MERYL STREEP - MY HERO

It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter, someone he outranked in privilege, power, and the capacity to fight back. It -- it kind of broke my heart when I saw it. And I still can't get it out of my head because it wasn't in a movie. It was real life. 

 And this instinct to humiliate, when it's modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody's life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose. 

Meryl Streep is my hero, and not for the first time.  She said what needed to be said about President-elect Donald Trump in her speech at the Golden Globe Awards.  When Trump mocked reporter Serge Kovaleski's physical disability, he should have been shunned by everyone, including sane members of the GOP, and eliminated from the field of candidates.

When the tape of Trump boasting about assaulting women was released, his candidacy should have been finished, over, done, but that did not happen.

Trump invited his friend Putin to hack Hillary Clinton's email, and I don't recall a GOP outcry at the time.  The vast majority, if not all, Republican members of Congress endorsed Trump in the end. Putin followed through, hacked the Clinton campaign's email server, and interfered with the election.  Now, too little, too late, a few Republican leaders are "concerned".  That Trump is unfit to serve as president is obvious, but where were the sane Republicans who should have been speaking out forcefully against Trump for months and months?

Also, now that the election is over, Democrats are far too quiet about Trump's unfitness to suit me. The Democratic leadership, with some exceptions, seems overly focused on a smooth transition of power, but a smooth transition to what? Maybe the focus should be on the disastrous nightmare that will follow the smooth transition. WTF?

"BUCK UP, DEMOCRATS AND FIGHT LIKE REPUBLICANS"

Dahlia Lithwick of Slate and law Professor David S Cohen from Drexel University in The New York Times:

There's no shortage of legal theories that could challenge Mr. Trump'a anointment, but they come from outsiders rather than the Democratic Party. Impassioned citizens have been pleading with electors to vote against Mr. Trump; law professors have argued that winner-take-all laws for electoral votes are unconstitutional; small group of Hamilton Electors is attempting to free electors to vote their consciences; and a new theory has arisen that there is legal precedent for courts to give the election to Mrs. Clinton based on Russian interference, All of these efforts, along with grass-roots protests, boycotts and petitions, have been happening without the Democratic Party. The most we've seen is a response to the C.I.A revelations, but only with Republicans onboard to give Democrats bipartisan cover.

Clinton won nearly 3 million more votes than Trump. Trump won by 1% in Pennsylvania, but he received all 20 electoral votes, which disenfranchises the people who voted for her in the state and in all the other winner-take-all states. Why not support the Hamilton electors in the Electoral College in doing the job as described in The Federalist Papers #68? Why have the Electoral College at all if it's never to be used for it's proper purpose?

It was desirable that the sense of the people should operate in the choice of the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided. This end will be answered by committing the right of making it, not to any preestablished body, but to men chosen by the people for the special purpose, and at the particular conjuncture.
....
It was also peculiarly desirable to afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder. This evil was not least to be dreaded in the election of a magistrate, who was to have so important an agency in the administration of the government as the President of the United States. But the precautions which have been so happily concerted in the system under consideration, promise an effectual security against this mischief.

Tumult, disorder, and mischief abound in Trump's leadership and in his team. Democrats generally fight fairer according to Marquess of Queensbury-like rules and traditions, and Republicans take off the gloves and fight unbound by tradition and unwritten rules, which makes the fight assymmetrical, leaving Democrats at a disadvantage. As witness, during the writers' joint appearance on Chris Hayes' All In, Lithwick notes the 300 days the nomination of Merrick Garland languished in the Senate with no forward movement. Sorry, I can't get the embed link for the video to work, but you can try this link and look for the title Should Democrats act more like Republicans?.

If electors choose not to vote for Trump and write in another name besides besides Clinton, and no candidate receives the required 270 votes, the decision would go to the House of Representative. Of course, the majority will vote for Trump, but then the responsibility for the Trump presidency and its consequences will rest entirely in the hands of Republicans.

My post is not about laying blame for what's past, but rather about what Democrats do now. The electoral vote is on Monday, November 19, so there's very little time. Is there a way to stop the Putin-Trump co-presidency of the world?

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

How sad it is when Democrats who elected Barack Obama must remain in constant campaign mode to convince the president that many of us who helped put him in office do not want him to repeat the mistakes of the past. The recent (and barely avoided) mistakes that I have in mind are the launch of another war in the Middle East and the appointment of Larry Summers to a position of authority that has anything whatsoever to do with managing the economy of the United States.

NAME AND SHAME - DEMOCRATS WHO VOTED AGAINST BACKGROUND CHECKS

Five Democrats voted against strengthening background checks for gun sales.

Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas
Sen. Mark Begich of Alaska
Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota
Sen. Max Baucus of Montana.
Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, who switched his vote only to allow the measure to be called up again. 

Double shame on you, senators.

Four Republicans voted for the bill.

Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania
Sen. Susan Collins of Maine
Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois
Sen. John McCain of Arizona

Thank you, senators.

The rest of the Republican senators, double shame on you.

TIRED,TIRED, TIRED

Today I feel as though I've been trying with my bare hands to hold President Obama and Democrats in the Senate and the House accountable to implement the policies which led me to vote for them in the first place - policies which will bring a measure of fairness and equality to the citizens of the United States.  I know I'm not alone and that many others are fighting, too, but I'm tired and about ready to give up.  Among the politicians who know what is right, few have either the courage or the will to do the right thing.

I'm tired of the Democrats' appeasement of Republican politicians who apparently care only about rich donors who fill their campaign chests.  Keep in mind that all in the Congress are well-cared for with their yearly automatic raises that they don't even have to vote on, and their generous benefits and pensions.  I'm tired of Democrats who feel the need to express politically-correct concern about the deficit at this time, when they know what the people of the country want and need are jobs and money to pay their bills and buy the goods and services that are produced here, which would help the economy recover.  A strong economic recovery would, in itself, help reduce the deficit.  Why don't elected officials in the Democratic Party stop talking about the deficit and stay on message about creating jobs, jobs, jobs and a return to a robust economic recovery?  Our infrastructure is falling apart.  Why is it a good thing for the wealthiest country in the world to have a collapsing infrastructure?  Put people to work repairing and rebuilding.

Why is the stock market booming, reaching record heights, when so many in the country are suffering?  Watch the video below, which has gone viral.  The graphs are shocking, and, for me, depressing as they demonstrate the ever-widening income gap between the poor and middle class and the richest people in the country, the inequality that few politicians in the country are willing to address with realistic policies that will improve conditions for a large majority of the people.
Tired...

SHAME ON YOU!

Think Progress reports:

The Daily Advertiser, a Gannett-owned paper serving central Louisiana, is standing by its decision to run an advertisement today in which a far-right extremist group suggests that President Obama and Democrats are conspiring to murder Catholics and Christians.

Publisher Karen J. Lincoln and the other deciders at the newspaper judged the ad shown below not to include "blatantly false, overly offensive or otherwise inappropriate content" for its market.

For shame!  As a citizen of the State of Louisiana, I am offended, ashamed, mortified beyond description that a newspaper would permit such an ad, no matter the market.