So I’m putting together a page (or possibly two) of anti-Trump resources, and I could use your help over the next few days. (No need think about any of this stuff today, obviously!)
I’m looking for a bunch of different things:
Information and graphics to help make the case that Trump’s victory is illegitimate, based on:
Hillary’s big win the popular vote; the ways in which the electoral college effectively overcounts the votes of rural whites and those in swing states and undercounts those of minorities; dirty tricks, from Russian hacking and wikileaks to the machinations of Comey and pro-Trump FBI agents (I’m especially interested in stuff talking about Trump’s connections to the dirty tricksters, as well as his public encouragement and exploitation of leaked emails and the like).
Information on protests and other anti-Trump activism:
Both local and national (and on the internet). Links to help people who want to get involved.
Information and resources to help people deal with Trump-related anxiety, etc.
Information on Trump’s massive conflicts of interest, and whether or not this could rise to the level of an impeachable offense
Information on his worldwide business dealings. Examples of the conflicts that have already become an issue even though he’s not yet in the White House. The issues raised by his plan to have his kids run his business — despite their continued involvement in the transition and their attendance at meetings with foreign leaders.
Information on Trump’s connections to white supremacists
The possibility that he engaged in “pay to play” for favorable coverage in Breitbart. Connections to far-right parties and activists in Europe. Examples of horrible stuff said and done by his white supremacist supporters. His refusal to clearly and specifically distance himself from these people — in person, on camera.
Trump’s compulsive lying; his vanity; his obsession with revenge; his encouragement of violence at his rallies; his flip-flops, mood swings, erratic behavior; his susceptibility to flattery; his promulgation of fake news and discredited claims
Trump’s racism and misogyny
Trump’s attacks on Muslims and Latinos. His record of discrimination against black tenants. His long history of misogyny. The accusations of sexual assault raised against him.
Historical parallels between Trump and fascist/authoritarian leaders in the past
Information about Trump’s unwillingness to follow traditional norms of presidential behavior and/or do his job
His massive ignorance about this country and the world and unwillingness/inability to learn. His attempts to dodge the press and threats against press freedom. His refusal to attend daily intelligence briefings. His refusal to make his tax returns public.
Trump’s terrible advisors and allies; the Russian connections
Further reading on Trump
Ranging from the terrible things he’s said about women, to his bankruptcies and sleazy business practices, to his embrace of assorted conspiracy theories over the years. I’m generally looking for longer articles here, but short primers on some issues are welcome as well.
Further reading on fascism. authoritarianism, right-wing movements and media
Information about Pence, particularly his anti-LGBT policies
Funny stuff
Recommended publications, writers, podcasters, etc to help make sense of Trump
Anything else you can think of that I’m forgetting
Thanks!
All I can say is: Zumahzoomzoom or whatever your name is, if Scildfreja felt the need to respond to you in that way, you need to consider how you are coming across. Normally, Scildfreja is all about being polite and emulating MLP in responses, so you are obviously doing something wrong if you get that response you received.
In other words, I’m always impressed with how civil and nice Scildfreja is, so you basically really came across in an unflattering manner there to get that response, Zumadumadindong.
Aw, thank you, @Shartheheretic. I was pretty cranky yesterday though, so it could be that too! I leave it to the court to decide my fate.
I don’t know how reliable this source is, but holy crap.
http://www.palmerreport.com/news/three-wisconsin-precincts-revise-vote-totals-caught-padding-donald-trumps-numbers/228/
Agreed 100% on all counts. It’s always better to take the high road.
We need to heed the wisdom of Michelle Obama; “When they go low, we go high!”. We need to apply that to both our strategy, how we conduct ourselves and how we retort to the Trumpsters. You can speak out and speak the Truth to Power while being tactful.
We must also study the U.S. Constitution so we can use it should certain folks in the U.S. Govt. decide to pull something shady against us.
All things must be legal. Any act that is illegal or against the Constitution on our part would be a detriment.
They can fudge things, right now, because they have money and power so we have to do double-duty at being law-abiding.
The only laws worth fighting and breaking are the ones that go against the Constitution and the true American ideals of Freedom, Equality, Opportunity.
So; No hacking. Hacking is stupid.
That said; It’s wise to still be savvy, shrewd and not naive. We need to learn from past failures and learn to unite as a Nation and do our best to put away our differences.
The U.S. Constitution is the U.S.A.’s best barrier against the worst, most Hitler/Mussolini/Pol-Pot/Stalin/etc.-esque abuses. As long as it’s still considered “The Law of the Land”, the country won’t become exactly like Nazi Germany (as long as we stay diligent).
I also love the idea of creating lists of stuff/establishments to boycott (be it Trump stuff or Koch stuff or whatever). In fact; There should be a bright, easy-to-read guide that not only tells you what to boycott but also, SHOW ALTERNATIVES. It’s important that people are shown easy-to-find, relatively inexpensive alternatives. You can tell folks to boycott all you want but that often means boycotting everything (since these are big business conglomerates and monopolies and alternatives are often hard to find).
Since someone shared Trump stuff to avoid. Here’s a bunch of Koch stuff to avoid as well….
http://oi64.tinypic.com/2rbz6dl.jpg
….These guys may seem like old news but we should never take the heat off for a minute!
Places for alternatives that I know of….
http://www.greenpages.org/ (All Sorts of Stuff be it Home, Fashion, Health, Food, etc.)
http://www.ecomall.com/ (All Sorts of Stuff be it Home, Fashion, Health, Food, etc.)
http://www.tenthousandvillages.com/ (Fair Trade)
http://www.localharvest.org (Home, Health, Food from Local Farmers and Craftspeople in the States).
….Finally; Buy stuff second-hand and, if you can, grow some produce (you don’t even need a big garden. You can keep a mini-garden in some big pots on your apartment balcony). The finest tomatoes I’ve eaten are the ones grown at home.
Slowly making it through this post and comments.
In my vehement opposition to Trump, I have tried to concentrate on his conflicts of interest. On Tuesday he said to the New York Times “The president can’t have conflicts of interest Okay?” Now, if he was a presidential man, that would mean “The president shouldn’t give everybody the impression that he has conflicts of interests up the wazoo, this would halt his ability to do his job.” But what Trump was referring to is that there is no specific law against the president having conflicts of interests. He therefore talked about running the country and his businesses “perfectly” at the same time, citing that it has never been done.
So Trump is involved in a few dozen of what he calls joint ventures. Simply put, Trump selling international business men the ability to put his name on the buildings they are constructing. Trump gets a fat check, that is it.
So who is responsible for protecting these two dozen sites (prominent ones in Qatar and Saudi Arabia) from vandalism or attack? Because, these buildings have a huge target on them. Remember that the World Trade Center was attacked because its name identifies it as the epicenter of globalization. Obviously, the owners of these buildings could remove the gold letters from the facade. But then they will sue Trump in order to get out of paying him money to display the name. And most of these projects are already mired by lawsuits and criminal investigations!
This completely invalidates Trump’s ability to do his new job.
I could run into a lobby of a Trump building screaming anything ominous or scary… And the “OMG Trump Assasination Attempt!” crew would ramp this up to make it a world incident of grave danger to the supreme leader. And then Trump must provide security to all his interests, at great cost to Americans. (Keep track of the expense of Trump)
Next. Marines protect Embassies. Kitchy TRUMP properties cannot be protected by the army. So the old Private Armies have to be brought in to secure these properties. What happens with secret armies? Not only are they terrifyingly scary men projecting TERRIBLE OPTICS about Americans all over the world, they have been known to… shoot people. Again, I could run into a hotel lobby screaming (that my dog got run over) and probably be shot on site by one of these goons. And, again, it would be a terrible incident of terrorism used to increase the budget for security. This is incredibly expensive and, as we have seen with the Iraq war, an excellent method of sneakily stealing billions from the US public.
Okay, so there are a million awful things that Trump can do like round up brown people suspected of “immigration” but the kleptocracy of Americans to protect his own business interests is possible the easiest to quantify and watchdog.
USA is a nation of laws and money. So hold him accountable to the law (decry his luxurious brand of corruption) and count the money.
I’ve assembled a set of references to stories about various shortcomings of the President-elect. Perhaps it will be of interest. Note that it is still a work in progress.
The capital letter enclosed in square brackets are keys to the references — not active links, because I figure to add more and changing all those links would be too tedious.
URL: http://www.chris-winter.com/Digressions/Election_2016/Trump_Strikes.html
Question. Since it’s looking more likely by the hour that, yes, Trump did rig the election (holy fucktabulous shitsicles)… Exactly what would happen to him and his co-conspirators, legally speaking, if they’re ever brought to trial for it? Potential charges, prison terms, etc. I just can’t think of any precedent for this outside of spy thrillers and action movies.
@Moocow
@LG
Re Electoral College
(Apologies in advance for any splaining. Trying to be thorough.)
Right now the main pushback on the election results are Jill Stein’s effort for recounts in WI, MI and PA https://jillstein.nationbuilder.com/recount ; and the #HamiltonElectors, a group of Demoractic Electors trying to convince their GOP counterparts in other states to “unite behind an alternative Republican Candidate” http://www.hamiltonelectors.com .
There are, of course, many many more. Beware of sites that ask you to blanket-contact Electors: Some states have laws against that, and/or laws against Electors changing their EV. I’ve seen at least one site where people have contacted Florida Electors, and one has gloatingly responded back with “I have turned your email request over to the proper legal authorities for their handling as to a legal disposition.”
The Electors names’ are mostly known (they have a Wikipedia page), but some sites have been posting their contact info. Yeah, doxxing, though many are public officials outside their position as Electors.
I have in my possession one unconfirmed file of GOP Electors that has since been taken down from one of these sites, which I will not share, as it is very doxxing. However, one field suggests as many as nine GOP Electors reported to be against Trump as of last week. With Art Sisneros of TX, mentioned in Moocow’s link, that would be ten.
The Electoral College votes at the state capitols on December 19th. We must still prepare for Trumpocalypse, but up through that date, we should find the best ways to petition the Electors.
(Moooore electoral splain ahead…)
The issue with the Electors that gets muddied online is that 37 GOP Electors have to not vote for Trump to change the outcome of the reported election. (Though if a Stein recount flips a state, this margin would be narrowed.)
The likelihood of Republican Electors to switch their vote to Hillary Clinton, even with all Trump is known for and currently up to, is vanishingly small.
Smaller than the already extremely outside chance of getting GOP Electors to go “faithless” and vote for a different Republican, as the #HamiltonElectors are proposing.
The most likely outcome of a successful disruption of the Electoral College is a reduction of Trump’s EV below 270 with no one else rising above it either. This puts the top three candidates into the House for a vote, with Trump, Clinton, and whoever gets the thirdmost EVs.
Since the House is Republican, this still precludes Clinton from the Oval Office. But it would hold the GOP directly accountable, and even give them an option to replace Trump with another, presumably saner, Republican.
Again, this is the most likely scenario in this highly unlikely scenario. The longest of long odds.
Duty pays no mind to the odds.
Also, Dave? Our enormous gratitude for everything you’ve done, and continue to do.
…Because you are now an anti-fascist leader.
Here is an idea for action: Tweet at companies whose ads are appearing on Breitbart to reduce Breitbart’s ad funding. Here is a spreadsheet I created listing the companies and their Twitter handles:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSasxLNF5-ogapZm_ueEd20Leddq5JI9NmaSEN9ymGwYrGLbrBoEiMcet4kLxdxIrhUfu72S0hO-7o0/pubhtml
@Yamara:
You might want to check out the comments policy.
Interesting stuff on the electoral college, something that still baffles me!
A big issue that will come up is that Trump promised he would protect Social Security and Medicare. Republicans and centrist Democrats both support various forms of privatization, and there’s a possibility the Republicans will try to push through Paul Ryan’s “Better Way” program. Ryan’s program for Medicare involves replacing Medicare with a voucher program for buying private insurance. Some progressive analysts say it makes Medicare more like Obamacare and it would be less efficient and hugely unpopular. It would be a huge scandal if Trump doesn’t follow through and veto privatization bills.
@Rhuu
Ergh! I thought I caught everything before cutting & pasting from Notepad. I of course meant political sanity, but you’re right. My sincere apologies to any and all.
My report on an anti-Semitic/Islamophobic author who tried to influence Trump.
WOWZERS! TIME TO MAKE A NOISE!
We gotta get things goin’! Time to petition and all that stuff and make a “YUGE” case that Trumpy has been rigging the votes!
Also; Time to demand all sorts of investigations and charges of TREASON!
Fortunately; There have been a lot of GOPers that were against Trump, that’s a good sign. Many might be wingnuts as well but at least they’re decent enough to see Trump for what he is. Perhaps a bipartisan coalition of Democrats, Sympathetic GOPers and other Parties may be in order.
On the Russian Front, Josh Marshall encapsulates the issue all too well in this essay from yesterday:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/don-t-forget-it-happened
And the links he provides to exposés in the Washington Post and Buzzfeed:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-propaganda-effort-helped-spread-fake-news-during-election-experts-say/2016/11/24/793903b6-8a40-4ca9-b712-716af66098fe_story.html?postshare=7411480039958022&tid=ss_tw
https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertonardelli/german-spies-are-alarmed-over-threat-to-election-from-fake-n?utm_term=.fy8NlqQw3D#.jhNnOGg3QV
How bad is it? Well, the BBC today posted this video of Putin explaining to a geography student, “Russia’s border doesn’t end anywhere.”
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38099842
Two more to add to the list; I haven’t fully looked into the first. Both are from this Twitter feed:
1.
2.
According to DeVos, it’s not mines, precisely – more like Walmart and Chick-Fil-A (seriously, who comes up with these names?). And abolishing compulsory education will make it easier, yay! 😐
Woah.
A lot to respond to.
First, GIANT THANKS for everyone providing links. I’ve gone through every one of them, saving articles in instapaper for later reading, bookmarking helpful sites, even getting hold of ebook versions of some of the book titles mentioned.
At this point I think I will end up doing at least two if not three pages on this, one focusing on the reasons Trump will be an illegitimate president, another providing a sort of trump library, with brief sections on assorted topics, buttressed by lots of links and recommended reading, and the third devoted to activist efforts.
The first one I’ll be doing will focus on the illegitimacy argument, which I think rests on three main arguments.
1) Hillary’s big win in the popular vote and the inherent biases of the electoral college.
No, I dont think we can undo the election because of this, nor do I think attempts to sway electors to vote for someone other than Trump will work. But it’s worth pushing anyway for the sake of future elections, and because it is important to push against the idea that Trump has any kind of mandate, even a tiny one. We absolutely cannot let Trump be legitimized or “normalized” and harping on his big loss in the popular vote is one key way to do this. Especially if/when he starts pulling the authoritarian shit he seems likely to pull.
2) Russia’s chillingly successful attempts to influence the election, by promoting “fake news” (there’s no question they did this) and, in all likelihood, with the email hacks (not completely proven but seems exceedingly likely).
If there’s proof that Trump colluded with Russia on this, that seems pretty clearly an impeachable offense, if not worse.
It doesn’t appear that Russia was involved in hacking voting machines or anything as direct as that.
3) Trump’s massive conflicts of interest, which he has clearly decided to basically embrace. Trump is already profiting, financially and otherwise, from his presidency even before it has started. The legal issues are complicated and I can’t say I understand them all but there are various people who know more than me saying there may be impeachable offenses here as well.
So that’s the basic argument.
I’ll try to get back to some of you on more specific stuff in a bit.
I’m not sure what there is for me to say on the whole troll issue that hasn’t already been said. Disagreeing with people here is no crime, but if you do, you have to expect that regular commenters will react to what you say, especially if your comments have a hostile, passive-aggressive edge to them.
Hi David, your plans for these pages sound great. I’m looking forward to reading them and think they’ll be an invaluable resource going forwards. You do such wonderful and largely thankless work here!
The problem with the electoral college is the same as the problem with impeachment, to my understanding. Electors are chosen by the party who won the state, so it’s very unlikely for them to vote against their party. Likewise, to my understanding, Impeachment is done in the House/Senate, which are both Republican-dominated. They won’t impeach him for collusion, because it’d implicate a number of people in their own party :\ At the best, I see the Republicans losing a huge number of congresspeoples in 2018, and then impeachment might be viable. I can’t see it happening otherwise.
@David F.,
The plan looks fab. I’m on semi-holiday for a few weeks, so let me know if I can help (chasing stuff up, etc.).
As Imperator Kahlo said above, your work is very, very much appreciated.
@ Axecalibur: Middle Name Danger
Sorry for my slow response, and thanks for the confirmation.
I’m not really certain about the pronunciation of Vucodlak. I came across it in an occult text. Such things really ought to have a pronunciation guides, though I suppose that would rather run counter to the “occult” part.
I’m pretty sure Vuc- rhymes with Luke, and Lac- rhymes with, well, Lack, but I’m not sure if the O- is long or short. I’m sure it would sound very weird if I spoke it anyway, given how slowly I speak. You should hear me say Piggly Wiggly (a local-ish grocery chain).
@Vukodlak
After some rudimentary research, I think it’s meant to be pronounced like voo-CODE-lock in the original Serbian. Or, at least I’m pretty sure that’s a Serbo-Croat word…
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vukodlak
Pronunciation
IPA(key): /ʋukǒdlak/
If someone could translate the IPA symbols…