The president-elect is a Twitter troll, and other shattershots

-- In this post-truth environment we're now living in, it helps to find something to keep you grounded and centered.  Even if that happens to be, you know, a bottle of Scotch.  I have to limit myself personally to about one or two drinks weekly because of my sundry health conditions, but drinking to forget how the world is changing for the worse, and so rapidly, is not something I'm going to criticize anyone over.  I tend to look for solutions to problems as a first reaction to their presenting themselves, and this sounds like a good one to me.

This week, in a volley of angry tweets, Donald Trump ridiculed the “badly defeated ... Dems,” claimed he “won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” and said anyone who burned the American flag should lose their citizenship or spend a year in jail. Trump’s outbursts set off alarms. How could he believe such nonsense about voter fraud? Why would a man who had just been elected president gloat, threaten protesters, and insult half the country? What’s going on in his messed-up head?

To understand Trump, you have to set aside the scripted speeches he gave before his election and the canned videos he has released since. You also have to set aside the caricature of him as a Klan-loving, Nazi-sympathizing woman hater who will deport every immigrant he can find. Instead, look at the four interviews he has given since his election: to the Wall Street Journal, 60 Minutes, the New York Times, and a group of TV anchors and executives. In these exchanges, all of them conducted outside the behavior-warping context of the campaign, you’ll see how squishy he is. Trump did run a despicable campaign, and he’s a menace to the country and the world. But it’s not because he’s a strongman. It’s because he’s a weakling.

Mwahahahaha.  Will Saletan, a writer I've enjoyed for decades, goes on to list twelve shadetree-psychology points to make when influencing the f'n new guy in the White House.

That’s how you move Trump. You don’t talk about ethics. You play the toughness card. You appeal to the art of the deal. You make him feel smart, powerful, and loved. You don’t forget how unmoored and volatile he is, but you set aside your fear and your anger. You thank God that you’re dealing with a narcissist, not a cold-blooded killer. And until you can get him safely out of the White House, you work with what you have. People in other countries have dealt with presidents like Trump for a long time. Can we handle it?

Yes, we can.

There will be ample time for protests that make a difference over the next four years -- such as turning Dump Tower into a living hell and thus forcing his neighbors to sell at below-market and move out -- but for now, don't give up your Twitter account, no matter how cesspoolish it may get.

-- There's differing opinions as to whether Trump is indeed an infantile narcissist who should be ignored every time he cries out for attention, or whether he should be taken deadly seriously (this is the "normalizing' quarrel).  I believe he is conducting a distraction for the most part, especially when it burps out on Twitter at 4:30 in the morning, like a colicky baby might.  But as to which avenue of pushback to choose: pick one and get going.  (There's nothing that limits you to one of those directions permanently, either.)

For example, today's "ha ha, look what Twitter says" is about Trump's having Mitt Romney over for dinner last night, despite the fact that Kellyanne Cryptkeeper went public last Sunday with the 'Bagger base's irritation over Romney being considered for anything beyond the main course of the meal.  This distraction has been going on for a week already.

-- The corporate media is still addicted to fake news.  Liberals still love it, too.  (The critique at the Slate link of Jill Stein and #Recount2016 hopefully can mollify my pal Gadfly, as he is just a bit too angry about ... well, everything it seems, regarding the recount.)

-- This is a good explainer about whether, and how, Medicare lives or dies over the next two and maybe four years.  I was reminded as I read it that that the Affordable Care Act was birthed the very same way, with the Republicans and Democrats having traded places.

Put me down for an early bet that Medicare survives much as it currently exists due to the shifting and shiftless nature of our fascist overlords.

#Recount2016: The latest *Updates below

A technician prepares voting machines to be used in the presidential election 

in Philadelphia. Courtesy AP/Philly.com

Pennsylvania will have to be sued in order to recount their votes, and the situation is something more than a little complicated.

“Petitioners have grave concerns about the integrity of electronic voting machines used in their districts,” the suit stated.

Though Monday’s petition was filed by 100 Pennsylvania voters, as required by the state’s election law, it is part of Stein’s effort to challenge results in three states that were critical to deciding the presidential election.

Stein’s camp filed a recount petition last week in Wisconsin, and is expected to do so this week Michigan. Clinton lost each of the state by fewer than 100,000 votes. She lost Pennsylvania by about 71,300 votes.

NYT:

(Pennsylvania), where Mr. Trump holds a lead of 70,638 votes, or 1.1 percent, allows any three voters to petition to recount their local precinct. But despite a call on Sunday from Ms. Stein on Facebook for thousands of Pennsylvanians to file the paperwork, in many cases the deadlines have come and gone, according to the Pennsylvania Department of State.

There are more than 9,000 voting precincts in Pennsylvania. Wanda Murren, a spokeswoman for the State Department, said she was aware of petitions in only a handful of the state’s 67 counties.

The Stein campaign said that as of Monday, voters had filed recount petitions in 120 precincts, including more than 70 in Philadelphia, where the county has not yet certified the vote and petitions can still be accepted, according to Ilann Maazel, a lawyer for the campaign.

The Wolverine State seems a little cleaner ...

In Michigan, a candidate can request a recount by citing fraud or errors, said Fred Woodhams, a spokesman for the Michigan secretary of state. But other candidates, like Mr. Trump, could potentially object to such a request by appealing to the Board of State Canvassers.

At a meeting on Monday, where the canvassers certified the election results, a representative for Ms. Stein said her campaign planned to request a complete hand recount by a deadline on Wednesday. The campaign would need to pay estimated costs of $800,000, and a recount could start as early as Friday.

... and the Badger State proceeds apace.

To begin the recount in Wisconsin, the state must receive payment of $3.5 million by Tuesday afternoon to cover the estimated costs, the Wisconsin Elections Commission said on Monday. The commission approved a schedule, which includes county clerks and canvass members being briefed on procedures on Wednesday morning, with the recount beginning Thursday and being completed by Dec. 12 and certified on Dec. 13. The Electoral College votes on Dec. 19.

Ms. Stein asked that the recount of ballots be done entirely by hand, but the elections commission rejected that request. It instead allowed counties to determine whether the ballots should be counted manually or with tabulating equipment. Ms. Stein said on Monday that she would sue to demand the hand count.

Rather then mention Trump's false and inflammatory Tweet, which as usual got more media attention that it deserved -- though thankfully most called it what it is: a lie -- let me point out that the recount effort has produced its own divisions in the Green Party, starting with this statement by Stein's running mate, Ajamu Baraka.

I believe that Dr. Stein sincerely believed that she had an obligation, grounded in her commitment to the principle of election integrity, to mount a challenge to the results in those three states. And while I don’t share that position for reasons that I am not going to try and elaborate on here on Facebook, the notion that her decision was made for any other reason than that is a position that I cannot support. There are many in and outside of the Green Party who support the campaign’s decision to call for a recount. But there are also many Green Party activists and supporters who are opposed to that decision.

It is unfortunate that after waging a courageous campaign to build an independent, principled political opposition to the two racist, capitalist/imperialist parties, the recount effort has resulted in serious questions regarding the motivations of the recount that threatens to damage the standing and reputation of the Green party, its supporters, and activists.

A statement released by several long-time Greens also objected to the recount.  A portion:

There are significant electoral reforms needed to make elections more democratic and more representative of the people. While we support electoral reforms, including how the vote is counted, we do not support the current recount being undertaken by Jill Stein.

The decision to pursue a recount was not made in a democratic or a strategic way, nor did it respect the established decision making processes and structures of the Green Party of the United States (GPUS).  The recount has created confusion about the relationship between the Green and Democratic parties because the states chosen for the recount are only states in which Hillary Clinton lost. There were close races in other states such as New Hampshire and Minnesota where Clinton won, but which were not part of the recount. And this recount does not address the disenfranchisement of voters; it recounts votes that were already counted rather than restoring the suffrage of voters who were prevented from voting.

As a candidate, Dr. Stein has the right to call for a recount. However, we urge the GPUS to distance itself from any appearance of support for either Democrats or Republicans. We are well aware of the undemocratic actions taken during the primaries by the DNC and the Clinton campaign. Greens cannot be perceived to be allied with such a party.

Signatories included Chris Hedges, Cindy Sheehan, Cynthia McKinney, Rosa Clemente, and even Stein's field director for her 2016 campaign, Adrian Boutureira Sansberro.

So to be clear, Stein (and David Cobb, her campaign manager and 2004 presidential nominee, along with other GP leaders like Ben Manski) took the initiative -- in defiance of a GPUS steering committee vote that went against them -- to pursue the recount, beginning with its stunningly successful fundraising appeal.  What all this means for Green unity going forward is an open question, particularly if Stein pursues elective office again, and a story likely to be reported almost exclusively in this space.

More from Brad Friedman's podcast yesterday and his interview with Richard Hayes Phillips, an author and election fraud investigator of long-standing repute.  Here's an excerpt:

... (Hayes Phillips' detailed report concerns) the unusually large apparent voter turnout numbers in many rural WI municipalities and the difficulty citizens have in verifying and overseeing those numbers. As Phillips explains, there are horrible public reporting requirements for both results and for same-day voter registration provisions in the state.

"At a minimum, the problem is a lack of transparency ... We have no way of knowing how many registered voters there are [in WI]. If you don't know how many registered voters there are, you don't know if too many ballots were cast." His report finds that, based on the latest state-reported voter registration numbers, there were "193 towns with turnout of 90% or better, 25 towns with turnout of 95% or better, and 7 towns with turnout of 100% or better." Those exceedingly high turnout numbers are likely lower in reality, due to same-day registration in WI, but the lack of reporting requirements for those numbers is "unacceptable".

"This is the period of time during which we must analyze those numbers to decide whether or not to challenge the election, and we don't have reliable numbers to use!" Philips, who personally examined tens of thousands of ballots and poll books and much more in Ohio after the disputed 2004 election there, resulting in his book Witness to a Crime: A Citizens' Audit of an American Election, says WI's turnout numbers remind him of a number of counties where he found fraud in Ohio, where there was some 80% turnout reported.

(Hayes Phillips observes) that there are almost no ballots to actually count in PA. "The five biggest cities in Pennsylvania that have no paper record of anybody's vote, except for absentee ballots, which only amount to 1 or 2% of the ballots," he says. "My God, if Wisconsin and Michigan which are very close were to actually flip and fall to Hillary Clinton's column, we will face a constitutional crisis, because this whole election will come down to Pennsylvania and the vote cannot be verified. I want America to know this."

Also hearkening back to Ohio in 2004, Phillips notes that there are tens of thousands of ballots with no vote at all for President in MI --- even near Detroit --- according to the state's unverified optical-scan tabulators. It's impossible to know how people voted, unless paper ballots are actually counted by human beings, he confirms. "Who knows who these ballots are actually marked for?"

"I'm not a shill for Hillary Clinton. I didn't even vote for her. But I want everyone's vote to count," he argues. "I want the winner to win and the loser to lose."

I'm not a purist, and I have no interest in seeing Hillary Clinton prevail, and I don't think she will.  Simply put, the integrity of our elections must be able to withstand scrutiny, or the United States is just another banana republic.  Or Christian caliphate, if you prefer.

Update (11/30): More from Bradblog.  And Rocky de La Fuente has paid for a small sample recount in Nevada.  If that sampling shows some inaccuracies, then the state will order a full recount.  And here's a more recent interview with Bonifaz detailing the mechanics of the recount.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance is more familiar with the word "emolument" than ever before as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff looks at statewide judicial race results by State Rep district in Harris County.

Libby Shaw at Daily Kos agrees with Donald Trump. The election is rigged. On his behalf. Thanks to the Electoral College. Why I refuse to sit down, shut up and get over it.

Ted at jobsanger also joins the cacophony of whining about the EC.

Socratic Gadfly takes a critical look at Jill Stein's vote recount push, and while noting it's noble, finds a number of problems, mainly with the likely Clinton-loving professor who pushed for it in the first place.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme is appalled that Henry Cuellar is one of 18 Democrats in the US House refusing to denounce Stephen Bannon, the white nationalist who is Trump's pick for chief strategist.

Texas Vox invites everyone to the ninth annual Austin Green Holiday Party, sponsored by 17 environmental groups, on December 8 at Barr Mansion.

The Lewisville High School theatre department will present "The Laramie Project", a retelling of the life and death of Matthew Shepard, December 1-3, according to the Texan-Journal.

The death of Fidel Castro was the latest of seminal 2016 moments, but no more so than for Mrs. Diddie, whose stories of leaving Cuba in the arms of her parents in 1962 were retold for another generation by PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.

Neil at All People Have Value went to Galveston on Thanksgiving Day and posted a nice picture of the beach. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

================

And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

Kevin Diaz at the SAEN, via Sayfie Review Texas, reports that US Rep. Kevin Brady will be Congress' and the Trump administration's point man in replacing the Affordable Care Act.

The Rivard Report calls our attention to a few more education bills filed in the Texas Senate for next year's legislative session.

Space City Weather remembers the November 1992 tornado outbreak in Southeast Texas.

The Bloggess explains her strategy for surviving family get-togethers.

The Texas Election Law Blog reviews the case for a presidential recount.

Grits for Breakfast marvels anew at the way some members of our Court of Criminal Appeals operate.

The TSTA Blog calls the A-F campus grading system "shameful".

In her first-ever concert in Texas, CultureMap Houston heard Barbra Streisand mix in some thoughts on barbecue and politics between songs.

And returning after a year-long hiatus, Fascist Dyke Motors reveals that she shot William Burroughs.

Leftover Turkey Funnies

Fidel Castro, 1926-2016

Bicho malo está muerto por fin.

Fidel Castro has died at the age of 90, Cuban state television has announced, ending an era for the country and Latin America.

The revolutionary icon, one of the world’s best-known and most controversial leaders, survived countless US assassination attempts and premature obituaries, but in the end proved mortal and died late on Friday night after suffering a long battle with illness.

The announcement of Castro’s death on Friday was long expected, given the former president’s age and health problems, but when it came it was still a shock: the comandante – a figurehead for armed struggle across the developing world – was no more. It was news that friends and foes had long dreaded and yearned for respectively.

Castro’s younger brother Raul, who assumed the presidency of Cuba in 2006 after Fidel suffered a near-fatal intestinal ailment, announced the revolutionary leader’s death on television.

“The commander-in-chief of the Cuban revolution died at 10.29pm tonight.”

Información de Raúl Castro sobre el fallecimiento del líder de la Revolución Cubana #FidelCastro #Cuba pic.twitter.com/vSwWY3gdiH

— CubanitoenCuba (@CubanitoenCuba) November 26, 2016

He survived long enough to see Raul negotiate an opening with the outgoing US president, Barack Obama, in December 2014, when Washington and Havana announced they would move to restore diplomatic ties for the first time since they were severed in 1961.

After outlasting nine occupants of the White House, he cautiously blessed the historic deal with his lifelong enemy in a letter published after a month-long silence.

The thaw in relations was crowned when Obama visted the island earlier this year. Castro did not meet Obama and days later wrote a scathing column condemning the US president’s “honey-coated” words and reminding Cubans of the many Americanefforts to overthrow and weaken the Communist government.

As in life, Castro was deeply divisive in death. The announcement of his death was greeted by thousands online with celebration and condemnation of the “cruel dictator” and his repressive regime.

Others mourned the passing of “a fighter of US imperialism” and a “charismatic icon”.

In Miami, home to the largest diaspora of expatriate Cubans, people took to the streets celebrating his death, singing, dancing, and waving Cuban flags.

AP PHOTO: Cuban community in Miami celebrates the announcement that Fidel Castro has died. https://t.co/WwmnrdD0gC

— The Associated Press (@AP) November 26, 2016

The Communist party and state apparatus has prepared for this moment since July 2006 when Castro underwent emergency intestinal surgery and ceded power to his brother, Raúl, who remains in charge.

More, and photos, from the exhaustive New York Times obituary.  I have written previously about mi Cubana loca's personal journey from the island nation in 1962 as Fidel came into full control there and her parents fled for the US, with not much more than her and a bag of diapers in their arms.  I'll ask her to add some thoughts to this post later today.

#AuditTheVote: The latest

$4.7 million as of the time stamp on this post.

Jill Stein has raised more than $4 million in just over 24 hours -- all through donations to her website.

“Our goal is to create a voting system that we can believe in,” Stein says.

Stein is questioning results in Pennsylvania, where Trump won by roughly 68,000 votes; Wisconsin, where his margin of victory was a little over 27,000 votes; and Michigan which is still too close to call.

“Let me be very clear: We do not have evidence of fraud,” Stein says. “We do not have smoking guns. What we do have is an election that was surrounded by hacking.”

She points to the hacking of the Democratic National Committee, and the hacks into the voter registration lists in Arizona and Illinois - hacks which some U.S. investigators have linked to Russia. She says it all raises questions of fraud with electronic voting machines and demonstrate the need for a count of the actual paper ballots.

One of the guys that started all this is John Bonifaz.

The Washington Post notes that it has never been proven that voting machines can be hacked from afar, and a recount of paper ballots wouldn’t show any evidence of such hacking anyway.

None of this has stopped the donations coming in. Voting rights attorney John Bonifaz, who is helping drive the recount campaign, says the American people “deserve public confidence in the integrity of our process.”

“If we don’t ever look at the ballots, we don’t ever verify the vote, why should we expect that public trust?” Bonifaz says. 

This is the primary reason I support this effort (but to be clear, won't be donating to it).

Bonifaz says he approached Clinton first about recounts, but with no decision made, he approached Stein instead. The only comment from President-elect Donald Trump’s team has been a tweet from spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway, saying, “look who can’t accept the election results,” referring to Clinton supporters.

I am a big fan of Stein's, have been since at least 2012, and think this fundraising effort has been a stunningly successful example of demonstrating the integrity she has regarding our elections and politics.  (As an aside to my very cynical friend Gadfly, I didn't criticize the diversity of her investments because as a financial planner, I understand more clearly than most that it's damned near impossible to put your money where your activism is and have a satisfactory ROI.  That may be different one day soon -- such as with the advancement of solar and wind -- but it's barely changed over the past fifteen years of my career.  If you want to be able to retire before you're 70 and not have to eat Fancy Feast a few times a week, then you need to go where the money already is.  YMMV, but IMO rising healthcare expenses combined with historically low interest rates all but compels retirement planning with one goal: maximizing returns.)

What this effort is truly about is re-establishing confidence in the system.

[What the report by Gabriel Sherman in New York magazine showed was that this] ... is exactly the sort of result we would expect to see if there had been some sort of voting machine hack. There are many different types of voting machines, and attacks against one type would not work against the others. So a voting anomaly correlated to machine type could be a red flag, although Trump did better across the entire Midwest than pre-election polls expected, and there are also some correlations between voting machine type and the demographics of the various precincts. Even (Bonifax collaborator J. Alex) Halderman wrote early Wednesday morning that “the most likely explanation is that the polls were systematically wrong, rather than that the election was hacked.”

What the allegations, and the ripples they’re causing on social media, really show is how fundamentally untrustworthy our hodgepodge election system is.

Accountability is a major problem for U.S. elections. The candidates are the ones required to petition for recounts, and we throw the matter into the courts when we can’t figure it out. This all happens after an election, and because the battle lines have already been drawn, the process is intensely political. Unlike many other countries, we don’t have an independent body empowered to investigate these matters. There is no government agency empowered to verify these researchers’ claims, even if it would be merely to reassure voters that the election count was accurate.

Instead, we have a patchwork of voting systems: different rules, different machines, different standards. I’ve seen arguments that there is security in this setup — an attacker can’t broadly attack the entire country — but the downsides of this system are much more critical. National standards would significantly improve our voting process.

The federal government is going to have to pass a HAVA 2.016 version, and provide funding that secures our elections -- and rebuild the electorate's trust in them -- and it shouldn't be expensive if we move away from voting machines and toward paper ballots.

Although winning those three states would flip the election, I predict Clinton will do nothing (her campaign, after all, has reportedly been aware of the researchers’ work for nearly a week). Not because she does not believe the researchers — although she might not — but because she doesn’t want to throw the post-election process into turmoil by starting a highly politicized process whose eventual outcome will have little to do with computer forensics and a lot to do with which party has more power in the three states.

But we only have two years until the next national elections, and it’s time to start fixing things if we don’t want to be wondering the same things about hackers in 2018. The risks are real: Electronic voting machines that don’t use a paper ballot are vulnerable to hacking.

Clinton supporters are seizing on this story as their last lifeline of hope. I sympathize with them. When I wrote about vote-hacking the day after the election, I said: “Elections serve two purposes. First, and most obvious, they are how we choose a winner. But second, and equally important, they convince the loser — and all the supporters — that he or she lost.” If the election system fails to do the second, we risk undermining the legitimacy of our democratic process. Clinton’s supporters deserve to know whether this apparent statistical anomaly is the result of a hack against our election system or a spurious correlation. They deserve an election that is demonstrably fair and accurate. Our patchwork, ad hoc system means they may never feel confident in the outcome. And that will further erode the trust we have in our election systems.

If Clinton supporters -- who seem to be having a fresh, positive moment about Jill Stein -- are apparently the folks primarily funding the recount, then I applaud that.  The Republicans and Trump supporters should forthrightly do the same, since it was their man who questioned the integrity of the election to begin with, and they continue to do so in the North Carolina governor's race.

The GOP can't applaud McCrory for demanding a recount in NC while condemning Jill Stein's recount efforts in WI, MI and PA. #AuditTheVote

— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) November 24, 2016

So Jill Stein's raised the money for the recounts; let's see how events proceed from here before we cast aspersions about her perceived motivations.

Turkey Day Toons

Anxious to have his life back, Donald Trump donates $2 million to Jill Stein's recount efforts. pic.twitter.com/vkWLqIrP1r

— Charlie Berens (@CharlieBerens) November 23, 2016