Boyfriend Bait: Key Lime Pie

New York Times food writer Vaughn Vreeland promises this homemade pie will be Love Potion Number Lime if you follow his recipe:

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Boozy Carrot Cake

Vaughn Vreeland of the New York Times

Ya know, fellas, sometimes you just run out of steam.  I've been posting a lot here for the last 100 days and more, but yesterday I realized I just don't want to write about the horror anymore.  The stupidity, the craziness, and the absurdity are still growing, and going from bad to worse to beyond godawful - and it's breaking my heart.  

We are living through a great turning point in the history of the world.  The sunlit world of peace, prosperity, and progress - on the whole and in the main, despite all its flaws and failures - that our fathers fought for is disintegrating before our eyes.  Instead, hateful right-wing dictatorships are arising all around the world, hand in hand with fundamentalist religion, willful ignorance, arbitrary cruelty, and the worship of Mammon.  Liberty has dropped her lamp, and Justice her scales.

The human race, led by fools, frauds, and fanatics, seems to be in a race to the bottom, sinking back to a lower level of civilization that we thought we had left far behind us.  And worse is to come, perhaps.  I fear that the 21st century will make the 20th look like a Sunday-school picnic.

No one should take my words as a counsel of despair, but rather as an urgent warning.  In any case, I can't do anything about it, and right now I need to come up for air and clear my head.  So I'm taking a break from nausea, disgust, and political blogging - for how long, who knows.

*          *          *          *          *

In this mortal life, we have to take the bitter with the sweet, and we should certainly enjoy the sweet parts while we can.  It just so happens that a certain foodist in New York has got a sweet shade of orange for you to try - oh, Mary, don't ask!

We both love carrot cake, but I don't care for raisins.  M.P., however, thinks it would be super.

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The Message and the Signs

Well, the first week of Trumpocracy has gone just about as we expected.  For anyone who may have slept through it, handsome Ezra Kline, a brilliant journalist, decodes the message of Trump's inauguration:

 

But this is only the beginning of sorrows.  Four refugees from foreign dictatorships tell how we can expect the tyranny to grow, step by step:

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Pete on Politics in 2024

An interview with Ezra Klein of the New York Times. Gosh, how nice it is to hear an intelligent man talking on the internet. 

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Biden Must Go

This is all I saw of last night's presidential debate, and all I needed to see:

 

I haven't blogged much about politics these last few years, and for good reason:  it's not safe to speak freely in America anymore.  And the vicious madness of current politics is not good for my mental equanimity.

But I will say that for the good of the country, Biden ought to decline the nomination at the Democratic Convention next month and let some other Democrat run for election this November.

Who that would be, I haven't the faintest idea.  Pete Buttigieg is the only politician I know of who is smart enough and good enough to be the leader of the free world.  He's sharp as a tack, he's got heart, and he's got balls.  But Pete is still a bit too young, and needs more experience at the top of the ladder.

What about Kamala, you say.  Well, what about her?  She seemed like a woman who would really make a mark on Washington when she was elected Veep - but since then has largely faded into the woodwork.  My impression is that Biden has kept her on the bench all this long time, and she's dutifully kept her mouth shut about it.  She's a cypher to me - an unknown quantity.  A fearless, outspoken woman who came out swinging just might energize the the party faithful and capture many voters' attention.  But who knows.

However -- and remember, I told you Biden was too old five years ago! -- the choice before us now is to vote for a bad man who would be an incompetent president (to put it very mildly) -- or to vote for a good man who would also be an incompetent president.  Both are unfit for office, albeit for very different reasons.

A terrible choice.  Whichever way it turns out, we lose, and the world loses.  Big time.

The stakes are too high to be indifferent about this election.  God bless Joe Biden, who deserves our thanks and respect for doing all he could do -- but he should now yield the scepter to a younger and more vigorous man or woman.  Someone who can pick up the baton and win the race, if there is anyone.  It's not just about parties - it's about the continuation of democracy, or the hell of dictatorship.  It's about the lives of millions of people all around the world.  It's about Good versus Evil, and that's no joke.

There, I've said it.  That's my good deed for today.  Make of it what you will.

P. S. --  The more I think about it, a Harris-Kinzinger "unity" ticket might be a real humdinger.  Hmm.

Update, 6/28, 11:30 p.m.:  It's cold comfort, but I see the Editorial Board of the New York Times agrees with me:

“The president appeared on Thursday night as the shadow of a great public servant. He struggled to explain what he would accomplish in a second term. He struggled to respond to Mr. Trump’s provocations. He struggled to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his lies, his failures and his chilling plans. More than once, he struggled to make it to the end of a sentence,” the board wrote in an opinion piece published Friday.

“The greatest public service Mr. Biden can now perform is to announce that he will not continue to run for re-election. As it stands, the president is engaged in a reckless gamble. There are Democratic leaders better equipped to present clear, compelling and energetic alternatives to a second Trump presidency. There is no reason for the party to risk the stability and security of the country by forcing voters to choose between Mr. Trump’s deficiencies and those of Mr. Biden. It’s too big a bet to simply hope Americans will overlook or discount Mr. Biden’s age and infirmity that they see with their own eyes,” the Times also said.

Biden is manifestly unfit for the highest job in the world, and the most demanding.  To ignore what is right in front of our eyes is utterly foolish; that's exactly what we reproach the Republicans for doing in the face of all Trump's wickedness, isn't it?  It would be disloyalty to our country to pretend all is well, nothing to worry about. Do you care more about your party or your country?

The board went on to say it would still support Biden as its “unequivocal pick” if the choice remains between him and former President Donald Trump.

Well, yes - if the choice is between Hitler and Pee-wee Herman, you have to go with the latter.  But that's a damn rotten shame.  

Roge Karma summarizes the current state of play in the Atlantic:

As of last night, there are no plausible theories left of how Biden could win the election. Last night was the test of whether Biden was up for the job of campaigning, and he failed it. This wasn’t just a weak performance, like Ronald Reagan’s first debate in 1984 and Barack Obama’s in 2012. The man could hardly speak. To believe that things will somehow turn around come September, when the next debate is scheduled, would be delusional.

The alternative to a Biden candidacy is for the president to voluntarily drop out of the race and either handpick his preferred successor or leave it entirely up to Democratic National Convention delegates to select a new candidate in August. Both come with significant risks; neither has a high probability of working. Vice President Kamala Harris, the most natural choice, may be even less popular than Biden, and other options, such as California Governor Gavin Newsom, are totally unproven at the national level. But the notion that a younger, more energetic, more articulate candidate could defeat Trump is at least plausible. Biden turning things around is not.

Your Head Trucker says, without a new quarterback and smart, dramatic, honest game plan to turn things around, we're fucked.  And I mean all of us:  the country, the world, the whole human race.  Remember you heard it here first.

As Elizabeth Bruenig writes, also in the Atlantic:

The candidates said some factual things and some false things, but only one message came across as true: Our nation is shambling along the road to hell, and there doesn’t appear to be an off-ramp. “We are living in a rat’s nest,” Trump said, right for the wrong reasons. “We’re like a bunch of stupid people,” he went on; “we’re a failing nation.” Absolutely, but not because of migrants or the Chinese or the Russians: This mess is made in America, and all of us are going to suffer for it.

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Elder: A Gay Mormon Love Story

Not as boring as you think!  This is a poignant story of coming to terms with the truth you were taught and the truth you know inside.  I suppose all of us good little gay boys who grew up in a homophobic church (and they all were, in my day) has a story of the Love That Could Not Be like this one. And of finally daring to step outside the sacred circle - and finding not judgment, but peace.

 

A YouTube commenter has kindly supplied the rest of the story from the New York Times (behind a paywall): 

Though Tom left Gianni in Italy, their relationship continued in various forms over the years. Gianni still lives in Pescara, where he is an artist and cares for his elderly mother. Tom returned to the United States, where he remained closeted but eventually left the Mormon Church. (His marriage to a Mormon woman ended in divorce, after which he came out.) Tom now lives in Salt Lake City with his partner. Although their romance has ended, he and Gianni still consider themselves deeply connected and close friends. 

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Who Sounds Gay?

A 2015 op-ed from the New York Times explores the question:

 

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Sunday Drive: On Eagle's Wings

This is the lovely hymn by Fr. Michael Joncas that President-elect Biden quoted in his victory speech last night. 

 

The President-elect also quoted part of this famous passage from the Old Testament:

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

--Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

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Predicting the Next President

Allan Lichtman, professor of history at American University in Washington, D. C., has accurately predicted every presidential election winner since 1980, often a year or two before the election, based on his analysis of 13 political, economic, and social criteria he calls the "keys to the White House." 

In this New York Times video produced in August 2020, you can find out who Prof. Lichtman thinks will win the election next month, and why.

  

What I Say:  Your Head Trucker reminds you that in this mortal life, nothing at all is certain until it happens.  There' s many a slip betwixt the cup and the lip, as the old saying goes.  You remember that in 2016 all signs, apart from Prof. Lichtman's, were go for a win by Hillary - and look what happened.  

Furthermore, in 2000, the prof did correctly predict that Gore would win the popular vote - but chicanery in Florida threw the election to Bush.  What do you think are the chances of political chicanery in this election?

I do feel the Democrats will prevail in this election - but feelings are not facts.  It ain't over till it's over.  So keep your fingers crossed, watch out for tricks, and VOTE!

 

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Frank Bruni: Mayor Pete Is Plenty Gay

Why is this man not gay enough to be President?

Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana, shared in frank terms his very moving coming-out story in a speech at the LGBTQ Victory Fund in Washington, D.C., last Sunday, a story that your Head Trucker can relate to:



Your Head Trucker has not quite given up hope that the American ship of state will right itself instead of capsizing under the howling, shifting gales of fanaticism coming from both right and left; but he is very nearly there.  The oh-so-pure, oh-so-righteous snowflake generation of young Democrats now coming to power in the party (the mirror image of their Trumpista equivalents in Bizarro world) makes me feel rather seasick, to tell you the truth.

It is, however, heartening to see an openly gay politician throwing his hat into the presidential ring for the first time ever in our history.  But is he gay enough?  And if not, just who is?  Is it RuPaul or nothing?  What bar must we clear now to be really and truly gay?

And will the new Kweer Kommissariat take away my pink card?

Frank Bruni has something to say about these matters in his New York Times column this week.  Excerpt:

It’s nonnegotiable that Democrats hold their presidential aspirants to high standards on issues of racial justice, gender equality and more. It’s crucial that the party nominate someone who can credibly represent its proudly diverse ranks. But it’s also important that the party not demand a degree of purity that nobody attains.

I’m not recommending the Republicans’ course in accepting and protecting Donald Trump, which was to bury principles so deep that they may never be exhumed. I’m saying that to turn the Democratic primary into a nonstop apology tour when the nominee will be going up against a president never expected to apologize for anything is a risky strategy. It obsesses over the flaws in candidates who have many strengths, defining them in terms of what they seek forgiveness for. It blurs the line between job interview and inquisition. Taken too far, it rips contenders to shreds before Trump even takes out his scissors.

As for the mini-debate about Buttigieg’s gayness, it arose principally from this column in Slate, which included the following paragraph:

“A marginalized sexual orientation can remain unspoken and unnoticed for as long as a queer person desires. A gay man who conforms to a critical mass of gendered expectations can move through life without his sexuality attending every interaction, even after he comes out. Buttigieg, for instance, would register on only the most finely tuned gaydar. Most people who are aware of his candidacy probably know he’s gay, but his every appearance doesn’t activate the ‘Hey, that’s that homosexual gentleman’ response in the average brain. That doesn’t mean he’s not gay enough — there’s really no such measure. It just means that he might not be up against quite the same hurdles that a gay candidate without such sturdy ties to straight culture would be.”

The author is asserting that Buttigieg, 37, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., doesn’t come across as particularly gay, meaning  . . . what? That he lacks stereotypical mannerisms? That his voice isn’t high-pitched? I’m kind of floored, because I and other gay people around my age (54) or older spent most of our lives educating people about the bigotry and inaccuracy of those very stereotypes and trumpeting the message — the truth! — that gay people can be every bit as buttoned-down and strait-laced as, well, Pete Buttigieg! Now his divergence from those stereotypes is deemed remarkable and in need of dissection? Strange days indeed.

Also, I guarantee you that Buttigieg’s adherence to “a critical mass of gendered expectations” and failure to “activate” the homosexual-alert siren don’t mean that being gay has been incidental to his life and is incidental to his perspective. That he didn’t come out until he was 33 is all the proof you need that he wrestled privately with his sexual orientation and with fears about how the world would respond to it and to him.

I like what little I have seen of Pete Buttigieg so far - his Oxford degree and Navy service are big plusses in my book.  But I think he needs some experience in national politics before trying out for President; he's a big fish in a little pond right now, but that's just a starting point for any candidate.

And I will say this about good old Joe Biden - a great guy with a big heart and a fine political record, but simply too old.  If by some twist of fate he did win the 2020 election, he would be 78 on election day, which would be worrisome for several very good reasons that should be obvious to anyone.

I thought it very curious during the election campaign of 2016 that both of the major contenders - and a couple of minor ones - were right at 70 years old.  Why was that?

Why is there no Democratic figure of statesmanlike character between the ages of 40 and 70?  I ask you.

Midterm Election Results: The Blue Ripple

Well, the American populace had its say on Trumpism last night, and spoke out of both sides of its mouth.  The Democratic Party hoped a big "blue wave" of fired-up voters would give them control of Congress; but they gained a majority only in the House of Representatives, the Republicans still controlling the Senate.  Well, that's disappointing, but it's a start.  At least now there is a power of resistance to the Trumpocracy in one of the three branches of government.

I found some videos that concisely summarize the election returns and results, in case my readers (like me) weren't glued to the TV set last night.  But whether you are interested in those or not, do take a moment to watch this rather heartwarming story of civility in a political race in Vermont - introduced by the delightful and ever-pleasant Jane Pauley, whom it's so nice to see again on screen.  (Where has she been all these years?  And why didn't NBC hang on to her, the fools?)



Well, that was a sweet story.  Maybe there' s still some hope left for this country.  Let us pray.

Wikipedia has the breakdown on all of last night's races here, if you want to burrow down into the numbers (though not all returns are in yet).  You could also take a look at the BBC's informative charts and maps if you care to.  If not, here's a quick summary of last night's election coverage from the Wall Street Journal:




The New York Times gives brief glimpses of some notable Democratic winners, including Jared Polis, the first gay governor of Colorado, or of any state, hooray:




Who knows what the percentage of red and blue will be, come the next election?  The NYT guesses at the future of American politics in this prognostication:

Randy Rainbow: A Very Stable Genius

"A brilliantly vulgar tour de force!" -- Blue Truck, Red State

For comparison, here's a review of an even more vulgar performance in Helsinki:

"Disgraceful . . . pathetic . . . a tragic mistake . . . 

No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant." -- Sen. John McCain

Bonus: The New York Times today released a hilarious animation of Trump's sickly-sweet infatuation with Putin:



I understand that some toxic little queens are up in arms about "homophobia" here. Well, I am as gay as they come, and I say it is brilliant satire. Gay romance is merely the vehicle, not the object of the humor here. It is not directed at gay people, it's directed at a monumental buffoon and possible traitor.

Besides, on every gay website, gays themselves have been making this very same comparison, with drawings and cartoons, ever since Trump first declared himself a candidate. So chill out, girls, and go take a powder: you are just waaaaaaaaaaaaay over-sensitive.

Every satire contains a grain of truth - and who among us hasn't, sometime or other, fallen for a seductive, sexy bad boy who later turned out to be a sonofabitch?  You never will be mature human beings until you learn to laugh at yourselves - and that goes for all the other chip-on-the-shoulder groups as well, at all points on the spectrum.  Grow up, people.

The Random-Flash President

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It has always been starkly evident to anyone with a lick of sense that Trump is a blustering, bragging, overgrown baby, a child's mind in a man's body.  Finally, it seems, the oh-so-smart mainstream press of this overstimulated era has figured it out, too.  Duh.

Excerpt from the New York Times opinion piece, "When the World Is Led by a Child," by David Brooks:

At certain times Donald Trump has seemed like a budding authoritarian, a corrupt Nixon, a rabble-rousing populist or a big business corporatist.

But as Trump has settled into his White House role, he has given a series of long interviews, and when you study the transcripts it becomes clear that fundamentally he is none of these things.

At base, Trump is an infantalist. There are three tasks that most mature adults have sort of figured out by the time they hit 25. Trump has mastered none of them. Immaturity is becoming the dominant note of his presidency, lack of self-control his leitmotif. . . .

Which brings us to the reports that Trump betrayed an intelligence source and leaked secrets to his Russian visitors. From all we know so far, Trump didn’t do it because he is a Russian agent, or for any malevolent intent. He did it because he is sloppy, because he lacks all impulse control, and above all because he is a 7-year-old boy desperate for the approval of those he admires.

The Russian leak story reveals one other thing, the dangerousness of a hollow man.

Our institutions depend on people who have enough engraved character traits to fulfill their assigned duties. But there is perpetually less to Trump than it appears. When we analyze a president’s utterances we tend to assume that there is some substantive process behind the words, that it’s part of some strategic intent.

But Trump’s statements don’t necessarily come from anywhere, lead anywhere or have a permanent reality beyond his wish to be liked at any given instant.

We’ve got this perverse situation in which the vast analytic powers of the entire world are being spent trying to understand a guy whose thoughts are often just six fireflies beeping randomly in a jar.

“We badly want to understand Trump, to grasp him,” David Roberts writes in Vox. “It might give us some sense of control, or at least an ability to predict what he will do next. But what if there’s nothing to understand? What if there is no there there?”

And out of that void comes a carelessness that quite possibly betrayed an intelligence source, and endangered a country.

The Moment and the Choice

For the record, here is an open letter, published on Thursday, from the Editorial Board of the New York Times to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

I will make no comment, except to say that anyone who watched Mr. Rosenstein's confirmation hearing in March would find it hard to doubt his integrity and loyalty to the Constitution.  I'm sure at this turning point in the history of our Republic, he must feel himself caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.

Dear Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein:

It’s rare that any single person has to bear as much responsibility for safeguarding American democracy as you find yourself carrying now. Even before President Trump’s shocking decision on Tuesday to fire the F.B.I. director, James Comey, a dark cloud of suspicion surrounded this president, and the very integrity of the electoral process that put him in office. At this fraught moment you find yourself, improbably, to be the person with the most authority to dispel that cloud and restore Americans’ confidence in their government. We sympathize; that’s a lot of pressure.

Given the sterling reputation you brought into this post — including a 27-year career in the Justice Department under five administrations, and the distinction of being the longest-serving United States attorney in history — you no doubt feel a particular anguish, and obligation to act. As the author of the memo that the president cited in firing Mr. Comey, you are now deeply implicated in that decision.

It was a solid brief; Mr. Comey’s misjudgments in his handling of the F.B.I. investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server were indeed serious. Yet you must know that these fair criticisms were mere pretext for Mr. Trump, who dumped Mr. Comey just as he was seeking more resources to investigate ties between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

You must also know that in ordering you to write the memo, Mr. Trump exploited the integrity you have earned over nearly three decades in public service, spending down your credibility as selfishly as he has spent other people’s money throughout his business career. We can only hope that your lack of an explicit recommendation to fire Mr. Comey reflects your own refusal to go as far as the president wanted you to.

In any case, the memo is yours, and that has compromised your ability to oversee any investigations into Russian meddling. But after Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from these matters, because of his own contacts during the campaign with the Russians, the power to launch a truly credible investigation has fallen to you, and you alone.

You have one choice: Appoint a special counsel who is independent of both the department and the White House. No one else would have the standing to assure the public it is getting the truth. While a handful of Republican senators and representatives expressed concern at Mr. Comey’s firing, there is as yet no sign that the congressional investigations into Russian interference will be properly staffed or competently run. And Americans can have little faith that the Justice Department, or an F.B.I. run by Mr. Trump’s handpicked replacement, will get to the bottom of whether and how Russia helped steal the presidency for Mr. Trump.

In theory, no one should have a greater interest in a credible investigation than the president, who has repeatedly insisted the suspicions about his campaign are baseless. Yet rather than try to douse suspicions, he has shown he is more than willing to inflame them by impeding efforts to get to the truth.

Given your own reputation for probity, you must be troubled as well by the broader pattern of this president’s behavior, including his contempt for ethical standards of past presidents. He has mixed his business interests with his public responsibilities. He has boasted that conflict-of-interest laws do not apply to him as president. And from the moment he took office, Mr. Trump has shown a despot’s willingness to invent his own version of the truth and to weaponize the federal government to confirm that version, to serve his ego and to pursue vendettas large and small.

When Mrs. Clinton won the popular vote by nearly three million votes, for instance, he created a Voter Fraud Task Force to back up his claim that the margin resulted from noncitizens voting illegally (the task force has done nothing to date). When there was no evidence for his claim that President Barack Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower, Mr. Trump demanded that members of Congress put their work aside in order to dig up “facts” to support it.

Firing Mr. Comey — who, in addition to leading the Russia investigation, infuriated Mr. Trump by refusing to give any credence to his wiretapping accusation — is only the latest and most stunning example. The White House can’t even get its own story straight about why Mr. Trump took this extraordinary step.

Few public servants have found themselves with a choice as weighty as yours, between following their conscience and obeying a leader trying to evade scrutiny — Elliot Richardson and William Ruckelshaus, who behaved nobly in Watergate, come to mind. You can add your name to this short, heroic list. Yes, it might cost you your job. But it would save your honor, and so much more besides.

Is the Law Really on Trump's Side?

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The law's totally on my side, meaning, the president can't have a conflict of interest.

--Donald Trump, interview with the New York Times, November 22, 2016

Perhaps some of my truckbuddies were as surprised as I was to hear that the Orange One is not required by law to place his business holdings in a trust when he takes office. But it's true, and as a public service, your Head Trucker has tracked down what the law says about it. The relevant statute is Title 18 of the United States Code, Crimes and Criminal Procedure, under Part I of which Chapter 11 deals with Bribery, Graft, and Conflicts of Interest - here is the first part of the contents of Chapter 11, via the Legal Information Institute of Cornell University:

Click to enlarge.

Section 208 of Chapter 11 deals with Acts affecting a personal financial interest, and applies to all federal officers and employees; but Section 202, subsection (c), specifically exempts the President, Vice President, Members of Congress, and federal judges. Read it yourself:

Click to enlarge.

This law was passed by Congress in 1962 as a comprehensive reform of conflict-of-interest guidelines.  Here is what the Washington Post's Fact Checker has to say about it:

The law doesn’t say the president can’t have a conflict of interest. But Congress, under Title 18 Section 208 of the U.S. code, did exempt the president and vice president from conflict-of-interest laws on the theory that the presidency has so much power that any possible executive action might pose a potential conflict.

“As a general rule, public officials in the executive branch are subject to criminal penalties if they personally and substantially participate in matters in which they (or their immediate families, business partners or associated organizations) hold financial interests,” the Congressional Research Service said in an October report. “However, because of concerns regarding interference with the exercise of constitutional duties, Congress has not applied these restrictions to the President. Consequently, there is no current legal requirement that would compel the President to relinquish financial interests because of a conflict of interest.”. . .

While spoken in classic “Trumpese” that fails to capture the nuances of the law, the president-elect did rightly point to an exemption for the president and vice president in conflicts of interest laws. And while such an exemption exists, the theory was that the presidency has so much power that any policy decision could pose a potential conflict. The law assumed that the president could be trusted to do the right thing and take actions to avoid appearance or presence of impropriety — not that the law is “totally” on the president’s “side” or that it would allow the president to use the exemption to his favor.

Trump’s statement does not quite rise to the level of a Geppetto Checkmark, nor does it qualify for a Pinocchio. So we will not rate this claim. Trump, nevertheless, should be more careful about his wording on this point. It’s quite possible he will face a number of conflicts of interest during his presidency. The law may offer an exemption for the president, but political reality — and perception— often does not.

So there you have it. Trump can legally, in his words, "run my business perfectly and then run the country perfectly. There's never been a case like this." The only hindrance is the provisions of Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the Constitution:

No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.

But little good will that do with a man whose global business organization far outruns anything the Founding Fathers could have imagined.

Some other pertinent readings on this topic if any of you boys are interested enough to look at them:

• Bloomberg View, June 2016: Conflicts of Interest? President Trump's Would Be Amazing
• Congressional Research Service, January 2014: Financial Assets and Conflict of Interest Regulation in the Executive Branch
• Lawrence R. Silberman, Acting Attorney General, September 1974: Letter to the Senate Rules Committee on the assets of vice-presidential nominee and millionaire Nelson Rockefeller

The Two Americas, Mapped

The New York Times has generated a couple of fairly large geographic maps showing the difference between the America that voted for Clinton and the one that voted for Trump.  The small snip below is just to whet your appetite, so go look at the real thing..

And in case you are wondering -- I have been surprised to discover that there is no single nationwide authority for the popular vote, which is still being counted in some states by election officials. However, it seems that two private websites that keep running totals of the vote are regarded by the general media as being more or less dependable; here they are:

The Cook Political Report

Dave Leip's Atlas of U. S. Presidential Elections

Not that the vote count really matters at this point; but the stats are there if you want to see them.

Paul Krugman: Take a Stand

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Economist Paul Krugman wrote this short, pithy piece on his New York Times page yesterday:

A lot of people in politics and the media are scrambling to normalize what just happened to us, saying that it will all be OK and we can work with Trump. No, it won’t, and no, we can’t. The next occupant of the White House will be a pathological liar with a loose grip on reality; he is already surrounding himself with racists, anti-Semites, and conspiracy theorists; his administration will be the most corrupt in America history.

How did this happen? There were multiple causes, but you just can’t ignore the reality that key institutions and their leaders utterly failed. Every news organization that decided, for the sake of ratings, to ignore policy and barely cover Trump scandals while obsessing over Clinton emails, every reporter who, for whatever reason — often sheer pettiness — played up Wikileaks nonsense and talked about how various Clinton stuff “raised questions” and “cast shadows” is complicit in this disaster. And then there’s the FBI: it’s quite reasonable to argue that James Comey, whether it was careerism, cowardice, or something worse, tipped the scales and may have doomed the world.

No, I’m not giving up hope. Maybe, just maybe, the sheer awfulness of what’s happening will sink in. Maybe the backlash will be big enough to constrain Trump from destroying democracy in the next few months, and/or sweep his gang from power in the next few years. But if that’s going to happen, enough people will have to be true patriots, which means taking a stand.

And anyone who doesn’t — who plays along and plays it safe — is betraying America, and mankind.

Mourning in America

After great pain, a formal feeling comes –
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –
The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’
And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?

The Feet, mechanical, go round –
A Wooden way
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone –

This is the Hour of Lead –
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –
First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –

--Emily Dickinson

It's like a death in the family, isn't it?  First the brutal shock of the news, the unbearable, inescapable fact - then the cold, gray, leaden feeling that takes away all your strength, leaving you stunned, and groping for words.  But words won't come.

Hillary's gracious concession speech:

The sickening nationwide results, as of noon today.  Click to enlarge.

Garrison Keilor:

Alas for the Trump voters, the disasters he will bring on this country will fall more heavily on them than anyone else. The uneducated white males who elected him are the vulnerable ones, and they will not like what happens next. . . .

We liberal elitists are now completely in the clear. The government is in Republican hands. Let them deal with him. Democrats can spend four years raising heirloom tomatoes, meditating, reading Jane Austen, traveling around the country, tasting artisan beers, and let the Republicans build the wall and carry on the trade war with China and deport the undocumented and deal with opioids, and we Democrats can go for a long, brisk walk and smell the roses. . . .

Don’t be cruel. Elvis said it, and it’s true. We all experienced cruelty back in our playground days — boys who beat up on the timid, girls who made fun of the homely and naive — and most of us, to our shame, went along with it, afraid to defend the victims lest we become one of them. But by your 20s, you should be done with cruelty. Mr. Trump was the cruelest candidate since George Wallace. How he won on fear and bile is for political pathologists to study. The country is already tired of his noise, even his own voters. He is likely to become the most intensely disliked president since Hoover. His children will carry the burden of his name. He will never be happy in his own skin. But the damage he will do to our country — who knows? His supporters voted for change, and boy, are they going to get it.

In an optimistic mood, President Obama addressed the nation from the Rose Garden shortly after noon today:




This New York Times map plots the election results by counties:

Frank Bruni:

The party had a night so miserable that its leaders cannot chalk it up to the Russians or to James Comey, though there will be plenty of talk about that, much of it warranted. They had a gorgeous chance to retake their Senate majority, and not only did they fail to do so, but Democratic candidates who were thought to be in tight races lost by significant margins.

Clinton struggled more than had been predicted in the so-called Rust Belt — states like Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — in yet another illustration of how disaffected working-class white men had become and how estranged from a new economy and a new age they felt.

Their anger was the story of the primaries, the fuel not just for Trump’s campaign but for Bernie Sanders’s as well. And it manifested itself in the general election. Both parties are going to have to reckon with it.

And they should. If this were all that Trump had shown us, we’d owe him our thanks.

But there are darker implications here, too. After all the lies he told, all the fantasy he indulged in, all the hate he spewed and all the divisions he sharpened, he was rewarded with the highest office in the land. What does that portend for the politics of the next few years, for the kinds of congressional candidates we’ll see in 2018, for the presidential race of 2020?

I can’t bear to think about the conflagrations to come.

The NYT summary of exit polls shows that the president-elect got 14 percent of the LGBT vote:

Thomas L. Friedman:

Before I lay out all my fears, is there any silver lining to be found in this vote? I’ve been searching for hours, and the only one I can find is this: I don’t think Trump was truly committed to a single word or policy he offered during the campaign, except one phrase: “I want to win.”

But Donald Trump cannot be a winner unless he undergoes a radical change in personality and politics and becomes everything he was not in this campaign. He has to become a healer instead of a divider; a compulsive truth-teller rather than a compulsive liar; someone ready to study problems and make decisions based on evidence, not someone who just shoots from the hip; someone who tells people what they need to hear, not what they want to hear; and someone who appreciates that an interdependent world can thrive only on win-win relationships, not zero-sum ones.

I can only hope that he does. Because if he doesn’t, all of you who voted for him — overlooking all of his obvious flaws — because you wanted radical, disruptive change, well, you’re going to get it. . . .

Unlike the Republican Party for the last eight years, I am not going to try to make my president fail. If he fails, we all fail. So yes, I will hope that a better man emerges than we saw in this campaign.

But at the moment I am in anguish, frightened for my country and for our unity. And for the first time, I feel homeless in America.

Embed from Getty Images

David Remnick:

The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the Constitution, and a triumph for the forces, at home and abroad, of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism. Trump’s shocking victory, his ascension to the Presidency, is a sickening event in the history of the United States and liberal democracy. On January 20, 2017, we will bid farewell to the first African-American President—a man of integrity, dignity, and generous spirit—and witness the inauguration of a con who did little to spurn endorsement by forces of xenophobia and white supremacy. It is impossible to react to this moment with anything less than revulsion and profound anxiety.

There are, inevitably, miseries to come: an increasingly reactionary Supreme Court; an emboldened right-wing Congress; a President whose disdain for women and minorities, civil liberties and scientific fact, to say nothing of simple decency, has been repeatedly demonstrated. Trump is vulgarity unbounded, a knowledge-free national leader who will not only set markets tumbling but will strike fear into the hearts of the vulnerable, the weak, and, above all, the many varieties of Other whom he has so deeply insulted. The African-American Other. The Hispanic Other. The female Other. The Jewish and Muslim Other. The most hopeful way to look at this grievous event—and it’s a stretch—is that this election and the years to follow will be a test of the strength, or the fragility, of American institutions. It will be a test of our seriousness and resolve. . . .

All along, Trump seemed like a twisted caricature of every rotten reflex of the radical right. That he has prevailed, that he has won this election, is a crushing blow to the spirit; it is an event that will likely cast the country into a period of economic, political, and social uncertainty that we cannot yet imagine. That the electorate has, in its plurality, decided to live in Trump’s world of vanity, hate, arrogance, untruth, and recklessness, his disdain for democratic norms, is a fact that will lead, inevitably, to all manner of national decline and suffering. . . .

The commentators, in their attempt to normalize this tragedy, will also find ways to discount the bumbling and destructive behavior of the F.B.I., the malign interference of Russian intelligence, the free pass—the hours of uninterrupted, unmediated coverage of his rallies—provided to Trump by cable television, particularly in the early months of his campaign. We will be asked to count on the stability of American institutions, the tendency of even the most radical politicians to rein themselves in when admitted to office. Liberals will be admonished as smug, disconnected from suffering, as if so many Democratic voters were unacquainted with poverty, struggle, and misfortune. There is no reason to believe this palaver. There is no reason to believe that Trump and his band of associates—Chris Christie, Rudolph Giuliani, Mike Pence, and, yes, Paul Ryan—are in any mood to govern as Republicans within the traditional boundaries of decency. Trump was not elected on a platform of decency, fairness, moderation, compromise, and the rule of law; he was elected, in the main, on a platform of resentment. Fascism is not our future—it cannot be; we cannot allow it to be so—but this is surely the way fascism can begin.

As of 5 p.m. today, it appeared from this NYT map that Clinton had edged out a bare majority in the popular vote. Click to enlarge.  

Readers in other lands, before you curse and castigate "Americans" for whatever may befall your countries in time to come, please do remember that more than half of us did NOT will this catastrophe upon the world, and in fact did all we could to prevent it.

And anonymous commenter rgfrw from Sarasota, Florida, sums it all up nicely:

The Republicans now own the country lock, stock and barrel. The own the white House, the Senate and the House. They will soon own the Supreme Court again. They own a majority of Statehouses & Governer's Mansions. If thing go wrong I don't want to hear any "it's all the fault of the liberals."

Sad . . . Failing . . . Dumb!

The New York Times yesterday published a two-page spread listing all 281 people, places, and things that Trump has dissed (from once to many times) since he began running for president.  Remarkable evidence of a 10-year-old's mind at work.  I imagine in many circles, people are anxiously scanning the list for their own names - perhaps they will consider a diss by Trump to be a badge of honor, rather like being named on Nixon's enemies list was, once upon a time. 

Click here to view the whole list.

Change You Can't Believe In

Showtime!  Pay no attention to those little men behind the curtains . . .

In the wake of the Verizon phone-trawling revelations, coming hot on the heels of other privacy and civil-liberties scandals in recent weeks, the New York Times today said in a scathing editorial that Obama "has now lost all credibility."  Do you agree?

Excerpt:

Within hours of the disclosure that federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation, the Obama administration issued the same platitude it has offered every time President Obama has been caught overreaching in the use of his powers: Terrorists are a real menace and you should just trust us to deal with them because we have internal mechanisms (that we are not going to tell you about) to make sure we do not violate your rights.

Those reassurances have never been persuasive—whether on secret warrants to scoop up a news agency’s phone records or secret orders to kill an American suspected of terrorism — especially coming from a president who once promised transparency and accountability.

The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue. Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive branch will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it. That is one reason we have long argued that the Patriot Act, enacted in the heat of fear after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by members of Congress who mostly had not even read it, was reckless in its assignment of unnecessary and overbroad surveillance powers.

Based on an article in The Guardian published Wednesday night, we now know that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency used the Patriot Act to obtain a secret warrant to compel Verizon’s business services division to turn over data on every single call that went through its system. We know that this particular order was a routine extension of surveillance that has been going on for years, and it seems very likely that it extends beyond Verizon’s business division. There is every reason to believe the federal government has been collecting every bit of information about every American’s phone calls except the words actually exchanged in those calls. . . .

Essentially, the administration is saying that without any individual suspicion of wrongdoing, the government is allowed to know whom Americans are calling every time they make a phone call, for how long they talk and from where.

This sort of tracking can reveal a lot of personal and intimate information about an individual. To casually permit this surveillance—with the American public having no idea that the executive branch is now exercising this power—fundamentally shifts power between the individual and the state, and it repudiates constitutional principles governing search, seizure and privacy.

My question is, Who says the feds aren't also listening to every call, with some kind of futuristic, top-secret, voice-recognition software?

But if the Verizon revelation doesn't make you jump out of your socks, maybe this will, as reported by Amy Davidson today in the New Yorker - emphasis mine:

“They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type,” an unnamed intelligence officer told Barton Gellman and Laura Poitras of the Washington Post. “They” are the National Security Agency, and the Post report reveals that an N.S.A. program called PRISM has, for the past six years, been “tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time.”

These were not occasional, extraordinary incursions: the Post, in addition to talking to the intelligence officer—who decided to speak out of a concern for civil liberties that seems to have been distinctly lacking at higher levels—obtained PowerPoint slides from an internal N.S.A. briefing. One of the slides explains that “NSA reporting increasingly relies on PRISM” for close to one in seven of its intelligence reports, and the program, which began in 2007, is said to be growing rapidly. The history of PRISM, Gellman and Poitras write, “shows how fundamentally surveillance law and practice have shifted away from individual suspicion in favor of systematic, mass collection techniques.”

This is the second story in the past twenty-four hours with deeply troubling constitutional and privacy implications—the first was the news, reported in the Guardian, of a secret court order compelling a Verizon subsidiary to turn over call records to the N.S.A. (It is increasingly clear that the order went well beyond Verizon.) We have gone through the day with Administration spokesmen and friendly senators telling us that we shouldn’t worry so much about the Verizon case because of the supposedly abstract quality of metadata. That was always a hollow defense—metadata reveals a great deal that is properly private—but it is especially meaningless now, in the face of what appears to be a sprawling effort to look over the shoulders of Internet users.

The N.S.A.-briefing slides mix corporate cheer and disturbing revelations. There are the logos of the nine companies involved: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple. That is the order in which they joined PRISM. The Post describes Apple as a holdout (it acquiesced, coincidentally or not, after Steve Jobs’s death).

In other words, boys:  Everything you've ever done online in the last six years or so is recorded and stored in a government database. Everything.  Just stop and sit with that thought awhile.

I don't know about you fellas, but one reason I voted for Obama in 2008 was to prune the rot from the governmental tree that Dubya and Co. introduced, and to try to preserve constitutional government in this country.

Now it appears I was misinformed. Somebody, please tell me it's not so.


Update, 9:45 p.m.: The Guardian reports that chiefs of the Silicon Valley companies named as collaborators in the PRISM program are shocked, shocked! that gambling is going on in this establishment to hear this story and deny they have any connection with it. Of course.

Round up the usual suspects.


Update, 6/7/13, 11:40 p.m.:   Via Daily Kos, Rick Perlstein in The Nation reports that our government has been massively spying on its citizens by the millions since the 1930's - receiving daily bulk data from telephone and telegraph companies in the pre-internet days - as was revealed in the Abzug/Church congressional hearings in 1975, something your Head Trucker doesn't remember hearing about back then. But then, Perlstein says the mainstream media downplayed the story and buried it in the back pages.

Your Tax Dollars at Work.

Rachel reports on a story that originally broke in 2006, but nobody paid much attention: "They're sending the entire Internet to the secret room" - and has more on this week's stories.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

 

But not to worry. The Prez says, "Chill, people. Nobody is listening to your damn phone calls."

 

Anyway, it's all cool because all of your elected Congresspeeps, Democrat and Republican alike, have known all about this shit since like Day 1. So chillax already! And once again, pay no attention to what's going on over there with that funny little man behind the curtains. And call off your damn dog too.