Three Weeks Later: Still Out of Whack

Balanced Rock in Arches National Park, Utah

Like the rock somehow still standing in this photo on the November page of my calendar, dt hovers over our nation, the lump elected president but about to fall off, shattering himself and damaging the lives of untold numbers of others.  

Thank you to the Los Angeles Times for today's editorial titled "The so-called rigged election."

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-election-rigged-20161129-story.html

We're used to close presidential elections, begins the piece:

"Yet three weeks after the final ballots were cast in the 2016 election, the notion that the contest was 'rigged' or otherwise lacking in legitimacy is alarmingly widespread....  the unease is real."

The writers credit dt with sowing doubt about the election process during his campaign and even now with "peddling utterly unsubstantiated claims about 'millions' of illegally cast votes in an effort to explain away his second-place finish in the popular vote)."

They cite the Electoral College as "an anti-democratic anachronism that should be abolished through a constitutional amendment."  Not in my lifetime.

Then they discuss the three main reasons why Democrats consider this election to have been flawed:

1) The hacking of key Clinton campaign emails and DNC emails by Russians,

2) FBI Director James Comey's announcement on Oct. 28 of reopening the investigation into Clinton's private email server--and his "never mind" two days before the election, 
and 
3) evidence that some Republican legislatures made it harder for Democratic-leaning voters to vote, such as the Wisconsin law requiring photo ID to vote.  Did this contribute to the decline in turn-out in poor areas of Milwaukee?  dt won Wisconsin by only 22,177 votes.

Thus three weeks later we still have a bad taste in our mouths after swallowing the election "results."

There will be a recount in Wisconsin and in Michigan, where dt won by only 10,704 votes, and in Pennsylvania, where his lead was 68,030 votes.  Here's the story by Noah Bierman and Michael A. Memoli:

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-recount-20161128-story.html

But the three key flaws cited above cannot be changed. 

We are stuck with an unusually well-qualified candidate--female--winning the popular vote by 2.5 million votes--but losing in the Electoral College to the most unqualified candidate ever to take office.  And what a surprise--this bozo is male.

Once again, a woman has to be ten times as well-qualified as a man to get the job.  If there's the slightest doubt about her, give it to the Groper in Chief.  

The gender dynamics in this election are so outrageous that I refuse to live with a dt presidency, to resume business as usual.  I will hate dt with every fiber in my body.  I will fight him through my blog and Facebook page and tweets....  I am investigating whether to move to Mexico as a political statement.

I will watch him unravel into a presidency like Ronald Reagan's second term, where those around him control his rants and tweets and try to carry out the business of running the nation.

Pipelines and Other Blessings

We gather together to ask our God's blessing
And try to remember the things not to say--
The family secrets, the crises, disagreements--
We promised not to raise them,
Hope no one else does.

We gather together to ask our God's blessing.
She hastens and chastens her will to make known.
The wicked are winning
But hey, it's just beginning.
Our God is on our side;
She forgets not her own.

Beside to guide us, our God with us joining,
Ordaining, maintaining our pipeline divine;
So what if we freeze spray
A few lousy injuns
Been doing it forever,
O God, make us free!

Report on violence to protesters against North Dakota pipeline:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/23/us/north-dakota-pipeline-conflict/index.html

"We Gather Together":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo7YlcYHPTM

1. We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing;
   He chastens and hastens His will to make known;
   The wicked oppressing now cease from distressing;
   Sing praises to His Name; He forgets not His own.
2. Beside us to guide us, our God with us joining,
   Ordaining, maintaining His kingdom divine;
   So from the beginning the fight we were winning;
   Thou, Lord, were at our side, all glory be Thine!
3. We all do extol Thee, Thou Leader triumphant,
   And pray that Thou still our Defender will be;
   Let Thy congregation escape tribulation;
   Thy Name be ever praised! O Lord, make us free!

Thanksgiving Day

I am thankful for only one thing: that President Obama lived to complete his two terms and was not assassinated.  

Not much else on the horizon to be thankful for, except that I will not live too much longer, 5-10 yrs.

I'm still angry that this asshole won the presidential election.

My analysis, with thanks to the psychiatric analysis by guests on The Diane Rehm Show last summer:

1)  He has some form of dementia, probably Alzheimer's.  Evidence: lack of memory, lack of impulse control, grandiosity, etc.  I saw it with my mother--see my other blog, Doing Dementia http://doingdementia.blogspot.com/

 2)  He will be managed by those around him during his presidency, as Ronald Reagan was during his second term.  He won't have a second term.

3)  He is pathetic.  Not worth my anger, which will eventually diminish.

I guess I can finally take down my yard signs for Hillary Rodham Clinton for president.

Lies and "Never Mind"s

Every day we hear that yet another of dt's campaign slogans and promises has been scrapped:
--repeal Obamacare?  well, maybe not...
--pull out of the Paris environmental agreement?  no, not really
--ban Muslim immigrants? not so much.
--waterboarding?  maybe not a good idea...

Things he's no longer proud of saying, he labels "campaign rhetoric" or "locker room talk"--and poof, they are gone.

Now it's "Lock her up."  

That chant got him elected--but today he tells the New York Times that he's not really going to set up a commission to investigate HRC and try to convict her of something and jail her.

And by the way, he's friends with the NYT now.  All the caustic labels are gone, for the moment.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/23/us/politics/your-guide-to-most-important-quotes-times-trump-interview.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=b-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

http://www.scpr.org/programs/airtalk/2016/11/23/53248/did-trump-pull-an-about-face-at-the-nyt/#comments

Some Democrats are heartened by these about-faces.  "Hey, maybe his presidency won't be so bad," they say.

Not me.  I am disgusted by the way he so easily switches off the hate that got him elected.

Each time Trump reverses a campaign position, he becomes a greater liar. 

He used "Lock her up" to win the election but had no intention of actually trying to do it. 

He said whatever was convenient to get more votes--now he says whatever he needs to in order to get enough Romneys and others to work with him. 

He's a liar, and I become more bitter about his tactics to defeat Hillary Clinton with every reversal I hear.

Lie, cheat, and steal so you can win the election.  

He has no idea that any moral standards exist.  He doesn't think that God is watching him--or that anyone else is watching except his sycophants.

The only way I can survive is to turn off the television permanently, turn off NPR whenever I hear his voice or someone making excuses for him. and limit my intake of print journalism.

Thank you to Larry Mantle for airing this dt credibility problem on AirTalk today.

Hillary Is Ahead by 1.5 Million Votes

As of today, November 20, Hillary Clinton leads dt by 1.5 million votes.

And 7 million absentee ballots are still being counted, most in California, Washington, and New York. 

It’s too soon to tell, he cautions, if Clinton’s total haul, which sat at 63.6 million as of the morning of November 20, will match or surpass the 66 million votes Obama received in 2012.

The problem is that each vote in Wyoming counts as much in the electoral college as three votes in California.  The way the electoral college is weighted, dt will become the next president.

Thank you to Andrew McGill of The Atlantic for this reminder that vote for vote, Hillary Clinton is the winner.  But our founding FATHERS rigged the system to favor the slave states and the rural areas.

So we're stuck with a dangerous, incompetent clown for president.  

Good luck, USA.

Hope from a Wise President

President Obama has been such a good, wise president.

His words to encourage his daughters not to give up hope after the election are so heartening.

http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/11/what-president-obama-told-his-daughters-after-trumps-win.html

I can't keep up the faith that he has--but I will try harder.

In an interview with David Remick of The New Yorker, he spoke these words regarding his encouragement to his daughters: 

“What I say to them is that people are complicated,” Obama told me. “Societies and cultures are really complicated … This is not mathematics; this is biology and chemistry. These are living organisms, and it’s messy. And your job as a citizen and as a decent human being is to constantly affirm and lift up and fight for treating people with kindness and respect and understanding. And you should anticipate that at any given moment there’s going to be flare-ups of bigotry that you may have to confront, or may be inside you and you have to vanquish. And it doesn’t stop … You don’t get into a fetal position about it. You don’t start worrying about apocalypse. You say, O.K., where are the places where I can push to keep it moving forward.”

 http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/28/obama-reckons-with-a-trump-presidency

You find places to push to keep it moving forward.

Okay, Mr. President.  I will not despair.

Hillary Speaks Out

Hillary confirms what everyone knows: James Comey's announcement of reopened investigation 12 days before the election hurt her campaign.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/13/us/politics/hillary-clinton-james-comey.html?_r=0


It caused a loss of momentum at a critical point.

I'm so angry about this...

Fleeing the US

No wall you can build, bully, will keep me in.  

I'm going to Mexico--a better place to live than the US under your pretended presidency.  

Today I'm driving to Mexicali and San Felipe to check things out: housing prices, neighborhoods, towns to live in.  Will spend the weekend.  

Some people are going to Canada or France.  I say, do what dt doesn't understand, what he loathes.  

See the beauties of a neighbor that we have put down for years, both militarily and verbally. 

Going where I don't have a 711 store handy, where I may be the victim of a crime, where getting internet access is harder.  

St. Francis, Mother Theresa, and all the saints would approve--but I know I'm still going as a relatively wealthy person with a lot of privilege.

"Your hopes, your dreams" ??

Yesterday on KPCC's Airtalk, Larry Mantle began by asking, "What are your hopes, your dreams for the Trump presidency?"

I didn't turn it off.  I was housecleaning, so I left it on.  Until I had to turn it off half an hour later.

Until that moment, I had trusted Larry as my friend via his radio talk show.  Intelligent, reasoned, liberal, tolerant...

But he has sold out.  

He could be raging against the dying of the light, like Michael Moore. Senator Harry Reid, and many others.

Instead he is accommodating to the new dominant power.  He's accepting the status quo as reasonable, something we can deal with by still having hopes and dreams about where this lying, misogynist sexual pervert will take the country in the next four years.

No, thank you.

I had already learned that I need to turn off my television for four years.  Goodbye, Rachel Maddow and all my friends via MSNBC and CNN.  

I can't see you any more because I would risk having the face and voice of that monster coming into my home.

I felt sad on Tuesday night watching Rachel as she bravely talked on, reporting the presidential race as if the apocalypse had not come.  She did not let her true feelings come to the fore.

She did what firefighters and police and doctors do in emergencies.  She stayed calm and carried on.

But in this case it was more appropriate to scream and yell or walk out of the studio--and lose her job.  What the hell.

She didn't, however.  She kept on politely reporting facts state by state.  Her mouth spoke facts but the act of continuing to sit calmly as the Titanic sank amounted to a huge lie: "This is normal." 

"This is within the range of acceptable outcomes.  I'm down with it.  I will not lose face or lose my job over dt being elected president."

I refuse to accept business-as-usual commentary on tv or radio.  I have not turned on the television since Nov. 8.  

And now Larry Mantle has taught me that I can't even listen to radio, or at least to KPCC.

Note: I can still listen to KPFK, the more radical local radio station.

He'll be miserable...

Great post by Ashley, Live Blogging My Descent into Madness at 11 pm, Friday, Nov. 11, 2016

http://livebloggingmydescentintomadness.tumblr.com/tagged/mine

"I do take some small, cold, bitter satisfaction in one thing, and that's the fact that Trump is going to be absolutely fucking miserable for the next 4 years.... He's going to have to sit through SO many meetings, be forced to read SO many briefings, get shoehorned into serious business all day every day..."

I do take some small, cold, bitter satisfaction in one thing, and that’s the fact that Trump is going to be absolutely fucking miserable for the next four years. 

He’s an entertainer and an attention whore, not a public servant. He wants to be on TV and in front of crowds, not actually working a difficult, grueling, stressful job he can’t opt out of. He’s going to have to sit through SO many meetings, be forced to read SO many briefings, get shoehorned into serious business all day every day, without crowds to perform for, and he’s going to hate Every. Single. Minute. 

And then, when he doesn’t deliver on his promises, when he doesn’t build the wall or create jobs or make people rich, when it becomes clear how incompetent and buffoonish he is, the country and all his supporters will turn on him. They’re gonna start blaming him for everything, and those crowds that cheered for him are going to start booing. He’ll be humiliated at every turn, and leave office with the lowest approval rating ever, and he’ll be universally despised. 

Because if he’d lost to Hillary, he would have played the martyr forever, called everything rigged, and had a cushy gig on Fox News complaining every day about how he would have done it better. But now he’s going to have to actually WORK, he’s going to be forced to deal with RESPONSIBILITIES, while surrounded by people who hate him and don’t respect him, people vastly more intelligent and competent than him, and he will be exposed as a loser. And then, we’ll fire him. He’ll go down as the worst president in history. And he’ll have no one to blame but himself. 

I know this isn’t much against the fear of what’s going to happen, but friends, hear me. We are going to make Donald Trump’s life a living nightmare, and I for one take immense pleasure from that. 

I do take some small, cold, bitter satisfaction in one thing, and that’s the fact that Trump is going to be absolutely fucking miserable for the next four years. 

He’s an entertainer and an attention whore, not a public servant. He wants to be on TV and in front of crowds, not actually working a difficult, grueling, stressful job he can’t opt out of. He’s going to have to sit through SO many meetings, be forced to read SO many briefings, get shoehorned into serious business all day every day, without crowds to perform for, and he’s going to hate Every. Single. Minute. 

And then, when he doesn’t deliver on his promises, when he doesn’t build the wall or create jobs or make people rich, when it becomes clear how incompetent and buffoonish he is, the country and all his supporters will turn on him. They’re gonna start blaming him for everything, and those crowds that cheered for him are going to start booing. He’ll be humiliated at every turn, and leave office with the lowest approval rating ever, and he’ll be universally despised. 

Because if he’d lost to Hillary, he would have played the martyr forever, called everything rigged, and had a cushy gig on Fox News complaining every day about how he would have done it better. But now he’s going to have to actually WORK, he’s going to be forced to deal with RESPONSIBILITIES, while surrounded by people who hate him and don’t respect him, people vastly more intelligent and competent than him, and he will be exposed as a loser. And then, we’ll fire him. He’ll go down as the worst president in history. And he’ll have no one to blame but himself. 

I know this isn’t much against the fear of what’s going to happen, but friends, hear me. We are going to make Donald Trump’s life a living nightmare, and I for one take immense ple

How millennials voted...

Hope for the future... this is how millennials voted in the presidential race.

Thanks to my daughter, Marie AE, for keeping me sane with her fighting spirit these last few days.  

(She sent this post and called me several times...)

Funny that we don't hear anything from dt now about the election being rigged.  

If anything, the electoral college rigs the election in favor of rural voters every time we vote for a national president.

Hillary Rodham Clinton won the popular vote.  Never forget that.  

The state of Maryland has changed its laws to allow its own electoral college voters to follow the popular vote of the state and the popular vote of the nation, regardless of what direction the county-by-county or state-by-state vote goes.

May Michigan, Florida, and other states follow the example of Maryland.

The other way this election was thrown was by the intervention of FBI Director James Comey.  Had he not sent out his three ambiguous, threatening, damaging letters, Hillary RC would have been elected.  

Action seen in Reaction

Thank you to Evon Bachaus for teaching me in the mid-70s that "The action is in the reaction" --in other words, you can measure the effectiveness of an action by the amount of reaction it stirs up.

My first lesson in feminist organizing!

Thank you to Marie June for reminding me of this principle today --that the progress made for minorities, women, immigrants, LGBTQ folks, pregnant women needing to end a pregnancy, etc. is what caused Tuesday's big backlash.

Taking it a step further, Marie promises that we will all bring about a ton of progress through our reaction to the Trump squeak-by election.

Stay tuned...

dt has a court date on Dec. 16 for rape of a 13-yr-old.  Stay tuned.  Will he get off because he's president-elect?

Thank you to Whitney Gustafson for bringing dt's upcoming court case to my attention.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-bloom/why-the-new-child-rape-ca_b_10619944.html?ncid=engmodushpmg00000003


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Now I will turn to another subject, one that dt supporters like to bring up--HRC's courtroom defense of a rapist in 1975.  

http://heavy.com/news/2016/10/kathy-shelton-hillary-clinton-defends-rapist-12-year-old-rape-victim-scandals-laughed/

Here's my take after reading this article on Heavy.com.

Hillary didn't want to take the case, but refusing it as a young lawyer probably would have cost her the job she had.  

Now I'm sure she wishes she had refused to be this guy's defense lawyer.  

At any rate, being a rapist and defending one in the courtroom are worlds apart.

From the article:

“I don’t want to represent this guy. I just can’t stand this,” Gibson recalled Clinton pleading with him. “I don’t want to get involved. Can you get me off?”

Gibson suggested that she take her pleas to the judge, which Clinton did. But the judge was unsympathetic, ordering her to take Taylor’s case.

Once she no longer had a choice in the matter, Clinton said in a 2014 interview that she had a professional obligation to give Taylor the strongest possible defense.

“I had a professional duty to represent my client to the best of my ability, which I did,” she said.

Jesus: Bleeding or Bulletproof?

Thank you to Rachel Elizabeth Asproth for her blog post  on justice vs. empire in the life of Jesus.

http://www.cbeinternational.org/blogs/feminists-take-cross-justice-over-empire

She writes:

Clearly, Jesus knew all about the human instinct for empire. He also knew a simple but profound truth: all empires fall.

So will ours.

...But a God who bleeds is irrelevant, even threatening, to Christians who worship a bulletproof Jesus.

These words of truth help me as I sit with the reality we must all face today, November 10, 2016.

What doesn't help: knowing that many of my fellow evangelicals supported Trump.  And I do mean fellows as in males.

http://time.com/4565010/donald-trump-evangelicals-win/ by Elizabeth Dias

http://religionnews.com/2016/11/09/are-evangelicals-expecting-too-much-from-a-trump-presidency/  by Emily McFarlan Miller and Jerome Socolovsky, Editor in Chief of RNS

Thank you to Religion News Service for these links.

I lost it, I lost it...

A-tisket a-tasket

A green and yellow basket

I cast a ballot for my love

And in the end I lost it,

I lost it, I lost it,

And in the end I lost it.

Looking for my sanity in this flower...

Express yourself on trash day

 Express yourself on trash day.

#trashtrump









My to do list:

1) Change my name.

2) Move to Baja California.

3) Try not to kill anyone.

Post-Mortem

I feel like a spider that has been sprayed with Raid.

My limbs curl in toward my abdomen and I shrink as all the water in my body evaporates.

Yet I refuse to die.  I refuse to succumb to the misogyny and racism and egotism of this creep.

I will move to Calexico, Baja California.  I will drive down there Saturday to see what the town looks like.  

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the reign in heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
  ---Matthew 5:3-4

I don't want to be this kind of blessed.

I feel like the bewildered Germans who voted against Hitler as Der Fuhrer rose to power.

I know how Israel felt as the Roman soldiers galloped in, destroying Jerusalem and the Temple.

As the Preacher said more than two millennia ago, "The race is not to the swift."

I will take a sledgehammer to my television--I refuse to listen to dt's voice and see his face day after day for four years.  

I don't know how to live with a presidency by this asshole.

I grieve for Hillary Rodham Clinton, for all women now and in the past who worked for equality.

Now she joins the ranks of Shirley Chisholm, Margaret Chase Smith, Victoria Woodhull and also Geraldine Ferraro--women who ran for the presidency or vice presidency and were defeated.

Chris Matthews on MSNBC jumped in and began Hillary bashing before midnight.  Rachel Maddow had to cover her emotions and find things to say on air as election eve moved from joy to despair.

Misogyny reigns.  

My beautiful Madame President is not to be--not in her lifetime, not in mine.  She came so close.  She fought so hard.

Shirley Chisholm, Margaret Chase Smith, Victoria Woodhull, Susan B. Anthony, Geraldine Ferraro, and more all grieve.

The iron grip of evil has clamped down.  

Old Scrooge dt

Even this report was not enough to keep dt from being elected....  his donations to charity were zero.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/trump-charity-donations/

Thank you to the Washington Post and reporters
 David A. Fahrenthold and Danielle Rindler 

August 18, 2016 • Updated November 7, 2016

Woodhull, Chisholm and Smith

Shirley Chisholm

I voted for Shirley Chisholm in the Democratic primary in 1972.  George McGovern won the nomination, and Richard Nixon was re-elected president—breaking into the Watergate office of his rivals and eventually being impeached.

How would history have been different had we elected Chisholm instead of Nixon?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Chisholm#1972_presidential_campaign

I was too young to vote for Margaret Chase Smith in the primary election of 1964.  The Republican Party gave the nomination to Barry Goldwater, but Lyndon Johnson trounced him with 61% of the popular vote. 

How would our world be different if we had elected Smith as our president in 1964?  Would she have ended the Vietnam War sooner?  Certainly women’s inequality would have ended much sooner economically, politically, and socially.

Margaret Chase Smith

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Chase_Smith

Then there’s Victoria Woodhull, who ran as the Equal Rights Party candidate in 1872, with Frederick Douglass as her running mate.  Susan B. Anthony was arrested for trying to cast her vote in this election.

How would history be different if she and Douglass had been elected in 1872?  

Women might have won the right to vote forty years before 1920.

Black-white relations might have improved soon after the Civil War, instead of still festering in 2016. 

Victoria Woodhull

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Woodhull

How short-sighted American voters have been, always looking to the past and rejecting the voices of prophets.  

I mourn the years of progress not gained, the lives of women who did not witness a woman being elected to highest office.  Finally after 227 years of existence as a constitutional republic, we have reached square one.

All the courage--all the hope and hard work--but the fathers of our nation kept their fists clenched on their own power.

Anybody here seen my old friend Victoria?
Can you tell me where she's gone?
She freed a lotta people but the nation it stays blind
You know I just looked around and I cried

Anybody here seen my old friend Susan?
Can you tell me where she's gone?
She freed a lotta people but the nation it stays blind
I just looked around and I cried

Anybody here seen my old friend Margaret?
Can you tell me where she's gone?
She freed a lotta people but the nation it stays blind
I just looked around and I cried

Didn't you love the things that they stood for?
Didn't they try to find some good for you and me?
And we'll be free
Some day soon, it's gonna be one day

Anybody here seen my old friend Shirley?
Can you tell me where she's gone?
I thought I saw her walkin' up over the hill
With Hillary, Victoria, and Margaret.

 With a thank you to Dion DiMucci and Marvin Gaye:

https://www.google.com/#q=martin+bobby+and+john+lyrics

See this list of women who have run for US president and vice president:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_United_States_presidential_and_vice-presidential_candidates#All_candidates

Anger on Election Day

She told me to smile.  I tried.

I woke up thinking about my father and all the fathers and the patriarchal social order in the US that prevented women from voting until 1920 and then limited women to only a few representatives in the House and Senate and then blocked ratification of the ERA.

I became angry.  I blended dt in with all those fathers and all that misogyny.  I wanted to shoot dt as the personification of all that evil.

When I put my flag out to hang in front of my house, as it has hung for several days, I suddenly grabbed it and took it with me to my polling place.  Better to take a flag than a gun, I thought.

I arrived a few minutes after 6 am and found myself #10 in the line.

"Oh, a flag!" said the woman in front of me.

"Either that or a gun," I answered.  "Can't shoot dt, only vote against him."

"Oh!" 

A few days ago I posted on FB, "Enjoy voting for the first woman president!"

This morning, however, my mood was grim.  No way to enjoy voting.  I didn't take my ridgeback with her Hillary t-shirt.  I wore white in honor of the suffrage movement, but I felt like a commando going out to assault a nest of guerrilla soldiers.  

Battleground states.  Battle.  Today is not a fun day. 

It's do or die.  We must win by such a landslide that this asshole and his supporters know that they have been repudiated.  

They need to know that the country has rejected them soundly... If HRC wins with 320 electoral votes or more, will they get it?

dt has blabbed about the emails for the last few weeks, saying "Let the people judge her!"

When millions of voters choose her and make a judgment against him, will it dawn on him that people don't like the way he treats women and the way he talks about Mexicans, Muslims, prisoners of war, and other minorities?

Or, with a loss by 5 or 6 percentage points in the popular vote, will he claim it was rigged?

Ratings unchanged

If you hated dt last January--or loved him--your views haven't changed.

The same for Hillary Rodham Clinton--her ratings now are exactly where they were in January: 43% favorable.

Thank you to Rachel Maddow for pointing this out --and to Bradd Jaffy for tweeting it.

https://twitter.com/BraddJaffy/status/795459081163173888/video/1

So why did we have to go through all this shit for the last ten months?  Couldn't we just shorten the screaming run-up to the big day?

Ghost of Susan B. Anthony

On November 5, Hillary Clinton tweeted:

Today in 1872, Susan B. Anthony voted--and was then arrested.  Almost 50 years later, the 19th Amendment was ratified.

She added a photo of Anthony with this quote "There never will be complete equality until women themselves help to make laws and elect lawmakers."

We need to elect Hillary Rodham Clinton president.  One more step for womankind toward complete equality, which still remains elusive.

We've gone from Susan B. to Queen B.

Now we must elect Hillary RC.  Go to the polls tomorrow if you haven't already voted.

The ghost of Susan B. hovers over this nation.  Make her proud and happy!

"New Post-Truth Era"

Dawn of the day before the 2016 election.

Dan Rather says on CNN that we're in "a new post-truth era in American politics, where truth no longer matters."

Television news media in this past year have jumped on dt's words but not done investigative journalism.

Case in point:  FBI Director James R. Comey cleared Hillary Rodham Clinton of any criminal wrong-doing in her emails, but "Republicans brushed off Comey's findings and continued to accuse Clinton of poor judgment and negligence...."

They are still repeating the charges--though she's been cleared.

There's no time for full and accurate reporting of this new development in order to inform the public.  Many have already voted.

It's more than I can bear.

May it all end.  

May she be elected by a huge landslide. 

May dt be defeated more soundly than Goldwater was in 1964.

He says "let the people judge" the emails, but of course he will claim that losing the election in a landslide for Hillary Clinton was just because it's "rigged."

It's more than I can bear.

FBI Director Comey jerks us around

It was a peaceful Sunday afternoon until FBI Director James Comey destroyed the day with yet another letter, this time saying there's no problem in the Huma Abedin emails.

I'm so sick of this election being jerked around by his letters!

There's no time now to undo the damage done by his letter 9 days earlier.

We've endured dt claims that there will be an indictment, she will go to prison...

And now Comey tells us all that fuss was over nothing.  No problem in the emails.  

But it's only a day and a half before voting begins.  Democrats can't even begin to undo the damage done by ten days of claims of terrible new emails that will lead to an indictment.

And dt continues to make those charges, even though the FBI now says there will be no indictment.

As one commentator said, it's a bone the Trump supporters won't let go of.

I was pulling weeds in my garden when I heard the news.  Others were watching football games, riding bicycles, barbecuing, listening to The Moth Radio Hour, enjoying a quiet afternoon with their families.

But suddenly we have to drop everything, listen to the latest election screaming, and realize that the Republicans had day after day to beat up on Hillary Rodham Clinton, while she has a day and a half to try to inform voters that the noise amounted to nothing.

No candidate for president ever had these unfair blows hit him so close to the election, the way she has.

It's not a coincidence that this brutal treatment is being done to the first major female candidate for the presidency.

Powerful forces in American society don't want a woman president, and they will go to any lengths to keep her from winning.

She will win, but without the Democratic majority she needs in the House to accomplish her goals once she gets to the White House.  

I think we will get a Senate that is majority Democratic again, but if we don't, it will be thanks to FBI Director James Comey.

All I want to do is go to bed and pull the covers over my head... but Hillary fights on bravely, and so must we all.

Suicide among middle-aged poor women

I'm heart-broken to read about the suicide rate of middle-aged white women in rural areas and small towns such as Durango, Colorado.  It has doubled in the past 15 years.

I have family members in that demographic living in Durango.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/a-river-of-lost-souls-runs-through-western-colorado/2016/11/03/154fd1a0-8651-11e6-a3ef-f35afb41797f_story.html

Thank you to John Arthur for noticing a report on this problem in his Twitter feed and sending it to me.  Thank you to Amy Ellis Nutt and the Washington Post for the report today, as well as to Dan Keating and Alice Crites.

The article reminded me of my great-uncle Laurie Pohja who hung himself from a tree in the Durango cemetery on Christmas Day in 1932.  He had worked at the foundry in Telluride.  He and his wife and two sons moved to Durango when the foundry moved there.  Then the mines had so little work that there was no work for the foundry, and it was laying people off.  He couldn't support his family.

This story is in my mother's autobiography, p. 140, along with another story of suicide during the Depression: 

Mrs. Pahka, mother and mother of two, had a job as the cleaning woman at the Telluride Courthouse.  She came to my grandfather's door one morning at 6 am and said, "Something terrible is about to happen."

"Nothing terrible is about to happen," he answered her.

She went on down the street to the Courthouse, where she fixed and drank a solution of lye.  When the doors opened, her body was found.  (p. 142)

Adventures of a Telluride Native by Evelyn Gustafson Eggebroten (Boulder, CO: Johnson, 1999).  Available on Amazon.

The Price We Pay for the First Woman POTUS

Thank you, Jill Filipovic, for bringing up a huge issue:  the price we women are paying as Hillary Rodham Clinton fights to become the first woman president of the USA in 227 years.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/opinion/campaign-stops/the-men-feminists-left-behind.html

She writes:

On Nov. 8, Americans may elect our first female president. While many of us are exhilarated at the idea of this feminist victory, the toll we’ve paid for coming so close to that historic barrier has been the most graphically sexist election in living memory.

Women have been dragged through the mud by the Republican candidate and his hate-mongering forces.

It has been a painful ten months and excruciating last two months.

Yes, it has been a war on women.  Misogyny is real.

Filipovic points out that white males have been used to privilege and power for so long that they are fighting like pigs to hang onto it all.

And we are suffering.  Every woman I know can't stand one more day of this election.

Here I am, obsessively blogging, tweeting, posting on FB, and watching the news media--like many people I know, both male and female.

Could we just have an election without all this hatred toward the female candidate and toward women in general?

Here are some measures of women's progress listed by Filipovic--facts that stir anger and fear in many proud male hearts:

When Hillary Clinton started at Yale Law School in 1969, there was only one woman in the United States Senate. It was legal for a man to rape his wife, but abortion was mostly outlawed. Mrs. Clinton graduated as one of just 27 women in a class of 235, after being explicitly told that if accepted into law school, she would take the rightful place of a man.

The same year Mrs. Clinton graduated from Yale, the Supreme Court held that American women had a legal right to abortion; that, coupled with expanded access to contraception, meant that women flooded into colleges and workplaces.



And then there's the distance still to go:

 [W]e still make up just 19 percent of Congress and 33 percent of speaking roles in the 100 top-grossing films.

Male identity remains tied up in dominance and earning potential, and when those things flag, it seems men either give up or get angry.

This, perhaps more than anything else, explains the rise of Donald J. Trump: He promised struggling white men that they could have their identities back.

Again, thanks, Filipovic, for this analysis.  

As for why some women are supporting dt, they are male-identified.  They instinctively believe that it's in their best interest to support the male who is their breadwinner. (See my post about my high school friend on October 17, 2016: "Remember the little people.")

Maureen Dowd Makes a Boo Boo

I thought Maureen Dowd could do no wrong.

I was wrong.

Her column today "The End Is Nigh" unfairly parallels dt and Hillary Rodham Clinton as both "filled with fear and insecurity."

Are you kidding?  It's true of him, but not of her.  

She has more courage than most women I have ever known.  

What fear she has is totally warranted by circumstances--like being harassed by FBI Director James R. Comey nine days and then less than two days before the election.  Like her husband not being faithful.  Any human has warranted fear in those circumstances.

Yes, "her battles have made her... guarded" as you point out toward the end.

That's called learning--unlike the recklessness of dt who is not guarded and makes the same mistakes again and again.

To compare her to him in this regard is totally unwarranted.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/opinion/sunday/the-end-is-nigh.html?_r=0

I'm, like, totally unfollowing you on Twitter, Maureen.  Know that will break your heart.

Borowitz: Making us laugh in spite of it all

Andy Borowitz is crazy funny with these pieces in The New Yorker over the past six months-- from "Our Thirty Most Popular":

MOST POPULAR

1. Putin Appears with Trump in Flurry of Swing-State Rallies

   BY ANDY BOROWITZ      Nov. 5, 2016

2. Stephen Hawking Angers Trump Supporters with Baffling Array of Long Words

   BY ANDY BOROWITZ      May 31, 2016

3. Queen Offers to Restore British Rule Over United States

   BY ANDY BOROWITZ      Oct. 29, 2016

and also #8

Comey Says F.B.I. Investigating Hillary’s Ties to Bill Clinton

BY ANDY BOROWITZ   Nov. 2, 2016

How to follow election news and not lose your mind

My millennial daughter Roz tells me not to let anything Trump says bother me.

"The dinosaurs probably made a lot of noise as they were going extinct, but they still died."

I've been watching too much television, letting his lies against Hillary Rodham Clinton get to me, letting the ups and downs of the polls get to me.

She's way beyond watching tv as a source of information.  She goes to the gambling odds makers to see who is winning, and she says they are citing Clinton's odds of winning as 77%.  

"Don't rely on the news shows as a source of information," she says.

Wow, that's just a habit I have.  I've done it since my family first got a tv when I was about seven years old.  Hard to break that habit.

"Those shows are entertainment," she says.  "They're in business to boost their ratings, and they do so by hyping things like a bump up in the polls for dt."

True.  

To develop my skills in watching news shows for their entertainment value only, she introduces me to Fox News commentator Shepard Smith.  

She sent me this link to Rachel Maddow of MSNBC praising Smith for his work in exposing Republicans who blocked health care for 9/11 first responders in New York City.  

https://youtu.be/AF8JNUo2cEU

Roz points out that Shep Smith's style is subversive.  He interviews right wing people to let them reveal how ridiculous their views are.  She says he's gay but closeted

She showed me a great clip of Smith interviewing Rick Santorum  in January, 2012, about why he is against gay marriage.  Smith really backs Santorum into a corner where he can't find any respectable reason to oppose gays.

"How long will it be before you catch up to the rest of the country and decide that everybody's okay?" asks Smith.

http://www.mrctv.org/videos/shep-smith-interviews-rick-santorum

First Santorum tries to say gays can make any contract they want, just not call it marriage.  Then he says his position is all about kids, what's best for kids.  Then he says if there were gay marriage, it would cause big government to get bigger.  

"Senator, good luck and thanks for coming on today," concludes Smith.

Good luck with that.

It was my first lesson in how to view news reporting as a spectator sport, not a serious source of life-and-death information about the outcome of this election or any other political matter.

Hashtag post-modern.  

Thanks, Roz, for holding my hand and telling me not to let the election news coverage get me down in the dumps.

From Anxiety to Beyonce...

Thank you to Beyonce and Jay Z for the only bright spot today--their performance at Hillary's rally in Cleveland.

Seeing Beyonce hug Hillary Clinton in front of thousands--beyond heart-warming!

Watching Beyonce's dancers perform while all wearing blue pantsuits with white shirts saying "I'm with her"--a moment of hope.

http://time.com/4559543/hillary-clinton-rally-beyonce-jay-z/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xxebphd7F4g

http://www.latimes.com/nation/ct-clinton-trump-final-push-20161104-story.html

Another great moment--hearing Hillary quote these lines from Jay Z's "My President (Remix)":

“Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther could walk. Martin Luther walked so Barack Obama could run. Barack Obama ran so all the children could fly.”

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2016/11/04/us/politics/on-the-trail-friday-nov-4/s/04poldaily-slide-52JD.html

Earlier I had listened to MSNBC and CNN all day while doing housework and cooking.

I went into such a tailspin hearing dt repeat untruths about Hillary Clinton: "FBI sources say she will be indicted.  In my opinion, she will be convicted.  And the investigations will go on for years..."

Fox News reporter Bret Baier had earlier claimed that two anonymous [FBI] sources had said Clinton would "likely" be indicted, but he had later withdrawn his statement as an error and baseless. 

Nevertheless, dt kept making this claim.  Repeating a lie is one of the staples in his playbook.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/fox-news-clinton-indictment_us_581e3231e4b0e80b02ca6c30

Like many, my friend Diane has been watching the polls obsessively:

i have a little paper list of odds and electoral college votes and hillary went down % wise on nov. 3, but has come back up and gained a whole point today between 7:48am  and 4:54pm.  am using realclearpolitics.com for my data.

She is now convinced Hillary will win, but she like so many has been on pins and needles.

Two of my husband's friends, long-term newspaper editor/writer types, are checking hourly for the ups and downs of all the polls...  Both are anxious, and one is experiencing downright depression.

There are many media reports about the unusual stress on voters caused by this election:

http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/la-na-presidential-poll-20151108-story.html

We all just want this damn election to be over.

Wear white to vote!

Hillary Rodham Clinton - Photo by Timothy A. Clary - Boston Globe

Women are wearing white to cast their historic vote for the first woman president of the USA--in memory of the suffrage movement and the women who marched in white to demand their right to vote.

Thank you to Victoria McGrane for reporting on this phenomenon in the Boston Globe.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2016/11/02/women-for-clinton-are-donning-white-vote/diJAWZbggoxy0A6AVY1vHN/story.html?s_campaign=email_BG_TodaysHeadline&s_campaign=