monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Thousands of Montana snow geese die a horrible death after landing in toxic, acid mine pit

Donald Trump is apparently responsible for everything that goes wrong in people’s lives, including the heartbreak of psoriasis....Yes, it seems there’s a fertile media market for people speaking out about how Trump’s election has ruined their lives, is ruining the country, and possibly could ruin western civilization. Forget about Taiwan or Carrier or flag-burning, all they have to do is put together a personal rant to win their 15 seconds of fame. Editors are, well, rather receptive.

...The Washington Post saw fit to give the Missoula, Mont. woman a platform to spew about the president-elect ... though what she’s saying isn’t exactly clear.Poor Stephanie is depressed, so she doesn’t feel like dating, and it’s all Trump’s fault for messing things up. Sad!

This whining by Trump-haters is becoming a market niche. And it’s getting old.

Despite deciding not to back Donald Trump financially with ads during the presidential election, the sprawling donor and advocacy network led by the multibillionaire Koch brothers is emerging as a winner in the transition.

Longtime ally Mike Pence is leading the transition team, and several veteran Koch network donors, operatives and political allies are poised to join the Trump administration when the new president takes office in January.

While Charles Koch and some network officials had tough words for Trump for some of his incendiary campaign rhetoric and positions this year, several mega-donors who back Koch-linked advocacy groups poured millions into Super Pacs and other fundraising efforts to boost Trump, and some of these donors have not been shy about flexing their muscles during the transition.

Michael Flynn, 33, left the US president-elect's transition team on Tuesday following his tweets about the so-called Pizzagate fake news story.

His father, Michael Flynn Snr, Mr Trump's pick to be US national security adviser, has also shared fake news.

President-elect Donald Trump is freshly casting doubt on the idea that Russia was behind the election-related hacks into Democratic entities, and said the conclusion by U.S. agencies that the Kremlin paid a role was politically driven.

“I don’t believe it. I don’t believe they interfered,” Trump said in an interview with Time magazine, which named him person of the year.

Two facts stand out about Donald Trump’s remarkable ascension to the presidency. First, no presidential candidate—not even Barry Goldwater or George McGovern—faced so much internal opposition from his own party, with many major figures saying Trump was manifestly unfit for office. Second, that opposition, which initially seemed so fierce, quickly diminished to almost nothing. Trump was able to consolidate enough of the Republican vote to win an Electoral College victory, and from there any lingering dissent has been almost wholly stamped out.

...The party that capitulated to Trump is going to keep on waving the white flag. Never Trump was a popular slogan in 2016, but the reality of the Republican Party is now Forever Trump.

It’s easy to find extenuating justifications for the cravenness of the GOP. It’s rooted in an age of partisan polarization, as well as the dream of the likes of Paul Ryan of having a unitary government that could fulfill long-deferred goals of the conservative movement. As astute observers like Michael Grunwald note, the fanatical partisanship of the GOP, already evident in the way Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell implemented a policy of absolute rejectionism during the Obama administration, has in fact turned out to be politically smart: The GOP thwarted Barack Obama on many fronts and can now roll back his presidency.

Yet politics can never be fully divorced from morality. In order to achieve their victory, Republican leaders handed their party over to Donald Trump, a racist who boasted of sexually assaulting women, an advocate of torture and ethnic bigotry, a man in every way unfit for high office. Once Trump became the Republican nominee, the possibility of him becoming president was real and very few in his party tried to stop him. Whatever happens in the Trump era won’t just be his fault, but will now taint the entire party. That’s the true price of Republican capitulation.

.The party that capitulated to Trump is going to keep on waving the white flag. Never Trump was a popular slogan in 2016, but the reality of the Republican Party is now Forever Trump.

The emerging GOP plan to repeal Obamacare on a delayed schedule — and then maybe kinda sorta replace it later — has raised a big question: Will Democrats help Republicans pass a replacement that is far less generous and comprehensive than the health law is, allowing Republicans an escape from the political fallout from repeal?

In an interview with me, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer answered this question with a resounding No. Under no circumstances, he vowed, would Democrats throw Republicans such a political lifeline.

“We’re not going to do a replacement,” Schumer said of the Senate Democratic caucus. “If they repeal without a replacement, they will own it. Democrats will not then step up to the plate and come up with a half-baked solution that we will partially own. It’s all theirs.”