So says the ‘Conscience of Congress’, Congressman John Lewis. Because Russia helped elect Trump and destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton.
As of 11 pm Benedict Donald had not Twitter attacked the Human Rights icon. But it’s early yet.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
Please share widely!
I’m pleased to see the Katherine Clark (D-MA5) was among the first to decline to attend the inauguration. I hope the rest of the Mass. delegation will follow.
Democrats should be joining the march, not attending the inauguration.
” His Illegitimacy.”
” The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” REVEREND DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING,JR.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
I can understand the strong emotional appeal of boycotting the inauguration. The peculiar mixture of disgust and outrage Mr. Trump so readily inspires provides motivation enough.
However, this is not what the politics right now would seem to demand.
First off, there are two facts about the election that need to emphasized because not enough people believe them: (1) Clinton, not Trump, won the popular vote. There was no Trump “landslide”. (2) Russia intervened in our election. Democratic messaging relies to heavily on believing that facts require no advocacy.
Second, we need a vigorous defense of democratic norms or we’ll soon find ourselves without a republic. That has to start with the emoluments clause, laws against nepotism, and a maintenance of ethical standards. The incoming Administration should not be allowed to enter office breaking laws. It’ll become a habit. This is worse than Nixon who at least felt it necessary to hide his law breaking. A President flagrantly breaking the law is quite dangerous.
Third, we need to inspire buyer’s remorse among Trump voters. (Some part of this cannot be done by the Democratic Party apparatus. MoveOn, are you listening?) However, a connection really should be made from Trump’s recent pay out of $25 million in a fraud suit where Trump U students weren’t given what was promised to the Trump Administration’s governing wherein voters won’t be given what was promised. For example, all those Obamacare voters in Kentucky who thought Trump would never dismantle something that worked so well need a wake-up call. We have to set the stage so that the damage a trade war does to U.S. manufacturing actually imposes a political cost on the Trump Administration.
Little of this is accomplished by People’s Inaugurations, or absences from the Inaugural Ceremonies, or outraged responses to the latest tweet, or name calling.
Being woke is important, but being real is even more important in how we react and resist.
I’m calling my Congressman Seth Moulton (D – MA6) to boycott Twitler Monday.
Resistance is getting stronger. Ten Congressmen have announced they will boycott Putin’s Poodle so far. Let’s keep the pressure on !
Fred Rich LaRiccia
as being ‘ all talk and no action.’
This trash talk about the man who was nearly beaten to death by police when he ‘walked the walk’ across the Edmund Pettis bridge fighting injustice while the golden shower groper creep was pissing in the wind.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
…who said that Trump would be Un-American if he did not accept the results of the election?
by collaborating with the Commies.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
n/t
Get a life: Hillary is a loser.
makes cowards out of men.” ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
Fred Rich LaRiccia
n/t
This isn’t sour grapes. Hillary lost fair and square in a very undemocratic but entirely constitutional way (that isn’t going away anytime soon). He is illegitimate since he mocks the disabled, assaults women, and regularly demeans minorities. He has run the most overtly racist campaign in my lifetime and the most successfully racist campaign in my parents lifetime (and they lived through Wallace and Reagan in Philadelphia, MS).
My brother is a conservative leaner swing voter who loved Obamas character and grace under pressure and fears raising black kids in Trumps America. He is appointing an AG who has spent a career will refusing to acknowledge racial bias in policing or election laws. He is appointing an Education Secretary who wants to dismantle non-sectarian public education and a Health Secretsrh who will nuke Medicare and Medicaid let alone the ACA.
So nobody is denying he is legitimately elected, but the majority of Americans who voted to reject his agenda still have a right to protest and a right to resist his agenda. Just as the minority of Americans in the Tea Party fought our outgoing President tooth and nail.
Trump could govern as another four years of Obama, or hell even four years like Aanders, and I would still vote against his re-election after this terrible campaign he just ran. His presidency lacks a democratic mandate and lacks the moral legitimacy Americans expect of their Commander in Chief.
You won’t have Hillary to kick around anymore-the buck stops with him and everything that goes South the next four years he and the Republicans who have cowardly enabled him will own. His math doesn’t add up and he can’t govern as a fiscal conservative and a fiscal populist simultaneously without tanking the economy.
Speak for yourself. Between Russian hacking and FBI selective meddling, the election itself was in fact rigged, not to mention he gets the prize for biggest loser among EC winners in history. Unfortunately it IS possible to legitimately elect someone who commits the offenses you mention in the first paragraph.
Trump wasn’t elected by promising to give us the same old tiring government programs. He recently met with Steve Harvey to try and get some solutions to the decades old problems for Black inner city kids. Harvey’s program has been effective, something government programs don’t necessarily have a reputation for. In four years if the inner cities are better off would you still not vote for Trump? And Trump isn’t even sworn in yet.
…there’s a lot that Trump would have to turn around before he even gets my respect, and even then I’m voting for my party’s nominee in 2020. There’s no excuse for his fascistic tendencies, even if he does manage to make the trains run on time.
This is a no-snark response, a genuine question about what Harvey has done for what you call “Black inner city kids” other than donate to the standard charities. I searched the internet for what might be his qualifications and found nothing, no experience in managing any program. Which is scary since Carson has already said he has none.
Carson acknowledged long ago that his sole qualification for serving at HUD is that he used to live in public housing. His brilliance as a surgeon does not elevate his candidacy, nor should his skin color.
But I gotta tell you that the use of the phrase “Black inner city kids” instantly raised the hair on my neck. “Inner city kids” are a mix of white, black, Latino, and Asian/Pacific, not just African-Americans.
I forgot this site is still very much about rhetoric over results. Many different ethnicities inhabit our inner cities and have been ignored by both parties for years. I was lazy and just said Black inner city.
Steve Harvey put up his own money and runs a mentoring program which has been highlighted on his show for years. Young men who don’t have good male role models (I suppose even this concept is not PC, why can’t women teach right?) have a much higher rate of crime etc. He gives the kids a taste of the discipline, concern and respect for themselves and others which is what is most lacking in their lives.
I know it’s not a government program so it probably needs to have the pc police approve it, but at this point people are desperate for things that work. Donate to the Steve and Marjory Harvey foundation.
.
I like how conservatives have convinced themselves the often deliberate “forgetting” of people not like them when talking about politics or policy can be airily dismissed as a failure to obey liberal shibboleths. Facts aren’t shibboleths, and we have an expiring planet to demonstrate it.
This is not about being PC. My comment was to point out your equating “inner city kids” with being African-American. Make a visit to Charlestown to see white thugs, to East Boston to find Latino gang bangers or to Chinatown to find Vietnamese gangs. Fortunately the Harvey Foundation does not make your mistake and offers programs regardless of race or gender (yes, they have a program called “Girls Who Rule the World).
But it would have been nice if you did not equate the problems facing urban youth with being African American and instead acknowledged that the problems of poverty do not respect your easy racial designation, especially today, MLK Day.
foundation you didn’t even know about till I mentioned it.
…that TBD was unaware of the Harvey Foundation before you mentioned it?
When tbd questioned why Harvey would be useful helping “disadvantaged youth of many hues” he said
“I searched the internet for what might be his qualifications and found nothing, no experience in managing any program. Which is scary since Carson has already said he has none.” read more above
I knew about it, and donate. How about it folks put your wallets to use.
It is remarkable how people can see what they want in the words of other. I never questioned why Harvey would be useful in helping “disadvantaged youth of many hues.” I assume you got those words from the Harvey web site, in place of the ugly language you used, “Black inner city kids”. So let me write in more direct words what I think since you did not get it when I tried being nice.
Steve Harvey is manifestly unqualified to hold a senior position at HUD, exceeded in his lack of qualifications only by his prospective boss, Ben Carson. His experience as a TV personality and comedian makes his meeting with Trump a national joke, but we will be the victims of the joke.
Harvey has ZERO work experience in program management or public policy. Before you claim that he has experience managing his private foundation, note that I had already looked up the IRS 990 form filed by the foundation which includes a key line required in 990s, how many hours the principals work per week at foundation activities. In the case of the Harveys the filings state that they work less than one hour per week on average on foundation activities and that includes the time he spends on TV promoting himself and at his annual golf event.
Before you repeat your claim that he self-funded the foundation, he has contributed very little beyond his modest initial donation. Most of the money comes from ATT and individual donors. I don’t kvel for people who are filthy rich and make modest donations and then publicize their own virtue. Sounds like Trump.
Does the foundation use its assets efficiently and effectively? They certainly think so and maybe they do. I don’t know and I don’t think anyone else can objectively answer that question. The foundation itself cannot even be evaluated by Charity Navigator because it is a private foundation with almost zero transparency. So I will decline your offer to donate to this willing stooge of Trump.
You think we need more experienced professional program managers. Some more people with phd’s in sociology, maybe a couple of double majors, psych and sociology. It’s worked so well for the poor people trapped in cycles of poverty in the inner cities for how many years?
Enough people in our Republic have voted for a change in leadership and if we give some “outside the box” thinking a chance, what have you got to lose?
Who would the poor people of Chicago follow down the street Harvey or their mayor Rahm Emmanuel?
When in a hole, stop digging. Once again you are making up stuff about what I think. Please just stop this offense. The question at hand is whether Steve Harvey belongs in office, and your plea for BMG readers to send money to his his foundation.
I will re-state what I wrote earlier:
I wrote nothing to lead a rational person to assume that I want: “Some more people with phd’s in sociology, maybe a couple of double majors, psych and sociology.”
Do you understand how offensive it is for you to write “You think…”??? Because you have ZERO idea of what I think except what I write, so then you make up stuff to fit your stereotype. Not nice.
We have no reason to think that Steve Harvey thinks outside the box. Harvey did the standard BS in creating a foundation named after himself, making a modest donation to start it, doing virtually no work to help the foundation and then claiming virtue. He has not shown any political or administrative thinking. None. Show me I am wrong and I will apologize for insulting the performer.
Let’s be clear. People who vote for Rahm Emmanuel are people I would not take advice from. The same holds true for people who watch Steve Harvey on TV. I don’t care who donates to his foundation.
So give it four years. I will remind you in for years if the kids in the cities are better off. Of course I don’t know what you think, and you don’t know about me. When I wrote “you think” it was more of a??? declarative interogative, you have to forgive me it’s been a while since I’ve been in school, so I guess that disqualifies me from this blog. I didn’t vote for Obama or Trump. I’ve never found a politician who was worthy of a donation, but I’m willing to throw a little money towards kids programs.
Things can’t go much worse than they already are.
If someone is interested in representing the well being of African Americans living in cities and refers to them as the “inner cities” population than, with as much respect as is appropriate, that person’s metric for “better off” isn’t one I’d trust.
What’s more “inner city,” the Leather District or Dorchester? Chicago’s North Side or South Side? Harlem/South Bronx or Midtown Manhattan? Northwest Atlanta or Northeast Atlanta? Houston’s Northside Village or Greater Third Ward?
some guy on Morning Joe speaking on behalf of the Trump mob referred to metro areas with “large urban populations”….
Who once described two men on a NYC street corner as “Latin speaking”.
n/t
n/t
Fred Rich LaRiccia
That’s Putin’s ‘Compromised Asset’ or Useful Idiot as we call Drumpt.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
Trump swearing in as of today.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
I just wrote a FB post on Trump’s legitimacy. Since many of my FB friends voted for Trump, I have held my criticisms of Trump. I figured I might as well wait until he did something terrible. Today, I wrote a post labeling this election as illegitimate.
Trump is president by the electoral college, not by the popular vote. He’s president by a technicality, not popular opinion. This alone should cause us to question the legitimacy of our system, and thus his election. He’s also president because the Republicans have successfully suppressed the vote in several states. This should make us question the legitimacy of the election. I tried to defend Comey when he brought up the non-existent Hillary emails in Weiner’s computer, he’s become indefensible. He was clearly working from a double-standard, choosing not to confirm an investigation into Trump’s campaign. The Russians and Wikileaks were also influencing the election by releasing hacked emails to embarrass and disrupt the Clinton campaign. And finally, my working hypothesis: the Russian dossier has a lot of truth to it and Trump campaign people or allies were working with Russia to influence the election.
Accepting all this as normal is to legitimize it. Personally, I think we are a better country than this.
I think that ship sailed with the notion that we could build a wall and get the Mexicans to pay for it… and then it sunk with the release of the video demonstrating a predatory sexual abuser. Three debates later, in which Trump clearly lost all three by the widest possible margins, and an election that upended everybodies sense of what’s what… and we’re into the sublimely ridiculous.
I don’t disagree with your post, per se: technicalities, Comey, wikileaks and the Russians are all worrisome. But it’s not like people didn’t know. It’s not a surprise, now, what was done, then. What Comey did was nakedly partisan and everybody knew it as he was doing it. What wikileaks and Russia did was also a fairly transparent attempt to sway votes and people forthrightly knew that their votes were being swayed. Fake news was everywhere and some of it was ridiculously fake. But I don’t buy it: Anybody who can read can assess a news story and decide if it is fake or not. But it was all of a piece and nothing more, really, than fig leaf for people to cover their unmentionables: racism and sexism.
The norms have already been broken. First, Trump broke them with his ridiculous campaign, then the Trump voters trampled the broken shards of them with their vote. They used their entirely legitimate vote to elect a cartoonishly sexist and buffoonishly racist clown turning norms to dust in the effort.
Will it be an illegitimate presidency? No. It will be a sublimely ridiculous, ultimately rather painful, one… but it will not be illegitimate.
Information becomes “knowledge” through understanding and contextualizing. When this information is mediated, it’s even more difficult to “know” something.
Legitimacy depends on how you define it. It’s a rather imprecise word in this context. Trump lost the popular vote. Foreign powers attacked the Clinton campaign (through the media). James Comey, whose decisions probably had the single biggest effect on Clinton’s loss, violated the spirit, if not the letter, of the law by interfering with the election. Trump won on the technicality of the electoral college. A legal technicality, but a technicality nonetheless. Without the interference, he would not have been elected. Call it what you want, I call it illegitimate.
what do you call the hijacking of the Supreme Court?
In fact, making up new rules as you go along is qualitatively worse than anything that happened in the presidential race.
When you consider illegal campaign contributions, dark money, gerrymandering, foreign influence, and voter suppression, pretty much every election is illegitimate.
How many congressional elections are legitimate? How many state legislators are legitimately elected?
I posted on this site about how a new state legislator was “elected” for the town of Randolph although he got only 24 votes here. Was that legitimate?
I don’t mind so much that Trump is reaping what he sowed, but calling everything illegitimate makes us all numb to the abuses we’ve been subjected to.
I actually thought a bit about. Your questions are all pertinent and on point. The biggest problem with this discussion, which I joined anyway, is that we don’t have good definition of legitimacy. Ordinarily, I avoid discussions about undefined concepts, and I may have been misguided in responding to this thread.
My answer: there are always forces of illegitimacy at work undermining our democracy. The issue then becomes one of degree. At the legitimate pole, there would be little or no obstacle between the popular will and the electoral result.
For the GOP, the only legitimate official is a Republican. The GOP contested the legitimacy of Obama almost from day one. Birtherism is an example that was recognized as an attack on his legitimacy, but never expanded to consider voter suppression. Is a gerrymandered election legitimate? I never said it before, but I think so now. North Carolina’s state elections are illegitimate.
the swearing in of the Manchurian candidate.
Better to lose with honor than win by treachery.
Fred Rich LaRiccia