kimmy

I'll be fine. Canadian, remember? My US travels will probably be limited to our friendly blue-state neighbors to the direct south. It's Americans living in red states I'm more concerned for. Yes, thank goodness that freedom-loving patriot Omar Mateen was able to own assault weapons despite being on multiple terror watch-lists. -k

Trying to deflect attention away from a guy like Pence being in Trump's inner circle is an odd way of showing your concern. Your theory that Hillary had a secret plan to bring millions of Muslims to conquer America for the caliphate is sheer lunacy and not worth further discussion. The election is over and there is no longer a choice between two outcomes. What is now relevant is that the President-Elect has brought well-known bigots into his inner circle. I'm sure gay people in America will be relieved to know that the government doesn't want to shoot them, however. "Don't Worry, We Ain't Fixin' To Shoot Ya!" would be a catchy name for the new anti-gay bill just tabled in Texas! -k

Laws and rhetoric are always the weapon of choice for his ilk. -k

Yeah, and at present a number of states have been so successful at regulating abortion clinics out of existence that a lot of women are looking at a long road trip to get an abortion even now. But my comment is that this has to be a position that's going to make the pro-life crew furious. They don't want her to be able to get on a bus and go out of state to get an abortion. They want her to carry that pregnancy to term, end of story. -k

He's got a token gay, a token female, ... he just needs a token black guy and he's all set! David Clarke? Kellyanne has said quite definitively that she'll be part of the team. Even though I'm sure it's going to be a pay-cut compared to what she could make elsewhere right now. -k

One of the interesting things he said in his 60 Minutes interview is that he feels that if it does get overturned, it'll become a States Rights issue. I can't imagine that stance making either side happy. Pro-life people don't just want abortion banned in Texas and Mississippi and Arkansas... they want it banned everywhere, because they feel it's murder and they don't believe murder should be allowed, period. -k

Stunner: Trump considering homo and female for cabinet post! Observers astounded! Ok, if Laura Ingraham is press secretary, where does that leave Kellyanne? -k

He said he'd protect them from being shot by Muslim radicals, but he didn't promise to protect them Christian radicals like Mike Pence. I once again mention my observation that right-wingers seem to only care about gay rights when it presents the opportunity to slam Muslims... it looks like you're doing your level best to become Exhibit A on that front. Trump might genuinely have no issue with gay people. In fact I suspect he probably doesn't. On the other hand, he made America's biggest bigot Mike Pence his running-mate, and appointed a Family Research Council mook to chair his "domestic policy" team, so that's not very promising. Trump's latest opinion on the subject is that gay marriage is "a done deal", which I'm sure has Mike Pence shaking with rage. -k

I saw it as well not too long ago, and I thought it was ok. I like Kristen Wiig, but I agree that Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon are by far the highlights of this movie. I didn't care for the Chris Hemsworth character... if the genders had been reversed it would have been utterly offensive. Perhaps that is the point they wanted to make, but I don't really see why that point needed to be made at all. I also feel like the idea of all-female leads was a marketing gimmick... like execs sat around talking about the project and said "ok, how are we going to get people interested in a franchise that's been dormant since the 1980s?" ===== How I envision the studio brainstorming session: Rex Grossman: "How do we get people's attention? How do we make this new? We need an angle! Chucky. Talk to me." Chucky: "What if the Ghostbusters are actually ghosts! Like in Sixth Sense?" Rex: "That's stupid. Jimmy. Go." Jimmy: "What if we had a story where there's a--" Rex: "I'm bored already. Alvin! Hit me!" Alvin: "Babes." Rex: "Babes?" Alvin: "Ghostbusters who are babes. Sexy women. Big ta-tas. Tight spandex jumpsuits instead of overalls. Camel-toe." Rex: "Alright. Let's work on that. Get me some women who make bank. Chucky. Women who make bank. Hit me." Chucky: "Melissa McCarthy. Bank." Rex: "Alright. How does she look in a spandex jumpsuit?" Alvin: "uhhhh..." ===== Anyway, I thought it was a pretty entertaining movie on its own merits, but not a home run or anything. It's unfortunate that the controversy from some corners of the interwebs turned it into some kind of weird referendum on gender relations. -k

Oh come on guys, he's not Hitler. I don't like him any more than you do, but he's not Hitler. Or even Makmood Amadinajinabad, for that matter. And he is in a system with checks and balances, and has sane people around who will keep him from getting out of control. For example Kellyanne will probably take his Twitter away if he starts having a tantrum, and only give it back when he calms down and promises to behave. I did notice that TV Show Amarosa, who has been his ambassador of black outreach during the campaign, has been talking about their "enemy list" in the past few days. Hey, Lindsey Graham! You're gonna "get it"! Watch out, Mitt Romney, you're gonna "get it" too! We don't know yet what "it" is, or when "they" are gonna "get" "it", but we do know that that list exists, and that Mitt and Lindsey are on it... Megyn Kelly better watch her back as well. If Chris Christie were still on the team, I'm sure they would be worried about bridge closures and traffic jams in their home towns, but with Christie out of the picture, we can only guess what kind of retribution they're facing. I am imagining packages of Trump Steaks being delivered to their homes, with the Best Before dates blacked out. Is it safe? Is it not safe? Who can guess? Be careful, Mitt, Meg, and Lindsey! -k

Strangely enough, one guy who was ahead of the curve on this is Rick Santorum. His 2012 campaign for the Republican nomination was based on (aside from "family values") being a champion for manufacturing jobs. He of course didn't actually have any answer other than (of course) tax cuts, but he did recognize the issue. He talked about it at his 2014 speech to CPAC, which I recapped here, and showed he recognized how they were failing to connect with working-class voters. And from the same speech The idea that entrepreneurship was the answer to unemployment was a big thing at the RNC in 2012. It was a big thing in Canada as well, as the Harper government promoted entrepreneurship heavily to unemployed people. I have several friends who took government of Canada-sponsored programs to teach them how to start their own small businesses... they have no revenue and no clients and virtually no idea what they are doing, but they do have business cards! They now have "regular" jobs and their "small businesses" are just conversation pieces. The one person I know who is actually making good money working for herself is selling amazing hand-made clothing on Etsy... it took a long time to take off but she's doing quite well now. And "job retraining" isn't an appealing message either. We already have that, don't we? The message "better retraining!" or "more retraining!" or "smarter retraining!" doesn't seem to really inspire people. They know that a government crash-course in anything isn't going to make them an expert at it... it'll get them an entry-level job in some new field and they're starting from square 1, alongside people 30 years younger. For people who've lost their careers, the idea that they're going to be starting all over must be heartbreaking. They don't entry level jobs in new fields, they want things back the way they used to be... and Trump told them he could give them that, and they desperately want to believe him, even if they suspect it's not actually true. -k

The message I was responding to mentioned burning of Trump effigies, and it's easy to find images of Hillary effigies being hung, as well as Obama effigies being hung. Regarding riots in response to Obama's election, the only one I have evidence of happened at Ole Miss university in 2012. But again, no shortage of people calling for assassinations, praying for fatal disease, and of course the current president-elect calling for rebellion against the election results. Why are anti-Trump people rioting in the streets while anti-Obama people were staging virtual-riots from the comfort of their Twitter accounts? Who can say... my theory is that riots are a young people type thing and a city-dweller type thing, and most Obama-haters are either not young or not city-dwellers. -k

I checked in at Breitbart today prior to the announcement of Rince Priebus as Chief of Staff, and was interested to see a headline talking up Steve Bannon's leadership skills-- "The general who lead Trump to victory!" or some such... and another headline talking about how Paul Ryan said he could work with Bannon as Chief of Staff, plus an editorial reading "Rinse Rince! Priebus represents everything voters rejected!" I didn't read any of these, but the headlines seemed to be trying to not-too-subtly hint that Trump ought to pick Bannon and not Priebus. So, uh... does the administration's close ties to Breitbart seem a little ... uh, strange? People have been complaining for a long time that Clinton has too many connections with the media, that they gave her a free ride. But now we have a president-elect whose "senior advisor" and "chief strategist" also happens to run one of the most popular right-wing news sources. Does that seem like too close of a relationship? It seems like Breitbart is now not just a biased media outlet, but also now a defacto propaganda arm of the administration. -k

I don't think that's true. I saw photos of Hillary being hung in effigy prior to the election, and I have no doubt there would be more of the same if she had won. I also recall people hanging Obama in effigy many times over the years, as well as praying for assassinations or fatal disease. There's certainly no shortage of hot-heads on either side. -k

Now official that RNC chairman Rince Priebus will be Chief of Staff. -k

I completely agree. I just don't think it's going to happen to any great extent. Giving big corporations a tax-amnesty to bring all their offshored money out of tax shelter countries and back to the US probably isn't going to do anything significant. It'll come back to the US and promptly given to shareholders who'll use their own tax-avoidance strategies to send it back out of the country. Will Apple create jobs in the US if they have a lower tax rate? Why would they? They already have enough employees to design and build their products. They only need to hire more people if they can sell more iPhones. Lowering Apple's taxes doesn't create jobs, it just creates more dividends for shareholders. The theory that these shareholders will go out and spend their extra dividend money to stimulate the economy is pretty skeptical... it's been tried before, it's known as "trickle-down economics", and it's not actually very successful. I'm amazed to be in this new world where conservatives who've denounced the idea of direct stimulus government spending for many years as wasteful and ineffective are now convinced that hiring people to build a wall is going to turn the economy around. A democratic socialist senator named Bernie Sanders has announced that he's enthusiastic about working with Trump in rebuilding America's crumbling infrastructure. Although, I suspect that Senator Sanders is more interested in repairing roads, bridges, water, sewers, Flint's water treatment plant, and so on, as opposed to border walls and pipelines. -k

Listen, I don't hate the wider man. I have hired wide people, tremendous workers, they do a tremendous job. Some of my friends are wide, they're lovely people. Nobody respects wide people more than I do, nobody. I'm just telling it like it is. Being politically correct takes too much time, too much energy, and we have too much to do to waste time being politically correct. And also, Chris Christie has a tremendous problem, it's a disaster. Have you seen him? It's a total disaster. So the latest I am reading is that, Breitbart CEO Steve Bannon and Rince Priebus will be definitely serving in some capacity. Kellyanne Conway is also definitely in, although she didn't say in what capacity. If Bannon is in a major role, it's bad news for Paul Ryan, because Bannon hates Ryan's guts bigly. Bigly. Kelly Ayotte, who just lost her senate re-election big by something like 1000 votes in New Hampshire, is now strongly being rumored for a position. Joe Arpaio not actually very likely-- nobody thinks he could pass confirmation, he's facing potential jail time, he's 84, and his wife is battling cancer. He'd also probably blow most of the Homeland Security budget searching for Obama's real birth certificate, so that's also a potential negative. Wild-eyed angry-man David Clarke could be the Homeland Security pick instead. Or it could got to somebody more normal-- Senator Richard Burr is a name I read. Texas state agriculture chief Sid Miller, the only Republican official who called Hillary Clinton a "cunt" in public during the campaign, is a contender for the Agriculture post. -k

Laid-off factory workers aren't going to turn into programmers and electronics technicians and network analysts just with some crash courses at government retraining centers. And if/when factories return to America, they'll be staffed mostly by robots and technicians, not blue-collar workers. The US does keep strategic industry alive by buying stuff they don't actually need. A few years back the Army suggested spending cuts could be helped by not ordering a shipment of tanks they didn't want or need... the tanks were purchased anyway, because the DND felt that keeping the manufacturer financially viable was important to national security. Aerospace companies and ship builders likewise remain viable commercial concerns. Obviously the answer is to give American corporations the same ability to exploit workers and destroy the environment that they have in China! Failing that, perhaps a 35% tariff on Chinese products entering the US. The idea that making everyday products a lot more expensive to buy will work out well has been proven to be tremendously successful, again and again. -k

I'm actually somewhat impressed that he did this. As I mentioned in my first post in the thread, I thought it was a no-brainer. Have you actually seen him? He could have blocked off 2 lanes of the George Washingon Bridge just by standing by one of the toll booths. -k

The reasons Trump won are fairly apparent: -large numbers of people dislike and distrust Hillary. -many people want the economy changed. -many people want social conservative policy put in place. -many people want action on immigration and undocumented workers and "the Wall". I fully expect some action on the latter issue. As for the first three, though. He won't be running against Hillary next time, so unless the Democrats can find somebody even less popular, Trump won't have that advantage working for him. So that leaves us talking about how much economic change he can actually create, and how much social conservative policy he can actually bring into effect. As we've been discussing in this thread. Do you have some objection to that, or are you just trying to sound smug? -k

I'm hearing rumors that the Wall will be located in Texas and New Mexico and Arizona, not Ohio and Michigan and Wisconsin. -k

I think we both agree that those Rust Belt workers expecting jobs are going to be left disappointed, which leaves me wondering what he's going to do to make up for it that disappointment. While some are suggesting this was a resounding win by Trump, the truth is that it's anything but. His electoral college win actually hinges on just a few thousand votes in each of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania... less than 100,000 votes total between the 3 states. It's very easy to picture those states flipping back to blue next election if Trump isn't running against the most unpopular woman in America, or just a small number of independents and Reagan Democrats say "I was willing to give him a chance, but this just hasn't worked out the way he promised", or evangelicals say "he promised us all these things and he just didn't deliver, I'm staying home." He's going to need some YUGE wins to put on his resume, and I'm wondering where they'll come from. -k

Well, that and the promise of jobs. -k

Update: it looks like Trump's first step in draining the swamp is getting rid of Chris Christie. http://nypost.com/2016/11/13/trump-is-dumping-christie-over-bridgegate-insiders/ Sucks to be you, fatty! -k

Judge-- I don't know who he is, but it'll be somebody who passes the Republican senate's strict 4-point litmus test (loves guns, hates abortions, loves Bibles, hates homos). Or, in Republican parlance, "a pro-life conservative who interprets the Constitution as the Founding Fathers intended." In the Donald vs Hillary thread, BC2004 and Derek2.0 have been steadfastly arguing that abortion rights will continue regardless of the Republican campaign promises on the subject. I'm not 100% convinced. Special Prosecutor-- Mayor Rudy and Chris Christie have already dropped strong hints that it's not going to happen. Trump will decide that in the name of "healing the divide in this country", he's not going to do it. Build the wall-- yes. Crack down on illegal immigrants-- only superficially. If illegal immigrants were kicked out of the US with the speed and thoroughness that Trump supporters are hoping, it would cause a crisis for agriculture in blue states and red states alike. Temporary ban on Muslims entering the US: no. Trump has already watered down his rhetoric here. There might be some talk about halting people from "hot-spots" coming to the US. Bias and corruption-- I think Trump supporters going to be bitterly disappointed here. Trump already has scandal-plagued swamp-dwellers like Chris Christie on his team, and bribe-recipient Pam Bondi. As well, half of his transition team is members of his own family who are still running Trump businesses... the potential for graft here is absolutely YUGE, and we know from his history that he's not good at saying no to temptation. Whether it be using his "charity" to buy goodies for himself, or using the campaign to buy services from Trump businesses, or "moving on that like a bitch" when it comes to attractive women, he just can't resist. My personal hunch is that we'll be talking about President Pence within a few years, but maybe I'm just too cynical. However, don't be surprised if the inauguration bash is catered with unsold Trump Steaks and Trump Vodka. (check the best before dates!) -k