Andrea's Awareness

Dean: [Trump]’s a complicated guy. He appoints a reasonable person, [Reince Priebus], who’s much more conservative than I am, but for somebody who can talk to as chief of staff and then his senior adviser is a Nazi.

CTV’s Evan Solomon: OK hang on, slow down. You called him a Nazi?

Dean: He’s anti-Semitic, he’s anti-black and he’s anti-women, It’s a big word, and I don’t usually use it unless somebody’s really anti-Semitic, really misogynist and really anti-black.

Solomon: You really think he’s that?

Dean: You go and look at Breitbart News, you’ll make up your own mind

Michigan Government Fights Judge’s Ruling to Deliver Water to Residents in Need, Calling it an ‘Unnecessary Burden’

News broke Friday morning that Trump had chosen Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions for attorney general.

Sessions opposes a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and has expressed support for a ban on Muslims. Sessions also has a troubling history of racist comments.

Also on Friday, Trump reached a $25 million settlement agreement in a fraud lawsuit involving his failed Trump University venture.

The size of the settlement is a damning indication of the severity of the grievances against Trump University — especially coming from Trump, who has, in the past, mocked business that chose to settle lawsuits, according to the New York Times.

Since the election, reports of acts of hate committed in the name of Trump have surged.

Just last week, swastikas were spray-painted in a park named for Beastie Boy Adam Yauch, along with the words “Go Trump.” Hijab-wearing Muslim women have been attacked and harassed. And the hate isn’t just random and dispersed — it’s also organized.

Protesters continue to gather to speak out against Trump’s appointment of Steve Bannon.

Trump’s selection of Bannon to play a key role in his presidency only stokes the fears of those who are terrified that Breitbart’s brand of hyperbolic and combative racism, sexism, anti-Semitism and transphobia could become national policy.

And the mounting concern about Trump’s business conflicts of interest.

Fears about how Trump will simultaneously manage both his business interests and the interests of the United States have only mounted. Trump will enter office with “unprecedented” conflicts of interest, including an ongoing lawsuit between the Trump Organization and the government over a Trump hotel on government land, his debt to Deutsche Bank and his vested interest in the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Protests against Donald Trump carry into their fifth day nationwide

1. Reinstate the Voter Rights Act. It’s been gutted by SCOTUS and that has been disastrous.

2. Let felons vote. Honestly, there’s no reason not to. If they’ve served their sentence and paid their debt to society, they should have a voice in their government.

3. Get rid of the electoral college. It’s outdated and useless.

4. Stop gerrymandering. Seriously. It’s gotten ridiculous.

A woman hates her abuser for how she was treated.

Her abuser hates her for existing as a woman.

We cannot treat the hate of the victims as the same thing as the hatred they face. That is belittling their experiences and silencing their (justified) reactions.

The Brainwashing Of My Dad dir. Jen Senko (2015)

Your feelings are valid and it’s ok to reach out if you need support 💜  

valadilenne:

I’ve been thinking a lot about the meeting between Trump and Obama at the White House, and here’s the thing.

Obama used to be a law professor. This is key.

Law school is so, so different from college. 

In college, everyone expects there to be a “syllabus day,” kind of a grace period where they can show up and get the lay of the land, figure out the bare minimum that they can get away with, the TA gives everyone their office hours, there’s an introductory lecture, and everybody leaves a few minutes early to go take a nap or something. You do the bullshit assignments, you say something in class now and then to get your participation check mark, and figure out how badly you can do on the final and still pass. 

But see, in law school, all the methodologies you’ve spent the last 17 years operating under go out the window. Day one of law school is you being thrown into the deep end of the pool—you’ve had a homework assignment for two weeks now, and it’s to read the first 200 pages of your casebook. And now it’s you and the teacher (who is usually as smug as Alex Trebek) gauging and assessing what you managed to absorb while you skimmed through all those pages of reading so you could hurry up and get to the other 150 pages of reading for your next period class, in front of 50 people who are all smarter than you. And if you fuck up, or you didn’t do the reading, you are at the mercies of not just the professor, but the silent satisfied judgment of your peers. 

Law school is hard, and it will make you feel stupid and tongue-tied and like you don’t know anything and can’t form an argument—because you don’t, and you can’t. Everybody there has had a 4.0 since birth. Everybody there was the smartest kid in their class, and you’re all rabidly competing for a sliver of a chance at something down the road. It’s petty, and savage, fiercely entrenched in a culture of formalities and ceremony, and exactly like Washington DC. 

Yesterday when I was driving home, the NPR reporter talking about the Oval Office meeting mentioned that Trump had thought it was going to be a “getting to know you” type meeting, but that he was surprised when Obama stretched their talk out to 90 minutes before sending him along to the Capitol building where he met with congressional leaders for more lengthy meetings and stuff he didn’t want to do.

And he hasn’t even gotten to the actual job yet. 

So think about that as we go into this. 

Trump walked into the Oval Office like a two-pump-chump freshman thinking it was syllabus day, and what he got was the first day of law school, and he hadn’t done the reading like everyone else had, and Professor Obama decided to put him in the hot seat. 

This was Obama’s chance for the most perfect revenge that would never be picked up on as revenge at all. He was gracious, polite—everything he needed to be for a peaceful transition and a good review from the press. And that would continue when the doors were closed, because that’s the key. Not a Come to Jesus meeting, oh no. If Obama were smart—and he is very smart—he would have treated Trump like an equal, and brought the discussion to a level that assumes far more of Trump than anyone has so far. Assumes that he’s an adult who’s been paying attention. Statistics, esoteric minutiae about the executive branch procedure, economic growth numbers, labor figures, domestic policies, countries Trump has never even heard of, shit that would never in a million years have been in Trump’s campaign soundbites or digestible summaries. 

No way to escape. No aides to remember any of it for him. Just the two of them. 

Because that’s what would strike a precise chill into Trump. The thundering realization that he’s woefully unprepared for the hard, boring, thankless reality of this, and Obama’s version of a smooth transition won’t and shouldn’t include remedial civics. 

That’s what I saw when they shook hands and Trump stared at the floor instead of looking back into Obama’s face. He’s just figured out how little he knows about any of this. 

And that should give you a small glow of satisfaction, because after those meetings, Trump definitely has the 1L Terror Shits. In January, the night sweats and insomnia will show up, but for these first few weeks—nothing but diarrhea and self-doubt.  

As a former chairwoman of the Black Panther Party, Elaine Brown is no stranger to radical ideas. The 72-year-old has been an advocate on behalf of prisoners for many years. And now she’s determined to transform a vacant lot in West Oakland, California into a thriving urban farm business that employs former offenders.

CLICK THE HEADER LINK TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE AND WATCH THE VIDEO.

“Hey, look! There’s lots of money over there!”

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. 

The things a President wants to get done are not going to happen quickly or easily, if at all. Passing important legislation is complicated and boring and lengthy. Even signed legislation can take a while to be enacted and is then always subject to appeals and challenges (recall the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate ultimately having to go before the Supreme Court). 

The Constitution will not allow for a lot of Trump’s more horrific ideas to ever get close to reality (this ACLU piece written before the election breaks it down better than I ever could). His Supreme Court nominee has to be approved. His cabinet members have to be approved. Just about everything needs to be approved. And even with majorities in Congress, that’s far from a swift guarantee.

There are checks and balances. We lived through 8 years of Bush (including those first six I mention), followed by the economy collapsing; there are more vigilant eyes and ears watching now than there have ever been. The likelihood of a Trump administration getting away with shit without a drawn-out, bloody fight is slim. Especially when you remember that he’s facing a civil RICO trial at the end of this month plus numerous more lawsuits that have yet to be settled. Especially when you remember that he has no law degree, no political science degree, and has never held a political office of any kind. Especially when you remember that he lost the popular vote. His cabinet and staff will not be filled with the best and brightest because he alienated so many of them, even in his own party.

And most importantly, one or both of the House and the Senate could be flipped in 2018. 

We’re all scared and worried and rightfully so. And the people who voted for Trump are as much a daily threat as Trump himself could hope to be. But this President’s only got two years before his legislative legs can be cut off. Two years from right now. 

Learn who your representatives are, at every level. Figure out how to get in touch with them and get in touch with them, repeatedly. Relentlessly. It doesn’t matter if they’re Republican or Democrat or Independent. You don’t have to wait for some terrible Trumpish idea to get going in Congress – you can write to them about restoring the Voting Rights Act or preserving the Affordable Care Act or protecting LGBTQ rights or fighting climate change right now. These people do not have a job without you. You’re younger than them. The future matters more to you. I’ve seen the working life of a Congressman up close and let me tell you: you can reach them (surprisingly easily, actually). You can get through to them. You can put a face to these issues and you never let them forget it. Be relentless. Be memorable. If they ignore you or forget you, you let everybody know about it. We have the platforms to easily and quickly tell others. Let relevant activist groups know. Let the whole fucking world know.