UnPresident-Elect Donald Cheeto claimed today he would have won the popular vote if voters hadn't cheated.

[More...]

Fidel Castro died Friday, November 25, 2016. He was 90 years old.

Raul Castro has pledged to step down in 2018. What then? The New York Times reports on how the power likely will pass -- to a lot of Raul's children. [More....]

Clinton Campaign finance guy Mark Elias has issued a statement saying the campaign will participate in a vote audit and recount of Wisconsin, and of Michigan and PA if Jill Stein files the requests.

Because we had not uncovered any actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology, we had not planned to exercise this option ourselves, but now that a recount has been initiated in Wisconsin, we intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides. If Jill Stein follows through as she has promised and pursues recounts in Pennsylvania and Michigan, we will take the same approach in those states as well.

[More...]

Protecting Donald Trump and his entourage grows more expensive daily.

Take his jaunt to his Palm Beach resort for Thanksgiving. NBC News reports it cost taxpayers $7 million:

As the soon-to-be first family sat down in Florida for their Thanksgiving feast, they were watched over by the core part of their new extended family — a contingent of at least 150 Secret Service personnel.

His and his wife's selfish insistence on maintaining two residences with Trump flying to New York on weekends will up the secret service contingent and related personnel to 950 and cause the expense to skyrocket.

Also complicating security arrangements is Melania Trump's decision to stay in Manhattan until Barron is done with school in June. Donald Trump has told his team that he intends to make regular weekend trips home to Trump Tower until his wife moves into the White House. So millions of dollars worth of infrastructure will have to be installed in Trump Tower to turn it into a White House North

Right now the cost to the Feds (funded by taxpayers of course) is already $2 million a day (just the federal cost): [More...]

It's Thanksgiving! Progressive radio stations around the country will be playing Arlo Guthrie's 18 minute version of Alice's Restaurant, about his trip down to White Hall St. in lower Manhattan to sit on the Group W bench and wait until he was told if he was fit for induction into the Army to go fight in Vietnam.

KBCO in Boulder is commercial free all day, and will play Alice's Restaurant at noon and again at 6 p.m.

Does anyone besides me still have a hardcover edition of her 1969 Alice's Restaurant cookbook in their kitchen? It's filled with tasty recipes and very easy instructions. [More...]

Are any of you cooking tomorrow? I am -- and I have lots to finish up today.

I plan to have a totally Trump-free holiday. I'm sure I'll binge watch something, I'm just not sure what yet. And check out the Black Friday online sales.

Here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

Wishing you all a happy pre-Holiday eve.

The era of the Inglorious Donald Trump is upon us. This will be the most dreary Thanksgiving ever. Here's what we learned about Unpresident Donald Trump today:

The security cost for protecting Trump and his family in New York is $1 million a day. As I wrote this morning, the Mayor plans to ask the feds to help out. If he's successful, that's our tax dollars being spent.

The Chicago Tribune tells Trump to suck it up and take his family to live in D.C. I agree.

Even if he personally repays the state and local governments for the massive cost of protecting his wife and 10 year old son after the inauguration in New York so he can indulge his 10 year old's desire to finish the 5th grade with his chums, which I suspect he won't because he's too miserly, he can't repay New Yorkers for the inconvenience and time lost in traffic jams. Tourism will fall quickly. Who would book a holiday trip to New York now, knowing they can't get up or down 5th Avenue and everyone will be in a Grinch mood over the delays (if it doesn't cause an unprecedented rise in violent road rage incidents?) [More...]

Donald Trump moved his spectacle of the revolving door to his potential cabinet picks to his golf course in New Jersey this weekend, shutting down the Lincoln Tunnel in both directions Friday night causing delays of more than an hour as his motorcade passed by.

While that may not be of interest to anyone who doesn't live in NY or New Jersey, other issues of concern to the entire nation are glossed over as Trump deflects attention from them by causing a distraction. Latest example: The public would rather talk about his tweet criticizing the cast of Hamilton for what it said to Mike Pence than his willful blindness to the danger of his global conflicts of interest.

Another Trump distraction: Melania and Barron will stay in New York at least until June so the 10 year old doesn't have to be inconvenienced by changing schools mid-year. He can go to school in Antarctica for all I care. But what does matter is who will bear responsibility for the exorbitant extra security cost and the inconvenience to New Yorkers (and tourists)? The public should be demanding Trump bear the expense. And since New York City intends to ask the feds for reimbursement, this concerns all taxpayers. [More...]

Jefferson Beauregard Sessions and the Munchkins. Separated at birth? I think so.

I don't really have much to say about Trump's Friday dump of radical right cabinet picks. They are to be expected. It just shows the futility of Democrats' efforts to "reach out" to him in hopes he'll exercise some moderation. He's too far gone. He thinks he's the Wizard of Oz, controlling the country from behind the iron curtains of Trump Tower. If you're not one of his billionaire bundlers or an extremist right wing politician, you won't get as far as the elevator.

The New York Times calls Session's nomination for Attorney General "an insult to justice." (It calls Michael Flynn's nomination for National Security Advisor "an alarming pick."

Here's an article from McClatchy on Sessions hard-core anti-immigration views. [More...]

Here is a new open thread, all topics welcome.

One week after the election, UnPresident Donald Trump shows he's not ready for primetime. His team is in utter disarray. It's one fiasco after another. The entire Republican party is mired in one crisis after another. And, barring an Indictment or impeachment of Donald Trump in both houses, the majority of the electorate -- who voted for Hillary -- are stuck with him and his seemingly rudderless ship for the next four years. [More...]

I'll be offline Monday and Tuesday, so here's a new open thread.

I'll be glad to miss the news as to the new UnPresident. It's still too difficult to process.

I'm debating whether to start a second blog tracking his moves. Here's what it would look like (only I'd move it to its own site.) Might be too much work and too depressing. You can't leave comments as of now, it's just a prototype (but that would be the site name, once I moved it off worpress.com.)

Again, All topics welcome

Hillary is now beating Donald Trump in the popular vote count by more than 600,000 votes. Not much solace. But it may be enough for me to call him the UnPresident from now on.

Josh Marshall says the Trump Administration will be incredibly corrupt.

Can Netflix please speed up the release date of Surviving Pablo Escobar -- the series about his head hitman Popeye, John Jairo Velásquez, who was released from prison in 2014 after serving 23 years? I've been following him in the news since before his release and want something to watch so I can stop reading about our UnPresident.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Trump has chosen Republican Chair Ron Priebus as his Chief of Staff. He named Steve Bannon his "senior strategist and chief counselor."

President-elect Donald Trump announced on Sunday that Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus will be his chief of staff and Steve Bannon, the former chairman of the conservative website Breitbart News, will serve as his senior strategist and chief counselor.

The announcement says they will be “equal partners”. White House staff appoints don't require Senate confirmation. They include: [More...]

Sweden’s neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement (NMR) held its largest march ever on Saturday, celebrating the election of Donald Trump, which it calls the start of a world revolution. The NMR has been promoting "an openly racist and anti-Semitic doctrine" since 1997.

Per Öberg, the Nazi group’s press chief, told the gathered crowd that Donald Trump’s election was a sign that a world revolution was beginning.

Also speaking was Vera Oredsson, a lifelong Nazi who was a member of the Hitler youth as a child growing up in Nazi Germany, and Fredrik Vejdeland, the group’s head of strategy.

More than 600 participated (despite being the snowiest Movember day in Stockholm in 111 years. [More...])