Pipeline

By The Rocket's Orange Glare

Schooley: "But at least you could say Merry Christmas without fear that one last time."

Hyperreality TV

I've lost track of who said this and where, but: "America is about to be governed by a Mafia crime family interbred with a genocidal Nazi televangelism cult."

One bit player, Doctor Quack Z. Runningmouth—

"It never occurred to me that he was the oldest president, not for a second," Bornstein, 69, said in his Upper East Side office of the 70-year-old Trump. He said that "there's nothing to share" on a regular basis about a president's health. "Ronald Reagan had pre-senile dementia. I mean, seriously, did they share that one with you, or did Nancy just cover it up?"

Weeellll... okey-dokey, then...

"If something happens to him, then it happens to him," Bornstein said. "It's like all the rest of us, no? That's why we have a vice president and a speaker of the House and a whole line of people. They can just keep dying."

Smart, keeping the business in the family. Why even his wife appears to be impersonating a doctor...

... his great-aunt, who is also a patient of his, was headed to the emergency room across the street from his office. He and his wife put on their matching white doctors coats and headed to the hospital, to see how she was doing and make sure she got the best possible care.

Rounding out the cast... Though they may not be ready for prime time, the private security goons were a big hit with fans during rallies, as they roughed up whoever The Boss fingered. Now, they're ejecting journalists. Unaccountable to only one man, they appear poised to supercede the Secret Service.

And for some really small bit players... Jes' folks: hangin' at home with the kids, lettin' their hoods down...

A&E's newest series does something worse than just provide a platform for the KKK: It employs the formal format and devices of the channel's other hits (Hoarders, Intervention) to transform its bigots into colorful characters, thereby placing them on the same plane as the rest of cable TV's freaky reality stars. By situating them in a familiar faux-verité package, Generation KKK makes clear that these rancid people are just as suitable subjects for our entertainment as anyone else. In short: It legitimizes them.

Well the format has worked quite well for a certain rancid, orange-hued star.

That structure will be recognizable to anyone who's watched a reality-TV program over the course of the past decade—and it's Generation KKK's most reprehensible aspect. By having its subjects constantly restate the same soundbites (Daryle is going to "put boots on the ground"; Cody views Richard as a "father figure"), and by repeatedly manufacturing a sense of impending doom—through interview snippets, and ominous music—that never materializes, the show feels like just another small-screen effort aimed at drumming up spectacle through staged scenarios and manipulative aesthetics. It's akin to a multi-episode KKK variation on Teen Mom or My 600 Lb. Life, except with more go-nowhere handwringing by hatemongers who aren't committed to (or interested in) changing.

Generation KKK seems to believe it's exposing these cretins for who they truly are (and what they stand for). However, by using a standard-issue TV template to let them prattle on about race-mixing and white power, about their oh-so-sacred "naturalization" ceremonies performed next to dirt road shacks, about their "religious" "cross-lighting" rituals, and about the color-coded ranks of their hate group, the show treats them no differently than any of its other reality TV oddballs. That includes the bearded hillbillies of Duck Dynasty, whose hit A&E show is, coincidentally, going off the air shortly after Generation KKK—another program courting rural white viewers—premieres. The network's apparent underlying business model isn't difficult to decipher. But it's certainly something to condemn.

The Family Grift

Post-November 8, it became about nothing but grift for the whole family, on a heretofore unimaginable scale. Fake charity is just one of the angles.

And for those who made themselves useful, influence peddling will bring in a nice sum.

Artist's rendering: a criminal organization
(Der Spiegel)

Red Dawn

For someone who grew up during the Cold War, the Russian stuff is the hardest to get the head around. The very Russians believed to have hidden subversives under every bed; whose godless communism was the purported reason for U.S. coups and wars abroad, and witch hunts at home.

Suddenly, all ancient history. This successful attack against democracy does explain the American right's infatuation with "leader of the free world" Putin.

 A highway in Montenegro. Photo: Savo Prelevic, AFP/Getty Images
via Hackwackers

Why would Putin refuse to interfere; it was so easy to stop a tough opponent in favor of installing a puppet.

image: Matt Silverman, via New York Crank

When he had not only Comrade Trump...

image: Matt Silverman, via New York Crank

...But the Republican oil money establishment on board.

Actual Bloomberg headline: Russia Applauds Trump Dream Team as Exxon CEO Eyed for State.

Judging from the words in that link, Bloomberg's headline seems to have once been, "Putin Awaits Fantastic Trump Team As Exxon Ally May Head State"

Heroism

I'm just now reading of a passing on the 13th. Like most people, I didn't know the name or the part he played—

Larry Colburn, who became an 18-year-old American hero when he intervened with two comrades to halt the massacre of unarmed Vietnamese civilians by United States soldiers in 1968, elevating an innocuous hamlet named My Lai into a watchword for the horrors of war, died on Tuesday at his home in Canton, Ga. He was 67.
...
Mr. Colburn was the last surviving member of a three-man helicopter crew that was assigned to hover over My Lai on Saturday morning, March 16, 1968, to identify enemy positions by drawing Vietcong fire.

Instead, the men encountered an eerie quiet and a macabre landscape of dead, wounded and weaponless women and children as a platoon of American soldiers, ostensibly hunting elusive Vietcong guerrillas, marauded among defenseless noncombatants.

The crew dropped smoke flares to mark the wounded, "thinking the men on the ground would come assist them," Mr. Colburn told Vietnam Magazine in 2011.

"When we would come back to those we marked," he said, "we'd find they were now dead."

Audaciously and on his own initiative, the pilot, Chief Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson Jr., swooped down and landed the copter.

"Mr. Thompson was just beside himself," Mr. Colburn recalled in an interview in 2010 for the PBS program "The American Experience.""He got on the radio and just said, 'This isn't right, these are civilians, there's people killing civilians down here.' And that's when he decided to intervene. He said, 'We've got to do something about this, are you with me?' And we said, 'Yes.'"

Mr. Thompson confronted the officer in command of the rampaging platoon, Lt. William L. Calley, but was rebuffed. He then positioned the helicopter between the troops and the surviving villagers and faced off against another lieutenant. Mr. Thompson ordered Mr. Colburn to fire his M-60 machine gun at any soldiers who tried to inflict further harm.

"Y'all cover me!" Mr. Thompson was quoted as saying. "If these bastards open up on me or these people, you open up on them. Promise me!"

"You got it boss," Mr. Colburn replied. "Consider it done."

Mr. Thompson, Mr. Colburn and Glenn Andreotta, the copter's crew chief, found about 10 villagers cowering in a makeshift bomb shelter and coaxed them out, then had them flown to safety by two Huey gunships. They found an 8-year-old boy clinging to his mother's corpse in an irrigation ditch and plucked him by the back of his shirt and delivered him to a nun in a nearby hospital.

On this particular day, Charles Pierce adds—

To me, this always has been one of the more astonishing displays of courage of which I've ever heard, and I heard about it the way everyone else did, years later, because the Army did its best to cover the whole thing up and to slander the reputations of the helicopter crew involved. (Needless to say, the Nixon Administration was particularly venal in this regard.) Were we a truly vibrant and evolved republic, Larry Colburn's funeral would be on national television. Children would read about him in school. There would be memorials on the National Mall and at West Point.

At the very least, there would be an earnest panel on television discussing the many facets of courage, from John Glenn's piloting a dangerously crippled spacecraft back to earth to, "You got it, boss," in the face of friendly fire. If there were a few more Larry Colburns in our politics, that would be nice, too.

2008: Colburn with Do Ba, whom he rescued at My Lai
Chitose Suzuki/Associated Press

Acting Up

On this last day before the one that will live in infamy, Erik Loomis looks at lessons from past activism. Loomis points to a piece by Michele Goldberg, on "ACT-UP as an important model for us to learn about in resisting Trump and that the veterans of that movement, born out of complete desperation in the face of massive death and institutional indifference, will play a very important role in the next 4 years."

Commenter LWA adds—

I've used the ACT-UP/ SSM activists as a model for a while now.
It isn't that they are a perfect analog for what is happening now, nothing ever is.

The salient lesson for me is that public opinion and the "conventional wisdom" that gets spouted endlessly by media is actually a highly malleable thing, subject to persuasion and influence.

In 1985 it was conventional wisdom that homosexuality was a strange lifestyle choice, and some people were liberal enough to tolerate it, within sensible restraints.

The astonishing turnabout in public opinion didn't just happen, it was the result of constant pressure and argumentation and activism.
It was activists willing to be assholes and ruin dinner parties, willing to be "counterproductive" with protests at churches, to be annoying and exasperating.

There is always a strain in activist thought that we should change things, but there should never be unpleasantness or anger or discomfort.
But it never works that way- social change is always painful and awkward and involves suffering.

And I say this as someone with Trump voters in my immediate and extended family, with all the strain and icy conversations that result.

Unpresidented Petulance

If the crisis has been resolved, that's merely the interest of the U.S.

In other words, an outrage... To think of attention being taken from an unpresidented effort to cause international incidents, ahead of even being inaugurated. And so...

O.M.B. ? O.M.G.

South Carolina Teahadist, Rep. Mick Mulvaney, named to direct Office of Management and Budget director.

"OMG" fits, in more ways than one. As journalists note...

john r stanton
Mick Mulvaney, who held prayer sessions on whether to force the US into default, will be in charge of the entire budget under Trump

And

Lizzie O'Leary
Mick Mulvaney told me it didn't matter if the US defaulted on its debt.

Busy, Busy, Busy

So much so—and so smart—he doesn't need daily intelligence briefings, everyone knows that.

Also, so busy provoking the Chinese that they seized a U.S. research drone that was collecting oceanographic data. At least we have a few weeks left for sane people to be running things; the Pentagon has demanded a return.

Meanwhile, very early today...

unpresidented... Later cleaned up by staff, though it took a couple of hours of twitter mockery for them to see it.

As of January 20, what could be a more appropriate title than "unpresident"?

Rallying The Volk

Yesterday, on the "Thank you [for making me a real billionaire] tour"...

"You people were vicious, violent, screaming, 'Where's the wall? We want the wall!' Screaming, 'Prison! Prison! Lock her up!' I mean, you are going crazy," Trump said at a stop in Orlando, Florida...

Clay Jones

One Smart Lawyer

Is should be no surprise that Trump names as ambassador to Israel his bankruptcy lawyer (and fellow Putin fan)–

David Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer who represented the president-elect over his failing hotels in Atlantic City, served Trump's advisory team on the Middle East. He has set out a number of hardline positions on Israeli-Palestinian relations, including fervent opposition to the two-state solution and strong support for an undivided Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

He has called President Barack Obama an antisemite and suggested that US Jews who oppose the Israeli occupation of the West Bank are worse than kapos, Nazi-era prisoners who served as concentration camp guards.

An unqualified, belligerent know-nothing to do "diplomacy" in one of the most dangerous parts of the world? A dynamiter after Trump's heart.

But, as Ben Mathis-Lilley says, Friedman helped Trump "pull one of his greatest scams," and that's the kind of thing Trump is likely to reward. Trump must appreciate him as one smart Jew; why not give Friedman a Jewish thing to fuck up?

To put it mildly. Besides consigliere duties, Friedman runs a pro-illegal settlement group—which Jared Kushner's family foundation backs. Nice way of ending any possible U.S. credibility in the region.

On the other hand, Friedman can always help bring on a conflagration. That would surely warm the hearts of Trump-voting evangelicals and Nazis.

Brain Trust

The Fox viewer-in-chief has them, and they all come from where he gets his daily intelligence briefings.

Not literally Fox, but close enough. David Dayen:  Larry Kudlow Isn't an Economist, but He Plays One on TV. Oh well, it's the tax breaks uber alles that count in a Trump chief economic advisor. That, and consistently being wrong about the economy.

And then there's this "renowned scholar of international relations"...

She is a natural, having once said something nice about a Wall...

"At the Berlin Wall last week. Walls work."

"Thank Them For Not Voting"

Trump tells cheering volk: thumbs up to "smart" African-Americans, who didn't vote for Clinton.

Rob Rogers (posted: Eric Wolfson)

Side By Side

After today's guilty verdict, Jamelle Bouie writes this—

On June 16, 2015, Donald Trump took the stage at his eponymous tower in New York City and announced his bid for the White House. His message was clear. "The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everyone else's problems," Trump said.

A day later, in South Carolina, 21-year-old Dylann Roof walked into Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, where members were holding Bible study. Using a .45-caliber Glock handgun and eight magazines of ammunition, Roof shot and killed nine people, including the pastor, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was also a state senator. Before he arrived at the church, Roof posted a manifesto on his website, a racist tirade that expressed his motives. His message was also clear. "Integration has done nothing but bring Whites down to level of brute animals," wrote Roof.

Sentencing set for next month, in federal court. Despite wishes of the families, the death penalty is being sought. All arguments against the death penalty aside, this would only make him a lone wolf, to be put behind us. A rare federal move that should be agreeable even to America's new ownership.

Elections By Other Means

McCrory may have been forced to concede in North Carolina. But there's still time for him to have called his gerrymandered state legislature into an "emergency" session, which will enact a legislative coup. To hobble the office of governor, prior to Roy Cooper's being sworn in, and to pack the state's supreme court, prior to its having a Democratic majority.

A Very Busy Man

Sure, three days ago is ancient history... Yet, the "blind trust" presser once (supposedly) was scheduled for today.

Of course the real priorities must be handled, and handled decisively.

No insult left unpunished; in this case, yesterday's Trump Grill review.

Trivial, But True

One of my early thoughts from a month ago was that inauguration "talent" would pretty much be Ted Nugent and Kid Rock. And so, this New York headline today: Trump's Team Reportedly Offered Ambassadorships to Talent Bookers in Exchange for Inauguration Singers.

New York's reporter found no takers.

This fits, that Hollywood people recognize a Trump as the kind of con man they deal with throughout their careers. Trump is certain to remain a pariah to Hollywood and Broadway.

But as to a wannabe cohort in DC... Will the White House Press Correspondents manage to continue their annual shindigs? I don't see how, unless the evening is exclusively devoted to mockery of the poor, minorities, Democrats; losers. Anything else would incite a vengeful guest of honor.

Pay No Attention To...

Kurt Eichenwald story: How Donald Trump's Business Ties Are Already Jeopardizing U.S. Interests
.

But, in more important news: Trump meets with incoherent rich guy who is black.

And genius—for reasons not understood by punier intellects—compares him to JFK.

Model Public Servants

The Department of Energy stands up to Trump transition demand. In this case, that names be named—of employees and contractors who have been working on climate change. In its report this morning, the WaPo quotes this agency statement—

...Our career workforce, including our contractors and employees at our labs, comprise the backbone of DOE ... and the important work our department does to benefit the American people. We are going to respect the professional and scientific integrity and independence of our employees at our labs and across our department.

We will be forthcoming with all publicly-available information with the transition team. We will not be providing any individual names to the transition team.

As the new boss is being named.... Is our Texas Republicans learning? At least this time around, Perry will know the name of the agency he's charged with destroying.

On the other hand, he knows enough to have the proper oil industry backing. No pointy-headed physicist, he—unlike the previous two energy secretaries—

...Ernest Moniz, Obama's most recent Sec. of Energy, played a major role in negotiating the particulars of the agreement with Iran about halting their nuclear weapons program. It was also under his leadership and that of his predecessor, Steven Chu, that this administration hosted four Global Summits on Nuclear Security that, among other things, resulted in the removal and/or disposition of over 3.2 metric tons of vulnerable highly enriched uranium (HEU) and plutonium material and the complete removal of HEU from 12 countries – Austria, Chile, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Libya, Mexico, Republic of Korea, Romania, Serbia, Turkey, Ukraine, and Vietnam. It is also helpful to keep in mind that it was Sec. Chu who provided oversight to the team of scientists brought in to end the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Later this morning, a new WaPo headline: Scientists are frantically copying U.S. climate data, fearing it might vanish under Trump.

He Who Knows Best

Interesting post on tweets vs. the the complexities of military procurement, from someone who's done the latter.

The process is detailed and complex. It is covered in Defense Management at the Senior Leader Colleges (the war colleges) and there is a stand alone school just for Defense acquisitions: Defense Acquisitions University, which is attended by acquisitions officers/professionals. I sat through, barring other duties or being on Temporary Duty, four years of my teammate teaching Defense Management. Its dry, its tedious, its very, very, very important! I don't remember any lesson materials dealing with tweeting!

But things aren't rally all that complicated, are they?

As Kurt Eichenwald tweeted—

Wall Street guy: Found what led Trump to F-35. CNN mentioned cost yesterday.They now monitor TV all day 2 short stock Trump might tweet bout

Mainstreaming The Rewrite

LA Times forced to apologize, after readers objections followed a Travel section article on former internment camp National Parks (Tule Lake and Manzanar). This because the paper published wingnut troll complaints about the Parks' "anti-U.S. remake of history." Complete with the usual tropes about "loyalty to Japan," and families living high-hog off the government, while GIs fought for their freedom.

Who knows if publication was OK'd by an ignoramus, or if it was because we need to understand the minds of the poor downtrodden Trump voters. The less than vigorous apology—

Davan Maharaj, editor-in-chief and publisher of The Times, said the letters did not meet the newspaper's standards for "civil, fact-based discourse" and should not have been published.

Press Conference? What Press Conference Was That?

Quel surprise: presser cancelled, until "sometime next month". Instead of bothering with the "blind trust" pretense, "Transition officials say Trump focused on cabinet selections," says Bloomberg.

In a series of tweets late Monday night, Trump said he would make no new business deals during his time in the White House. The tweets came on the same day Bloomberg first reported he was postponing a Dec. 15 news conference to announce his business plan. He will instead make an announcement sometime next month before his inauguration, according to transition officials familiar with the deliberations.

Sure, he will. But no one can make him, and it's all above board, anyway.

"Even though I am not mandated by law to do so, I will be leaving my busineses before January 20th so that I can focus full time on the Presidency," Trump said on Twitter Monday night. "Two of my children, Don and Eric, plus executives, will manage them. No new deals will be done during my term(s) in office."

Last week, Josh Marshall suggested, "Maybe he can't divest because he's too underwater to do so or more likely he's too dependent on current and expanding cash flow to divest or even turn the reins over to someone else."

Marshall adds here, "As a condition of borrowing he may have agreed not to divest himself of certain properties." A corporate lawyer TPM reader says–

It may be that the sweet spot for Trump to sell would be during the first year of his administration, when the values of his businesses have inflated due to some combination of his policies and the association with him, and a buyer could reasonably benefit from the association with him for at least three years. He could pass it off as trying to put the conflict behind him. Look for the buyer to get a right to continue to use his name -- and perhaps other rights/promises that we'll never know about. I wouldn't expect all of the deal documents to be made public.

Happy One Hundredth

Kirk Douglas, born this day, 1916. Who has said the moment in his career that made him proudest: giving Dalton Trumbo screenwriting credit for "Spartacus," which ended the blacklist's hold over Hollywood.

In September, he wrote this column―

A few weeks ago we heard words spoken in Arizona that my wife, Anne, who grew up in Germany, said chilled her to the bone. They could also have been spoken in 1933:

"We also have to be honest about the fact that not everyone who seeks to join our country will be able to successfully assimilate. It is our right as a sovereign nation to choose immigrants that we think are the likeliest to thrive and flourish here…[including] new screening tests for all applicants that include an ideological certification to make sure that those we are admitting to our country share our values..."

These are not the American values that we fought in World War II to protect.
...
Until now, I believed I had finally seen everything under the sun. But this was the kind of fear-mongering I have never before witnessed from a major U.S. presidential candidate in my lifetime.

And you don't even need to have lived to one hundred, to know it.

Losing No Time

Quel surprise... Barely a month after the election, and the real agenda begins: Key House GOPer Introduces Bill With Major Cuts To Social Security.

That the agenda was beaten back under Bush Jr. is anything but a guarantee of it happening again. As Brian Beutler says, the GOP will do its all to benefit from the confusion and distraction sown by Trump—

...Past GOP attacks on entitlement programs have been fairly frontal. Trump and his agenda-setters on Capitol Hill are going to do their best to keep this one off of the front pages.
...
On a daily basis, Trump has proven able to divert media attention away from the plutocratic government he is assembling and on to a variety of shiny objects. His meetings with Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio received far more coverage, for instance, than the fact that his designated Environmental Protection Agency director worked hand in glove with polluters as Oklahoma's attorney general. He has not tweeted about Obamacare or turning Medicare over to private insurers, but he did appoint one of the most fiercely dedicated foes of both programs to run the Department of Health and Human Services.

... Unifying control of government so Congress can set the agenda, and the president can sit back and sign bills, has been the party’s long-game for years. The difference is that instead of keeping drama at bay, the GOP president will be creating routine distractions from the hard work of crafting unpopular legislation.

For the press, the temptation will be hard to resist. Covering major legislation is grueling, complicated work that doesn't generate a return-to-clicks in the way a Trump rally or a Trump tweet does. Many dedicated, hardworking reporters will work insane hours covering the GOP’s decision-making and legislative maneuvers, but much of that hard work will end up below the fold, where much of the public won’t see it. This will insulate the party from blowback while the process is underway, which is precisely when blowback is most needed.

RIP, John Glenn

An appreciation—

The word "hero" is thrown around a lot these days, but there's no denying that former astronaut and Senator John Glenn was a real hero. He died today at the age of 95. Glenn was the first U.S. astronaut to orbit the Earth in 1962, and was one of the seven original astronauts-- the Mercury Seven -- selected by NASA for spaceflight. In 1998, he became the oldest to fly in space when he flew on the Discovery space vehicle at age 77. As a Marine aviator, Glenn flew 59 combat missions in the South Pacific in WW II and 63 combat missions during the Korean War. As a Democratic U.S. senator from Ohio from 1974 to 1999, Glenn was the principal author of the 1979 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act.

Extra Helpings Of Delusion; Hold The Mental Health Care

Three days ago: Florida woman who believes Sandy Hook was a hoax, arrested for threatening the father of a child killed in the 2012 school massacre.

Yesterday, the NYT devoted quite a bit of real estate to letting another threat speak.

Below, I've had to add emphasis—the original is oh-so-genteel, the kid-gloves so soft and soothing as they stroke the interviewee, Edgar Maddison Welch—

...arrested Sunday after firing a gun inside a pizza restaurant in Washington as he investigated false claims in online articles that the pizzeria was at the center of a child sex slave ring, the police said. No one was injured by the gunfire, and Mr. Welch surrendered peacefully. The pizzeria, Comet Ping Pong, had been swept into a conspiracy theory...

The rest is equally awful; arranged under headings, which are italicized below

What was his original plan?
Mr. Welch, the father of two daughters, said he woke up Sunday morning and told his family he had some things to do. He left "Smallsbury," a nickname for his hometown, for the 350-mile drive to Washington with the intention of giving the restaurant a "closer look" and then returning home. He wanted to "shine some light on it." As he made his way to Washington, he felt his "heart breaking over the thought of innocent people suffering." Once he got to the pizzeria, there was an abrupt change of plans. Mr. Welch would not say why he took a military-style assault rifle inside the restaurant and fired it. According to court documents, Mr. Welch said he had come armed to help rescue the children.

What did he think when he discovered there were no children at the pizzeria?
"The intel on this wasn't 100 percent," he said. However, he refused to dismiss outright the claims in the online articles, conceding only that there were no children "inside that dwelling." He also said that child slavery was a worldwide phenomenon.
...

What was he like?
Mr. Welch was soft-spoken and polite, and said he liked the outdoors....

No commenting open, as the Times offered this apology for its previous elitist failure to understand such fine, upstanding Real Americans.

"There Was Video.There Should Have Been A Verdict."

Writes Charles Pierce. Citing the NYT—

"Our whole criminal justice system rides on the back of law enforcement," the chief prosecutor for Charleston County, Scarlett A. Wilson, said during her closing argument. "They have to be held accountable when they mess up. It is very, very rare, but it does happen." Ms. Wilson acknowledged from the beginning of the trial that she thought Mr. Scott had contributed to his own death by running away. "If Walter Scott had stayed in that car, he wouldn't have been shot," Ms. Wilson said. "He paid the extreme consequence for his conduct. He lost his life for his foolishness."

Pierce—

Ask Philando Castile how safe you are from gun-happy cops if you stay in your car. Oh, sorry, you can't. He's dead, too.

Wilson's statement, however tactical it may have been, is simply appalling. Unless Slager was certain that Scott was running to get an RPG launcher that he'd secreted across the park, Slager simply was in no imminent danger and Scott should not be dead. If the video weren't evidence enough of that, then the lengths to which Slager and his superiors went to bullshit the public about how this was a righteous shoot should have been.

But if the prosecutor is hanging the victim with the original responsibility for his own death, even for purely tactical reasons, then that's opening the contest with a pretty serious own goal. If we're going to be serious about criminal justice reform—on which I've never been optimistic, but never mind—then there has to be a serious conversation at the state level about removing local DAs from the process of prosecuting cops that they also need to use as witnesses in their day-to-day lives. The current system is a mockery of justice. And there is the one thing about which nobody wants to talk in this national conversation that we're never likely to have now. It is that black lives matter less in the law, time and time again.

Which Pierce follows with this story, from Louisiana. Black motorist shot to death by white motorist—who police first released, for cooperating with the investigation. Sheriff now enraged over criticism of his department's actions. As Pierce says—

Sooner or later, Sheriff Normand is going to testify for the prosecution in the trial of the guy who is charged with shooting Joe McKnight. Good luck with that, folks.

Carolina, South

A mistrial declared in North Charleston.

Slager shot Walter Scott in the back repeatedly, killing him. At the time of the shooting, Scott was already 15 to 20 feet from Slager and running away.

Video taken by a bystander showed Slager placing a weapon by Scott's body after the shooting, in an apparent attempt to plant a weapon on him. When the officer radioed a dispatcher, he explicitly lied, stating that Scott had taken his Taser.

Scott Lemieux: "38% of the population of North Charleston is white, and yet 92% of the jury was."

The jury was hung due to a single hold-out; case will be re-tried.

Carolina, North

Source of very good news today: McCrory concedes. A month after the vote, because, as Scott Lemieux writes, "Pat McCrory has concluded that despite his best efforts the election is not close enough for him to steal"...

tengrain adds, "NC Doesn't Serve Your Kind, Pat McCrory!"

Maybe this will be an object-lesson in the age of Trump: even in the South, you cannot go full theocrat and try to outlaw civil rights of any Americans, specially if it destroys your state’s economy and reputation.

Collateral Damage

Clever sister called last night, to let me know about this arrest—not quite two weeks after alerting me to this.

"Smear Campaign Works as Intended," says Shakezula. Yes, there was an arrest—of a (completely non-terrorist white guy) would-be hero, Edgar Maddison Welch. He merely terrorized a restaurant popular with families; no one's been killed yet. Welch traveled from N Carolina, to "self-investigate" the DC restaurant; he fired shots into the floor, expecting to locate the "secret tunnel"... No casualties yet, just continued death threats against restaurant employees and owner, as well as employees and owners of the neighboring businesses.

Alex Jones must be out to surpass the Bill O'Reilly death toll. It's horrible, but a fact of life, for some doctors to know they are targets. O'Reilly's incitement got the predictable result, when it led (a completely non-terrorist white nut) to murder an abortion provider. But that was pre-social media; the drumbeat now is not only 24/7, but in the palm of the hand. And anyone can be made into a target.

Steve M. on Jones' role in spreading this.

Gullible, Trump-loving Real Americans are scary enough.

Edgar Maddison Welch

But it's an entirely new level of terror, to have the inner circle of an incoming government so willing to believe any sort of crap, in service of its political (and family dynasty profit-making) agenda. Think Progress recaps the words of father-son true believers.

Michael G. Flynn
Chief of staff to incoming National Security Advisor
"...runs Flynn Intel Group which provides intelligence services for business and governments."

Michael T. Flynn
incoming National Security Advisor
"...with son Michael G. Flynn, runs Flynn Intel Group which provides intelligence services for business and governments."

The Business Of The Presidency

It now seems to be comedy critiques, tapped out by the tiniest, thinnest-skinned fingers.

Alec Baldwin responded.

Release your tax returns and I'll stop.
Ha

But an even more pointed reaction came from someone not on TV: one Danielle Moscato. She responded to the twit-in-chief, on his very own feed... In tweet after tweet; they have to be read in full.

But What About The Rest Of Us?

"This goat with anxiety only calms down when she's in her duck costume"...

The explanation...

... 6-month-old Polly ... is partially blind and has a host of neurological issues... she's got a team at the New Jersey rescue center Goats of Anarchy that ... found that putting her in the duck onesie immediately calms her — even in her most anxious, high-strung moments. The rescue workers believe she feels comforted by the "hugging" quality of the garment, which surrounds and envelops her entire body.

I can't imagine there will ever be enough of these to go around... Though the goat sanctuary twitter feed is soothing; I just hope enough to bring the cortisol and blood pressure down a notch.

Knowing How To Handle Them

First he courts multiple diplomatic incidents, most worryingly against China. All in a couple days' work, for one who is so industrious about conducting Trump Organization foreign policy.

And it would seem he's merely conducting his company's foreign policy, even if he is not yet officially Biggest Ever CEO of the U.S. Though Steve M., thinks the China "gaffe" was a calculated act, inspired by Bolton and the other hard-liners around Trump.

So after causing all kinds of international tumult, Digby spotted this, from the NYT—

When Nancy Pelosi, the minority leader of the House of Representatives, called Donald J. Trump shortly after the Nov. 8 election, they talked about domestic policy and infrastructure. But when Ms. Pelosi raised the specific subject of women's issues, the president-elect did something unexpected: He handed the phone over to another person in the room — his 35-year-old daughter, Ivanka.

Why do I sense he handed the phone off without a further word? He knows everything about international relations: a simple matter of where the hotels and golf courses should go. Stuff broads care about? "Psst, Ivanka! You talk to the old bag."

The Reality Show At The End Of The World?

If, in the current context, insight can be a frightening thing, Yastreblyansky is hitting very scary bulls-eyes.

Yesterday, pointing to Alfie Kohn on Trump's psychopathology.

Followed today, by... well–

...you know what other famous dictator of history fancied himself an especially gifted artist? (It's OK, Mike Godwin himself says we can start doing this if we want, as long as we make an effort to know what we're talking about.) Not those watercolors, either, I'm talking about movies. I got this idea from one of the greatest movies I've ever seen, as a matter of fact, Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's Unser Hitler: Ein Film aus Deutschland (1977), which I saw twice, believe it or not (it's 442 minutes long), in which a major thesis or thesis-like theme is that Hitler increasingly saw himself as a filmmaker, in particularly from the war onwards, what we'd later call an auteur, literally having the war filmed, as we know, and watching the takes in his redoubt like a studio director going over the rushes. A Wagnerian film, obviously, with a Götterdämmerung at the end. Like the emperor Nero, Hitler felt the destruction of the world around him was interesting and deep, and a credit to his deep artistic sensitivity. Hitler was the Dramaturg of the end of the world.

And then, you know, there's Trump, who does "reality" shows, of which our experience in the last couple of years is certainly an example, and who is, as we know, similarly psychotic. I will doubtlessly be coming back to this thought, but I want to let it sink in a little.

National Narcisstic Personality Disorder Day

Is every day, thanks to the prevalence of Authoritarian-Follower Personality in the white electorate whose votes are the only ones that matter.

Alfie Kohn captures the psychopathology of He who brings the 11-9 world that so terrifies the rest of us.