, for the embittered struggle of class against class, or for the hostilities of nation against nation.

“St. Paul, in writing to the early church at Colossae, said, ‘Here there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, freeman, but Christ is all, and in all.’”

Before I go further, let me point out that there's a bit of a cheat here. Because if you look at the original speech of Truman's to the Westminster Presbyterian Church in 1952, there's a whole lot of stuff between the quoted first and second paragraphs - stuff Scaife's braintrust opted you didn't need to see - with no indication that there's been an omission.

What did they decide that you didn't need to see?  Apart from the expected "only faith is what will save us from godless communism" we find passages extolling the need to wage a "ceaseless war against injustice in our society" and that "we are all our brothers' keepers"  and finally touting the need for something called the "Point 4" program - which turns out to be a government plan to spread American scientific know-how to impoverished countries around the world.  Gee, I wonder why the arch-conservatives at the Trib decided you didn't need to read any of that.

But all that's beside the point.  Instead of Reagan's assertion that State and Church must remain separate and that "we command no worship", we get from the braintrust Truman quoting Paul's Letter to the Colossians asserting cultural and religious unity - but only through Christ.

Yea, that's freedom.

And in 2014, I added:

Strange that they'd abandon Reagan for a Democrat president pushing a gov'ment program.

Yea, strange.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Interesting Idea, Keith

The only problem with this is that we'd still be left with President (or Acting President) Mike Pence.

It would be the replacement of one completely batshit crazy anti-establishment guy (who might easily trigger WWIII out of spite) with a slightly less batshit crazy establishment guy (who - one hopes - is psychologically settled enough not to).

Either way, it's gonna be a shit storm.

And I'd like to thank all of Red Murika for making sure this made it to the White House instead of that nasty woman with her sieve-like email server.  Whew!  Danger avoided, Will Robinson!

Batshit crazy in the Oval: The New Normal.

And I refuse to adapt to this new normal.

Something To Ponder As We Approach Thanksgiving

From Human Rights Watch:

President-elect Donald Trump’s choice of retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn for National Security Advisor demonstrates a deeply disturbing disregard for human rights principles and the laws of war, Human Rights Watch said today. Flynn has repeatedly endorsed proposals by Trump that would constitute torture and other war crimes.

“Michael Flynn has shown a stunning contempt for the Geneva Conventions and other laws prohibiting torture,” said Sarah Margon, Washington director. “By offering this key post to Flynn, President-elect Trump is undermining US commitments to international laws that have been broken to America’s detriment.”

And:

Flynn has repeatedly refused to rule out Trump’s proposed use of torture and other war crimes. “I am a believer in leaving as many options on the table right up until the last possible minute,” Flynn told Al Jazeera in May.

On proposals by Trump to target for attack the families of suspected terrorists, Flynn said he “would have to see what the circumstances of that situation were.” Asked again by The Intercept in July about Trump’s support for torture and targeting suspected terrorists’ family members, he said: “Here’s what a guy like Donald Trump is doing: He’s basically saying, ‘Hey, look, all options are on the table,’ and being very unpredictable in the face of a very determined enemy.”

Each banned by International and US Law:

• Torture
• Targeting the families of suspected terrorists 

Which is sad for Lt. Gen Flynn because only a few years ago he said this:

In 2015, Flynn, asked about torture practices like waterboarding during an interview with Al Jazeera, said that he never used torture during interrogations and rebuked the practice. Flynn said that "history is not gonna look kind on the – on those actions that you're describing right now, and we will be held, we should be held accountable for many, many years to come."

But now:

On Trump’s desire to return to “waterboarding” terrorism suspects and “worse,” Flynn is also equivocal, having seen how harsh interrogation techniques were counterproductive at JSOC and besmirched the reputation of the U.S. military. “I would not want to return to ‘enhanced techniques,’ because I helped rewrite the manual for interrogations,” he said. “Having said that, if the nation was in grave danger from a terrorist attack involving weapons of mass destruction, and we had certain individuals in our custody with information that might avoid it, then I would probably OK enhanced interrogation techniques within certain limits.”

If it's torture, it'll still illegal no matter what Trump says.  However it seems that under Donald J Trump American torture will be the new normal.

I refuse to accept to this new normal.

Trump "University" Fraud Settlement

Amidst Trump's two assaults on free speech this weekend (assault one and assault two), you may have missed a bigger story.

The bigger story is his settling of his multimillion dollar fraud case.  John Cassidy at the New Yorker has the gist:

The lawsuits, two in California and one in New York, were filed on behalf of thousands of people, some of them elderly and of modest means, who alleged that Trump University had lured them into spending thousands of dollars on courses in real-estate speculation that turned out to be of little or no value. During the election campaign, Trump repeatedly claimed that the lawsuits were baseless, and vowed that he would never settle. But on Friday, just ten days before one of the cases was due to go to court in San Diego, he agreed to pay twenty-five million dollars in restitution and fines.

You can read the lawsuit here.

The ABA Journal has this:

The New York suit said the unlicensed university claimed its courses were taught by handpicked instructors who would teach “get rich” techniques, even though only one of the live-event instructors had even met Donald Trump. The suit also alleged that students who attended Trump University classes were encouraged to take increasingly expensive courses in a “bait and switch” tactic.

And this just weeks before he's set to take the oath of office.

Yes, challenging the 1st Amendment rights of actors and comedians is troubling enough for the next leader of the free world but the President-Elect effectively scammed thousands of people out of millions of dollars they couldn't afford.

I'd like to personally thank each Trump voter for delivering this proven con-man to the Oval Office.

I will not adapt to this new normal.

Jack Kelly Sunday

With this week's column, the Post-Gazette's Jack Kelly does what he usually does: selectively picks "evidence" to support an otherwise untenable political position.

Here's how he frames:

Remember the redneck riots after the election in 2012? Me neither.

Democrats and the “mainstream” media warn constantly about the threat of violence from the right. But nearly all violence that actually materializes is from the left.

Interesting how he tent poles his argument - beginning with "after the election in 2012".

What, he didn't want to go all the way back to 2008?  If he had, he'd have seen (IF he bothered to look) this from a Tea Party protest in 2009:

Or this from just before the 2012 election:

The Florida pastor who ignited an international furor by threatening to burn a pile of Korans has applied his subtle touch to the 2012 presidential campaign by constructing a gallows from which a likeness of President Barack Obama now hangs in effigy.

The display in the front yard of Terry Jones’s Dove World Outreach Center (DWOC) in Gainesville features a dummy wearing an Obama mask hanging from a yellow noose. Along with an American flag and a rainbow-striped gay pride flag, the scene includes an Uncle Sam dummy and a child’s doll hanging from the right hand of the Obama figure.

 Of this from just after the 2012 election:

Or the spike in racist tweets from just after the 2012.

Jack, go read them [NSFW!] and then tell me about the lack of "redneck riots" after 2012.

There's just one thing I want to add from Jack, lest any Trump supporters think he's on their side:

“Journalists love mocking Trump supporters,” wrote Will Rahn of CBS News. “We insult their appearances. We dismiss them as racists and sexists. … We diagnose them as racists in the way Dark Age clerics confused medical problems with demonic possession.”

Jack, didn't YOU call Trump supporters "morons"?

Why yes!  Yes, you did, 112 days ago.

Trumpkins will applaud whatever [Trump] says. Republican “leaders” are too ethically compromised to complain.

After outlining well in his acceptance speech why America is in crisis, Mr. Trump said: “I am your voice. I alone can fix it.”

This is Chavismo, Caesarism. Only megalomaniacs say such a thing. Only morons believe it.

"Trumpkins" Jack? "Morons" Jack?  Your words.

Care to comment on how you're criticizing the media for having a narrative that belittles Trump's many supporters while somehow NOT mentioning that you were...oh, I dunno...DOING THE SAME THING?

That's all for now.

David Shribman: President Trump Normalizer

First let me say that based on the P-G's endorsements of Senator Pat Toomey, Representative Rick Saccone (remember him?  He wanted 2012 to be "The Year of The Bible"), State House Speaker Mike Turzai (ALEC member and voter-fraud conspiracy theorist) and their Clinton/Trump non-endorsement (beautifully deconstructed by the OPJ here), I have a feeling I'll be spending more time fact-checking the once proud Post-Gazette editorial board in the coming months and years - I mean now that the Trib's gone paperless something has to fill the conservative vacuum in town, right?  How long until John Block forces a climate denial editorial on us?

Anyway, back to the blog.  I haven't posted much anything of substance since this posting the day after the election.  There were a few things here and there but if you'll take a closer look, you'll see that most of what I posted consists of statements and pleas for donations from some very important organizations (ACLU, NARAL, HRC, and NAACP) - organizations that, over the next few years, will be needing a great deal of help to counter the coming assault on our freedoms and on our national decency.

I took a short break because I felt I needed some time for the enormity of the outcome of the election to settle in.  Even now with a few days off it's becoming clear to me that the task before us is still daunting and nearly impossible to imagine - like trying to wrap your arms around the Great Pyramid of Giza just so you can lift it up and move it a few (just a few) inches to the left.

Take for example what happened yesterday.

Donald J. Trump has reversed course and agreed on Friday to pay $25 million to settle a series of lawsuits stemming from his defunct for-profit education venture, Trump University, finally putting to rest fraud allegations by former students, which have dogged him for years and hampered his presidential campaign.

Did you know that the fraud trial was scheduled to begin between the election and inauguration?

Imagine what the past few months would have looked like if either Clinton was facing a fraud trial.  Imagine if they settled the case for $25 mil.  Now ponder the concept of "a liberal media watchdog."
Anyway Senator Elizabeth Warren (racistly referred to as "Pocahontas" by our President-Elect) tweeted of the settlement:

.@realDonaldTrump swindled thousands of students at his sham “Trump University.” That’s not up for debate anymore – that’s a fact.

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) November 18, 2016

And you'll remember this detail of the case:

The judge overseeing the two California cases, Gonzalo Curiel, was thrust into the limelight of the campaign in May when Mr. Trump spent several minutes at a rally denouncing the judge’s decisions in the case, calling him a “hater” and questioning his impartiality because of his Mexican Heritage.

Something the Speaker of The House of Representatives, Paul Ryan, at one point denounced as "the textbook definition of a racist comment."

Well, few days ago, this is what Paul Ryan said:

Every member of the House Republican conference found a traditional red “Make America Great Again” hat waiting on their seats Tuesday morning before a Capitol Hill meeting. “Welcome to the dawn of a new unified Republican government,” Ryan announced at a news conference. “This will be a government focused on turning President-elect Trump’s victory into real progress for the American people.”

I haven't even mentioned how seemingly acceptable the Trump Foundation slush fund is these days, or his calls for war crimes, or his unsolicited pussy-grabbing and beauty pageant-peeping seems to be with American conservatives, voters and the news media in general.

But, on the other hand, we had a (losing) candidate who got pneumonia on 9/11 and used a private email server, so it all balances out, right?

See what I mean about trying to wrap your arms around the Great Pyramid?

For me it's resisting the normalization of Donald Trump.  I touched on it yesterday.

We must not normalize this man or his actions - even sitting in the Oval Office, he's guilty of some gross violations of human decency.  Winning the election didn't change any of that.

Unfortunately "normalization" is what David Shribman, executive editor of the once centrist/left Pittsburgh Post-Gazette did this past week.  He describes our President-Elect thusly:

So it was Tuesday night, when Manhattan businessman Donald J. Trump — a political outsider, possessed of daunting ambition, audacity and an acute sense of the American political climate — emerged as the winner of a raucous presidential election.

An American original — a casino and real-estate magnate with an uncanny ability to read the public mood and an unerring ability to discern his rivals’ vulnerabilities — Mr. Trump now takes on his biggest task.

And on the negative?

Sometimes vulgar, always voluble, Mr. Trump ran against the political establishment of the Republican Party, against the customs of political life, and against the principal elements of American life

Sometimes vulgar?  Mr Shribman?  Sometimes?  Vulgar is spitting in public.  Vulgar is burping out loud at a fancy restaurant (and then laughing about the moist bits now dotting in your date's eyeglasses).  Bragging about being able to "grab them by the pussy" is actually (and I can't believe I have to tell you this, Dave) illegal.

And:

In winning one of the wildest, least predictable presidential elections of the age, Mr. Trump prevailed despite a fusillade of complaints about his conduct with women; repeated stories detailing irregular business practices; an unusual number of party apostates who declared they would never vote for him; and criticism that he hadn’t paid federal income taxes for about two decades.

Ah, Dave - you're normalizing by downplaying.  You see that, right?  That "fusillade of complaints"?  Take a look.  How much of what was described is actually illegal?  Irregular business practices?  We could just stop at the $25 million to make the Trump "University" fraud cases go away but if we wanted to, we could look at the hundreds stiffed in the past by our future president. And on those unpaid taxes?  It would be one thing if his tax dodging were completely within bounds.  But why, Dave, did you fail to mention that Trump's own attorneys told him that what he was planning to do was likely to trigger an IRS audit?  Or that, even if he was completely within the law, he was writing off millions by "deducting someone else's losses"?  What a genius! What a man for the people!

No.  You reduced the extent of Trump's pre-Presidential corruption down to one easy to swallow lump of lark's vomit lovingly garnished with this:

The man who vowed to make America great again now faces great challenges. But against all the experts and all the expectations he fashioned a great upset, a great comeback, and a great achievement.

Dave, you might think it's a great achievement but Trump's still a sexist, racist, corrupt demagogue.  Sitting at Resolute Desk simply can't change that.

Or don't you think so?  Let me know.

I, for one, will not adapt to this new normal.  I will not normalize this behavior.

On The Question Of Whether Trump Deserves A "Grace Period"

Actor Christoph Waltz gives an answer:


A translation given in the video.

In case you don't want to hear the Waltz auf Deutsch, here it is Auf Englisch:

You mean we consider everything he said so far as unsaid? And say: no hard feelings. He did not call for torture. He didn't say you should use nuclear weapons if you have them? He didn't say that Mexicans are rapists and drug dealers?

You know, the list knows no bounds.

We just pretend these things just didn't come up at all? And say: anyway he might be a proper jolly good fellow.

Why? You can't unsay what has been said. And Obama said in a meeting with Trump:  We have to work on Trump feeling welcome.  And if Trump is successful the whole country is successful.

Really?

If Trump is successful with what he announced during his campaign, it's the end of the line.

So on the question as to whether Donald Trump deserves a "grace period," the answer has to be:  No, adapting to and normalizing Trump's bigotry will damage the fabric of American society at least as much as implementing his campaign's proposals.

I, for one, will not adapt to this new normal.