The Dunces Have Elected A Dunce

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2016/11/30/mitt_romney_dines_with_the_devil.html

The Going Rate for Mitt Romney’s Soul Is Apparently a $215.57 Meal at Jean-Georges



"On March 3, 2016, Republican Party elder Mitt Romney gave a speech about Donald Trump in which he listed the then-candidate’s defining actions as “bullying,” “greed,” “showing off,” “misogyny,” and “absurd third-grade theatrics,” called him a “con man,” a “fake,” a “phony,” and a “fraud,” who was “playing the members of the American public for suckers,” and, worst of all, said that when it came to foreign policy, Trump was “very, very not smart.” As recently as October, here’s how Romney felt about the Republican nominee:

Hitting on married women? Condoning assault? Such vile degradations demean our wives and daughters and corrupt America's face to the world.
— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) October 8, 2016

On Tuesday night, Romney described President-elect Trump’s picks to lead the government—a parade of horribles that include Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, and Jeff Sessions, who Slate’s Jamelle Bouie correctly described as a “a white nationalist provocateur; an anti-Muslim conspiracy-monger; and an apologist for a regressive, anti-black politics,” respectively—as “solid, effective, capable people.” Romney went on to say that he had “increasing hope that President-elect Trump is the very man who can lead us to [a] better future.”"

Ron

 

"Donald Trump Is Shocked His Working-Class Supporters Believed His B.S.

Trump recently brokered with the manufacturer’s parent company to prevent
roughly a 1,000 jobs from moving to Mexico. Notably absent from his rambling
remarks were details about what, exactly, he promised and/or threatened that
persuaded United Technologies to change its mind.
Josh Voorhees Josh Voorhees

The reason for that, as my colleague Henry Grabar has already explained, is
that what happened in Indiana represents exactly the problem, not the solution,
in America’s approach to corporate negotiation. Based on what has been made
public about the negotiations, it appears Trump secured millions of dollars
in state tax breaks for a massive corporation that will still send more than
a thousand other Indiana jobs to Mexico. The less said about the specifics
the better for Trump.



He did, however, offer fresh details on Thursday about why he claims he got
involved with Carrier in the first place. Assuming they are true, they were
remarkably candid (emphasis mine):

I'll never forget about a week ago I was watching the nightly news—I won't
say which one because I don't want to give them credit because I don't like
them much. I'll be honest, I don't like them, not even a little bit. But they
were doing a story on Carrier and I say, “Wow, that's something, I want to see
that.” And they had a gentleman worker, great guy, handsome guy, he was on, and
it was like he didn't even know they were leaving. He said something to the
effect, “No, we're not leaving because Donald Trump promised us that we're not
leaving.” And I never thought I made that promise; not with Carrier—I made it
for everybody else. I didn't make it really for Carrier, and I said, “What's he
saying?”

He was such a believer, he was such a great guy. He said, “I've been with
Donald Trump from the beginning and he made the statement that Carrier's not
going anywhere, they're not leaving.” And I'm saying to myself, man. And then
they played my statement, and I said, “Carrier will never leave.” But that was
a euphemism. I was talking about Carrier like all other companies from here on
in because they made the decision a year and a half ago. But he believed that
that was—and I could understand it; I actually said [it]—when they played that
I said I did make it but I didn't mean it quite that way.

First thing’s first: The next president of the United States might not know
what the word euphemism means. More importantly, though, was that Trump now
says that when he specifically promised during the campaign to use the threat
of stiff tariffs to bring back the Carrier jobs, he wasn’t actually promising
to bring back the Carrier jobs, nor did he even intend to try."

Ron

 

An ignorant southern white asshat living a vicarious power trip through Donald Trump did that? I JUST CAN'T BELIEVE IT.

The North Carolina GOP Has a New Suppression Tactic: Voter Defamation

"My neighbor Lucia Foster was surprised when I emailed her on November 18. “Are you aware,” I asked, “that your name is on one of the election protest petitions?”

Foster was raised to take voting seriously. She grew up in both Bangkok, Thailand, where her parents worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development, and Washington, D.C.’s Capitol Hill. “I was aware, from a young age, of how government works,” she says. “And I saw the impact of elections on foreign aid overseas.” Now 41, Foster has voted her entire adult life—she’s a Democrat—and this year moved her registration to Durham, North Carolina. When she’s not working as a clinical-trials specialist, she teaches drama at a theater company with a social-justice bent.

Now, to her befuddlement, Foster was seeing her name on a list of suspicious voters. Supporters of North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, a Republican seeking a second term, had launched an all-out campaign to question the legitimacy of a contest that he appeared to be losing to Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper. As of Thursday evening, Cooper’s lead was 10,267 votes out of 4.6 million cast, though no winner has been declared.

Questioning election integrity has been big news nationally, of course: Donald Trump has been espousing false claims of rampant voter fraud and even charging, without evidence, that “millions of people” voted illegally in the presidential race. This is a recurrent trope here in North Carolina, which has been a laboratory for attacks on voting rights. What happened to my neighbor shows how the fraud narrative plays out on the ground—and it may be a preview of what voters around the country can expect under President Trump.

Part of the North Carolina GOP’s strategy has been disputing the honesty of individual voters, including two who live on my street. John Posthill, a volunteer for the McCrory campaign, filed four petitions in Durham alleging various irregularities. One petition claimed that 17 Durhamites, including Foster, were “known to have voted in multiple states,” which in North Carolina would be a felony. “I certainly did not vote in more than one state,” Foster wrote back to me. (Election officials in Kent County, Maryland, where she used to live, confirm that she did not vote there during the general election.)

When I asked Posthill where he got his information, he responded, “I am in a situation where talking to the press right now seems like an unwise idea.”"

RON