President Obama, in his final press conference today, made very clear what he has telegraphed for days now, that a main focus for him going forward will be the sorry state of our nation’s voting rights:
“We are the only country in the advanced world that makes it harder to vote. … There’s an ugly history to that. … The reason that we are the only country among advanced countries that makes it harder to vote traces directly back to Jim Crow and the legacy of slavery. It became sort of acceptable to restrict the franchise. And that’s not who we are, not who we should be, that’s not when America works best. So that I hope everybody pays attention to making sure everybody has a chance to vote. Make it easier, not harder. This whole notion of voting fraud, this is something that has constantly been disproved. This is fake news. The notion that there are a whole bunch of people out there who are going out there and are not eligible to vote and want to vote. We have the opposite problem. We have a whole bunch of people who are eligible to vote who don’t vote. And so the idea that we put into place a whole bunch of barriers to people voting doesn’t makes sense. And then the political gerrymandering that makes your vote matter less because politicians have decided you live in a district where everybody votes the same way you do, so that these are not competitive races, and we get 90% Democratic districts and 90% Republican districts, that’s bad for our Democracy too. I worry about that.”
What about the voting list ‘cleansings’ that made a half M!LL!ON people non-persons, and the 75,000 missing ballots from Wayne County, MI ? Any racial implications there ? Hmmmm ?
Obamarama and Eric Holder already have a group to work on redistricting I think they plan on taking on all comers
I thought it was two terms and out but Mr Cracker just heard someone say he can run again. Now that would be something the Obama Trump showdown
It has already been proven that the natural movement of populations will change voting district composition as long as those districts are not gerrymandered but are designed by computers & specific rules of cohesion rather than wiggling all over creation.
seems it would save a lot of local & state gov’t money if everyone at birth or naturalization as a citizen were automatically deemed registered and at 18 eligible to vote. issuance at 18 of a lifetime voter id card and something like dipping the pinky in indelible ink at each election could handle fraud and multiple voting security problems. also adopt a version of the Australian mandatory vote law.
I think their plan is to make something like that happen – they have staff and $$$ and ae working at the state level but they need more Dem legislators and I think tht is part of the equation too
I think he has a full service campaign mode in mind
“Mr Cracker just heard someone say he can run again”
kgc, mr cracker is pulling your leg….. otherwise bill Clinton would be taking the oath tomorrow.
He heard on MSNBC and he paid attention because we had just been talking about it
I’m not through with the previous thread, so I’ll continue making comments on thoughts that my distinguished colleagues prompted. 1. Yeah, The Fountainhead is a preachy bore, but it’s not nearly as awful as Atlas Shrugged. 2. I am acquainted with Dr. Susan Clarke, an world renowned expert on TA. She wrote the definitive book on the subject. I expect that her answer to complaints about the lack of moral guidelines in TA would be Kantian. TA shares the lack of moral guidelines with hog breeding and living in a neighborhood. In all three operations, morality is a good thing, but a separate topic.… Read more »
Bill Clinton has some issues and was not all that popular when he left office
I don’t think he could have run again
The pendulum is now at its furthest point right of center.
unless they go full-bore master race fascist el penduloomo will begin to return towards center.
If they go full-bore master race fascist all bets are off.
Anyone read Talking Points Memo?
TPM editor Josh Marshall wrote a piece of advice for fellow journos on not surrendering to Trump and it’s good advice for all of us. Basically, we all know what Trump is, and the press should cover him “as a coward and a crook.”
Sounds good to me. The Made-in-China, Ivanka shoe fits, so let Trump wear it. Marshall usually provides a rational analysis, often rooted in history, a vision that both sees the forest and recognizes the individual trees. Lengthy, but worth a read. I hope our Press has time for it.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-case-for-not-being-crybabies
Parenthetically, ‘pussy-grabbing’ and failure to pay debts are not transactions. The former is criminal assault, the latter is a civil matter unless it involves criminal negligence or fraud.
“Bill Clinton has some issues and was not all that popular when he left office” kgc, sorry to disagree, but the dawg is top dog in the out-the-door prez polls: new CNN/ORC poll finds Obama’s approval rating stands at 60%, his best mark since June of his first year in office. Compared with other outgoing presidents, Obama lands near the top of the list, outranked only by Bill Clinton’s 66% in January 2001 and Ronald Reagan’s 64% in January 1989. and at abc: Obama’s end-of-presidency rating is in the top tier of ABC/Post polls, and Gallup polls before them, back… Read more »
btw, nice gesture by the rag the twit refers to as a failing newspaper and according to politico revoked creds during campaign:
wapo:
Donald Trump’s inauguration is Friday. The Post is offering free, unlimited access to our digital coverage through Saturday.
The president-elect is set to be sworn in at noon on Friday, the main event in a long weekend of ceremony, celebration and protest. Find everything you’re looking for — and read as much as you want — at washingtonpost.com and on our apps.
well BClinton’s popularity (sic) was such that Al Gore didn’t want to be seen with him
he could not have been elected to a third term. He was in the end kind of a shitty president he was a coward in many ways and sold out groups when it was in his best interest and of course the moral fiber of used kleenex
not too mention he hired people like the toe sucker and tried to triangulate everything
And his popularity didn’t help his wife and his crappy behavior hurt her
another interesting thing at wapo today: “Trump’s health: What we could expect with the oldest incoming president” But research shows that the chances of acquiring three diseases simultaneously rises ten-fold between ages 70 and 80, then ten-fold again during the following decade of life, said Nir Barzilai, director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. “I think we all realize that humans age at different rates,” Barzilai said. “Seventy means nothing to me. It can be very young, and it can be very old.” Barzilai said his first question would be… Read more »
pussygrabber is a big fat tub of lard lots of things can go wrong
.
Craig… thanks for this topic. Voting rights is one of the issues I truly care about. I’m glad to know that Obama thinks so too. It’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that this is his last full day in office.
Mr.doodlesdog… I used to read TPM religiously. I don’t know why I stopped. Thanks for reminding me that it’s time to look him up again.
Aide to Md. lawmaker fabricated article on fraudulent votes for Clinton A Republican legislative aide in Maryland who was behind a fake news site that accused Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton of election-rigging was fired Wednesday. Del. David E. Vogt III (R-Frederick) said he terminated Cameron Harris “on the spot” after learning that he was the mastermind behind ChristianTimesNewspaper.com and its fabricated Sept. 30 article, which reported that there were tens of thousands of “fraudulent Clinton votes found” in an Ohio warehouse. [….] Harris told the Times that he created fake news to earn money. After investing $5 for the… Read more »
https://youtu.be/r6X4qOlNjXE
and for granny, here’s keith
Awaiting the morning glory here…astronomical sunrise has already begun. I applaud Obama taking-on voting rights and he opens a pandora’s box of discourse and procedures especially as we enter the digital phase of our political existence. Soon the analog way of voting will drop by the wayside as it is too easy to manipulate and hack. Plus, there is the existential concept of voting as a privilege (which seems to be the repug view), that may kill the concept of voting for the homeless, the contract laborer, the disabled and the disenfranchised. I believe, like Obama, that voting… Read more »
And a speedy recovery to the Bushes who have taken ill over this inauguration. Poor stressed elderly humans who would rather be in the their hospital bed than see trumpence sworn in. I have been clinging heavily to my humor and science in my anticipation of tomorrow. I like to turn my thoughts to useful things, not this latest trash inauguration talk. My latest thought is ‘why’ no one has designed a computerized shoe for the elderly that not only helps them with balance, but also contains a GPS tracker so when they wonder off from the home? Easy to find.… Read more »
“…many taking well over 50 years to bring to fruition” bw, some taking 100 years and still not fruiting usatoday Survey: Women will march in Washington, because it’s still a man’s world WASHINGTON — The emotions are complex driving hundreds of thousands of women, many first-time activists arriving on Greyhound buses from as far away as Miami and Baton Rouge, to march on Washington the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration. But it starts with this: It’s still better to be a man in America, and sexism remains a problem in society. That’s according to the first major survey on gender… Read more »
Editorial Update: I’ll leave this here since Patd already beat me to it again, which makes it doubly important … lol
On the voting rights front in the Better Late Than Never file:
Aide to Md. lawmaker fabricated article on fraudulent votes for Clinton
I worked on a congressional campaign in 1968 the issues were the Viet Nam war, abortion and pot
sigh.
KGC, the Tub of Lard aka Laird O’Range is very physical.
According to his Inaugural chair, “If it were up to Donald Trump, he’d be jogging the whole 1.5 miles” of Inaugural parade route.
And if he didn’t have Secret Service and his own security, he’d be running from outraged citizens. That’s my guess.
Norks to join in inaugural fireworks…dong being readied.
In trumpworld, ‘jogging’ means riding in a golf cart right down the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Trump Biographers: He has a Deep Fear that he is not legitimate
Now, after more than two months of Trump’s norm-shattering transition, we gathered Gwenda Blair, Michael D’Antonio and Tim O’Brien by conference call (Wayne Barrett, the dean of Trump reporters, could not participate because of illness) to assess whether Trump has continued to surprise them. Their collective wisdom? In a word, no….
I know this is terrible but I hope Sean Spicer chokes on his own bile
what an asshole
So is drump right handed, left handed or ambidextrous? The stage picture of him “writing” his inaugural speech shows him “writing” with his right had. The golf swing above shows him playing golf left handed. I wonder which hand he uses to mas…. umm, sorry – got off the rails there for a minute. Re: the big dog, ironically enough he was not as popular among the left wing of the party as he was with the moderates and independents. All the party pretty much supported him when he was being pilloried over Monica, but from a policy perspective… Read more »
If you look at picture of Trump “writing” it appears he is sitting at the receptionist’s desk
I knew Florida Gov. Reuben Askew’s press secretary quite well (after the fact) and you can’t find a more decent human being. Just like his boss in that way. Press secretaries tend to resemble their bosses, don’t you think? If Spicer is an A’hole, and of course he is, then he is a complement to Trump and the whole Rump Parliament. (Bill Moyers does not resemble LBJ so I just contradicted my own theory. Although they are/were bright people.) By the way, Assholes, a Theory by Aaron James is a provocative and well-researched book. Haven’t read his follow-up, Assholes, A… Read more »
Obama’s Farewell Address To The Nation
https://www.whitehouse.gov/farewell
cabinet genesis 101
And drumpf said, Let us make the cabinet in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
So drumpf created the cabinet in his own image, in the image of drumpf created he him; out of 23, 18 white males, 1 black man and 4 females created he them.
nymag: Trump’s Cabinet Is Set to Be the First in 30 Years With No Latino Member
When asked about the lack of Latinos on Trump’s team, incoming White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said on Wednesday that the president-elect was still seeking out “the best and the brightest to fill his cabinet.” He urged the press to look at the diversity of Trump’s senior White House staffers, but the Washington Post notes that so far there are no Latinos in those positions either.
In response to question about no latinos Spicer said – there are a lot of cleaning contracts to be won
He Gave His Daughter A Kindle And Filled It With Books
from the independent:
Everything you need to know about Donald Trump’s cabinet, in 5 charts
There are more billionaires than black people in Trump’s new cabinet
How diverse are US cabinets?
Percentage of each cabinets made up by white men
Reagan
80
George Bush Sr
74
Clinton
47
George W Bush
58
Obama
32
Trump
74
How many women has each President appointed?
% Women
% Men
Reagan
11
89
George Bush Sr
16
84
Clinton
26
74
George W Bush
16
84
Obama
32
68
Trump
21
79
kgc, just for you, your very very favorite person
Fired Up! Ready to Go!
The story of Obama’s iconic phrase, animated. Because we’ll need all of our fires to burn brightly.
The Hill reports Trump eliminating National Endowment for the Arts and the Humanities.
https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/513629/fired-up-ready-to-go/?utm_source=twb
Sorry, Sturge: there’s nothing centrist about the cabinet-picks. They’re riding that horse as far as they can. Also, remember the GOP will control EVERY BRANCH of the federal government once they fill the vacant SCOTUS seat. Smoke ’em if ya got ’em.
mrdoodlesdog
Also on the chopping box: NPR & PBS. In a Trump administration, you can’t have anything that actually encourages people to think and form ideas not dictated from on high.
The people that don’t vote are apathetics, addicts, outcasts, conspiracy theorists, paranoids, anti-socials, the poor, the uneducated, the excluded, et cetera.
Fix those problems and more of the eligible electorate will vote. I’ll start holding my breath (maybe I’ll pass out for the inauguration).
NPR is mostly slanted pseudo-intellectual garbage, but PBS is still the best channel on any service. I’ll just throw out my TV if it goes defunct due to lack-of-funding.
Finally, I’ll miss “President” Obama, but he’s no fighter. Progressives need new leadership with more than just a stable of good speechwriters (and actual Progressive values). Ugh.
If I were a Senator, I would rise to say that I think General Mattis has what it takes to be the SoD. Then I would vote against all the cabinet nominees because the deadbeat’s election was illegitimate.