Lobenthal.com

Harry Reid’s response to Comey and his denunciation of Trump today demonstrate how thoroughly he was hamstrung by Obama’s resistance to actual political resistance.

And are the Democrats finally going to address what our “mainstream” media has become (to a large extent, let’s recall, because of Bill Clinton’s deregulation in 1996) ?

Reid writes:

“Every news piece that breathlessly obsesses over inauguration preparations compounds”

the fear of US population sectors targeted by Trump

“by normalizing a man who has threatened to tear families apart, who has bragged about sexually assaulting women and who has directed crowds of thousands to intimidate reporters and assault African Americans. Their fear is legitimate and we must refuse to let it fall through the cracks between the fluff pieces.”

the arts are in trouble in this country now, think ahead to what it’s going to be like four years from now.

They are largely a force for evil, there’s just no question about it.

Heather Digby Parton is incredulous: rather than repent for their kid-gloves treatment of Trump throughout most of the campaign, and their blinkered straight-from-Whitewater obsession with Hillary’s emails, they are now attempting to legitimize Trump as the world’s most powerful leader.

I think that the only reason the network “news” shows started to get a little more critical of Trump as his election loomed as a real possibility, was their corporate owners’ fear that he would seize their businesses. A Trump presidency is going to be about Trump exploiting his power as chief executive to enrich himself. Now the networks are again groveling before him in the hope that he will not extinguish them.

Turns out that high levels of mortgage debt correlated to support for Trump, Jim Tankersley reports in the Washington Post. Obama had, of course, notoriously failed to do much of anything about underwater mortgages.

Neil Gabler says “Farewell, America,” at BillMoyers.com

“America died on Nov. 8, 2016, not with a bang or a whimper, but at its own hand via electoral suicide. We the people chose a man who has shredded our values, our morals, our compassion, our tolerance, our decency, our sense of common purpose, our very identity — all the things that, however tenuously, made a nation out of a country.”

I will not unite behind a Fascist agenda.

I mean, here we’ve got Paul Ryan declaring that Trump had a mandate after losing the popular vote, we’ve got Tom Cotton defending waterboarding, we’ve got Mitch McConnell boasting that he will repeal Obamacare in two months, and the President sings his same old Kumbaya song.

for apologies from liberal commentariat stars, yes I mean Dr. K, Kos, Josh Marshall, among others-

for their unequivocal and, as it turns out, completely misplaced as well as often zealous promotion of HRC and her mythic electability.

He’s supporting Rep. Keith Ellison for DNC chair, after the dreadful Wasserman Schultz and her shameless abuse of Committee rules.

As Robert Reich writes: “I believe it necessary for the members and leadership of the Democratic National Committee to step down and be replaced by people who are determined to create a party that represents America—including all those who feel powerless and disenfranchised, and who have been left out of our politics and left behind in our economy.”

Did it begin with yesterday’s protests?

It begins: every freak in the government is stepping out of the closet.

And no one is freakier than Senator Tom Cotton.

Since it’s not torture, let’s get it on, babe–you go first!