monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Official FBI guidelines acknowledge that white supremacists and right-wing extremists have infiltrated U.S. law enforcement agencies, according to a classified 2015 counterterrorism policy guide obtained by The Intercept.

“Domestic terrorism investigations focused on militia extremists, white supremacist extremists, and sovereign citizen extremists often have identified active links to law enforcement officers,” the guide, which explains how individuals qualify for inclusion on a terrorism watchlist, reads, according to The Intercept.

"Some sincerely held beliefs" also applies to Hitler, Stalin, Putin and Mao.

By every standard, Trump is courting even greater unpopularity and sowing the seeds of an electoral backlash in two years. And yet, history shouldn't have allowed us to get here in the first place. By most conventional wisdom it should have been extremely difficult for Donald Trump to be elected President. And yet he was. So today people on both sides of the ideological divide - half emboldened, the other half demoralized - think that political gravity simply doesn't apply anymore.

Is this right?

My own read is that we've gone from a relatively small but still critical misread of the electorate that allowed Trump to win to many people thinking that no rules or guideposts apply at all. This is not right. Trump won as a minority president who was disliked even by many of his own voters, proceeded to make himself less popular and yet somehow none of this matters and he's unstoppable. I don't believe this is so, even as I recognize that all of us need to apply more scrutiny to what we think we know, to changes in how political gravity works.

But as we look at Trump's chaotic first week in office, rumblings at least of Republican discomfort if not discontent and a wave of protests around the country, we should remember some critical things. Resistance to Trump and anti-Trump activism is a critical precondition of turning back to Trumpite tide. But it is not a sufficient one. I appear to be considerably more confident than a lot of other people I know that Republicans may face a big electoral backlash in 2018. But if it happens it will happen because of grassroots organizing in red states and the red parts of blue states. The cities are already overwhelmingly Democratic. The fight is really outside the major cities. Nor is it just geographical. Trump's power will be broken most on issues like health care - some mix of Medicare, Obamacare repeal, etc. These are issues that cut across the urban/rural divide.

ps on supreme court...
Let's recall that Ted Cruz admitted to reporter Dave Weigel that if Hillary were to win the election, the Republicans were prepared to leave Scalia's seat vacant indefinitely.

President Trump announced Tuesday that he has tapped Judge Neil Gorsuch to fill the Supreme Court seat left vacant by Justice Antonin Scalia – a nominee who is in many ways similar to the man whose seat he hopes to fill.

Gorsuch, like Scalia, is a textualist and an originalist who believes judges should follow the text and original meaning of the Constitution. He has a record of standing up for religious liberty and swiftly met with approval Tuesday night from conservatives hoping for a Scalia-like pick.

An academic study from November comparing top court prospects to Scalia -- based on judicial philosophy and other factors -- put Gorsuch second among Trump's "List of 21" for his "Scalia-ness." His views on criminal law (including the death penalty), interstate commerce, and religious liberty match much of Scalia's jurisprudence.

Gorsuch, 49, is a strict opponent of judicial activism, writing in a 2016 law review article that “judges should be in the business of declaring what the law is using the traditional tools of interpretation, rather than pronouncing the law as they might wish it to be in light of their own political views.

No, my point is that if you or any other rabid critic chooses to make a lot more the Yates affair, than is clearly warranted, you will be demonstrating that the facts of any given situation are entirely immaterial to your purpose which is to keep up a constant deluge of propaganda.

I confess I don't understand why you bother or what you hope to accomplish, but suspect it has something to do with your desire to be seen as some sort of leader of the A2K Trump Resistance.

Quote:

I'll take up the remainder of your argument.

How generous.

It won't be necessary because I've no interest in engaging with a minor
propagandist who fancies himself important.

I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure Blathem just got a harrumpf.

I think this article is pretty accurate.
http://www.inc.com/jeremy-quittner/dnc-job-creation-elections.html

One of the many problems with the American left, and indeed of the American left, has been its image and self-image as something rather too solemn, mirthless, herbivorous, dull, monochrome, righteous, and boring.

How many times, in my old days at The Nation magazine, did I hear wistful and semienvious ruminations? Where was the radical Firing Line show? Who will be our Rush Limbaugh? I used privately to hope that the emphasis, if the comrades ever got around to it, would be on the first of those and not the second.

But the meetings themselves were so mind-numbing and lugubrious that I thought the danger of success on either front was infinitely slight.(C. Hitchens)

You can't very well turn around and use them to illustrate the public support for Mr. Trump.

Yes. Bigots R Us is a successful business model presently. Expanding franchise.