Mr. Trump - Stay away from ideologues ...

IMO President Elect Trump would do well to avoid appointing ideologues to jobs in his administration.  Republican Part hacks, neocon war-mongers, R2P do-gooders, all these will, if they can, drag him toward high risk positions that he can ill afford given the high level of resistance to his legitimacy among left wing Americans.

He will have Steve Bannon in the building to give him the right wing's point of view and Priebus for balance in trying to deal with the Congress and everyone else in Washington.

President Trump IMO has little regard or respect for the traditional Republican leadership.  IMO that is a good thing.  The GOP wants to gut entitlements and other popular programs.  Trump knows he can't do that without destroying his position in the minds of his supporters. 

Therefore he is going to have to work with the Democrats in Congress.  They may be in the minority but their votes will be needed to overcome GOP resistance to many of the things he will want to do.

For God's sake, no neocons and no "movement conservatives."  pl

Comments

[Patrick D]

Shaun,

"We know all about this subject, being Jewish and all."

The only people I know and am reasonably sure voted Trump are some of my Jewish relatives; all ardent Zionists and descendants from a real macher in the Jewish community and the Democratic Party during WWII and the post-war era.

I'll let them know their "Jewish" must be malfunctioning.

[turcopolier]

origin

OK. Color you blue. pl

[slabinja]

Chances is, he'll use the position to enrich himself.

[turcopolier]

slabinja

That is just slanderous. Are you from the 3rd world or eastern Europe.? Or perhaps you think his name is Clinton? pl

[Lemur]

no, its a function of dissolution by bored post-modern SWPLs (https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=SWPL) so deracinated from their community and culture they seek out decontextualized exotic stimuli to satiate their existentially impoverished souls. Even the deconstructively inclined Erich Fromm noted that in order to actually 'love' something in the full sense of the term, one had to be first rooted in prior matrix of meaning. But if everyone is mixed up, what is prior? It's the equivalent of forming your musical personality by listening to country, metal, pop, and jazz at the same time. In his second meditations Nietzsche considered that culture by definition required parameters in order to define itself. The open society is no society at all, merely a endless wasteland of deconstruction. One that TS Elliot found so horrifying he turned his prodigious talents to writing about cats. The word 'freedom' draws from the root, 'dom-ain'. To be free, there must be limits.
https://elfishpolitics.blogspot.co.nz/2016/03/an-alternative-to-liberalism-part-2_26.html

We can further expand on this theme by noting this love is a secularized protestant heresy. The protestant cultivates his 'personal relationship' with Jesus, excluding any intermediaries. In secular terms, the individual becomes the sole determinant of his relationship with the world, and thus holistic conceptions must be eschewed because they are forms of illegitimate dominance based upon the legacy of personal charisma. With the individual liberated from his matrix of meaning, indeed having become his matrix of meaning, they sink fatefully down into the world of contingency. So what we are really speaking of is something lower than self-indulgence. We're speaking of self-delusion, that meaning can be generated within the confines of no confines.

"the central and defining purpose of culture is to regulate the always-troublesome relation between the No-imposing voice of commandment and the Yes-seeking desires of the individual. According to Rieff, the traditional approach to the felt difficulties of bringing personality into coordination with authority involves internalizing and intensifying cultural norms. Religious at their core, traditional cultures stamp our inner lives with their creeds and, in so doing, deliver the human animal from its slavery to instinct."

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2007/04/philip-rieffs-charisma

[steve]

Every Congressman won his own election, and usually by a wider margin than did Trump. For the last 20 years working with Democrats meant you got a primary challenge. I don't really see that suddenly changing.

Steve

[Lemur]

Yeah Boris' politics are ultimately about Boris.

Let's talk brass tacks. The steel in the European position is American resolve. Stoltenberg and Mogherini talk a big game but their ascendancy is predicated on American 'engagement'. That's the REAL reason they're flipping out. If Trump ignores Europe the anti-American Europhiles (possibly in conjunction with nationalists) will depose the Atlanticist factions and make peace with the bear.

Lady Britannica has lost her dance partner for the Waltz of ME Shenanigans. "My word, why won't you LEAD Donald", Theresa May is imploring. "Why is finding and keeping a good man so damnably impossible these days?" If Britain can't fulfill her 'global security role' pretending to fight terrorists in Syria with Uncle Sam, she'll be reduced to growling angrily as "Putler" trolls his navy up and down the ENGLISH channel. Still, it will give the HMS Daily Fail something to do.

Money talks, bs walks though. Britain wants that sweet trade deal, if only to pip France and Germany.

[kao_hsien_chih]

But the "women" did not vote for Hillary Clinton, though.

Some women did, and they are identifiable by certain demographic characteristics, but a majority of women in other demographic characteristics did not.

I don't think this means condoning overtly putting down women, but it does beg the question, how "real" are the kind of priorities that self-claimed feminists have, not just for the entire country, but for wide swaths of women themselves?

I think we have to start with the recognition that many features of our system of representation failed. Many people--women, minority, working class--don't feel represented. The white working class, men and women, showed their displeasure by voting for Trump. The black working class, men and women, showed their displeasure by staying home. If people who call themselves Feminists feel that only the educated upper class women are worth their time, maybe this is what they deserved.

[Fred]

Steve,

I am neither the Speaker of the House, the President Elect nor the author of the Talking Points Memo article that GCP linked to in the comment I responded to.

[ex-PFC Chuck]

No. He's beyond that now. Trump has the biggest ego to occupy the Oval Office since Lyndon Johnson and I believe he sees himself, like LBJ, as assuming the job at a crisis point with an opportunity to go down in history as one of the greatest. Johnson ran afoul of Vietnam, but one can make a plausible case that without him it would have taken at least another decade or two to put Jim Crow on the ash heap of history. And those would not have been quiet, uneventful years.

[Origin]

"Women are notably underrepresented from STEM degrees; instead they're graduating with degrees in sociology and various courses that end in 'studies'."

How about the elite STEM degree, M.D. Men certainly do not have any big piece of that pie. About 47 percent of the current medical school doctor graduates are women http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/medical-school-graduates-by-gender/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D and about 48 percent of the law students currently enrolled at ABA law schools are women. The women lawyers are rapidly filling the judgeships and getting the real power.

It is not about "leveling", it is about the openings to compete and equal opportunity. I seriously doubt that Trump will be enticing any of these soon to be powerful women with his ethos and pathos. It is not about the "liberal state", it is that women now know they can compete with men and win on a personal basis.

The women as well as the men who will not or cannot compete in this competitive world will be left poorer and poorer. Trump will never convince the dynamic young women to "stay home and knit" The dynamic and ambitious ones move to the urban blue areas.

[robt willmann]

It is now reported that the three Army Special Forces soldiers who were killed in Jordan on 4 November 2016 were assigned to the CIA. The article at the end also mentions that since 2001, two other soldiers, one Army Special Forces (in Afghanistan) and one Marine (in Iraq), were killed while detailed to the CIA--

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/army-special-forces-soldiers-killed-in-jordan-were-working-for-the-cia/2016/11/11/8c6b53de-7b66-40ed-9077-bf954070f2be_story.html

[LeaNder]

Not only won, but? Succeeded beyond his wildest dreams?

Indeed. He seems to be in chatty state of bewilderment.

https://twitter.com/billkristol?lang=de

[Origin]

No, go look in the northern part of the state too. The county voting in very mixed. What used to be the "Black Belt" is no longer so black because of emigration. It is more on level of education precinct by precinct.

[different clue]

trinlae,

I remember recently reading that the DAPL company at first planned to drive the pipeline under the Missouri River just about right under Bismark. The Bismarkians objected on safety and water pollution reasons. So the Bismarkians got DAPL to re-route the pipeline under sites of Lakota concern and just upstream from Standing Rock Reservation instead. Because what's a few water-polluted Indians anyway?

I don't know if it would occur to President Trump to suggest that the DAPL should be re-rerouted right back under Bismark just like it was going to be at the start. Because if the Bismarkians support it so much, let them host it . . . thereby putting their land and water where their mouths are. But it sure would be interesting if President Trump were to suggest that very thing. And so order the permits to be corrected to reflect that plan.

[Fred]

Origin,

Now overlay the crime map with the blue votes. Notice anything in common?

[different clue]

Fred,

I suspect Ryan would make up anything at all to rationalize his basic desire to voucherise and privatise Medicare. ( But I have long believed that privatising Medicare was part of Obama's long-range vision as well. He was setting up Obamacare in order to flush Medicare and Medicaide and the VA System down the Obamacare over the decades to come.)

[turcopolier]

Robert Willman

Yes, SF soldiers are loaned out to CIA to do the tings they do not have the brains or balls enough to do. Old Story. pl

[Origin]

Blue I am and the father of two brilliant, talented and accomplished "elite" young women who would chase a Lemur to an isolated tree in the middle of a field and keep him there till he starved. They are the future and it will be a more friendly, gracious, and hard working one too. Such animals run in packs that hunt very effectively.

PS, Go to the capitol someday and look at who really runs the Congress. It used to be young men, now its young women.

Trying to keep the women down is not a winning strategy.

Does Kellyanne Conway run Trump. Could be?

[different clue]

steve,

Trump and any genuine Trumpublicans which may exist in the House and Senate could work with Berniecrats in the House and Senate on particular goals which both share. They may be able to do so even while opposing eachother on other goals where they differ.

I like to think that Trumpublicans and Berniecrats agree on ratifying precisely zero Trade Treason Agreements ever again. I hope they can also work on ripping up and destroying the present Trade Treason Agreements that America is currently locked into. Never Again Free Trade!

The Wall Street Republicans and the Clintonite Pelosi Obamacrats
will obstruct the "trumpies" and the "bernies" every step of the way on this. The support and pursuit of Trade Treason Agreements are core to Clinton/Pelosi/Obama's very innermost being.

[Origin]

Yes, drug addiction and early death of middle class men and women strongly correlates with red.

Also, size on the map does not correlate with population. My county is 271 square miles in size and has a population around 30k less than Alaska and more than either of Wyoming, Vermont, DC, or North Dakota. And my county is just the third in size within the metro area. Each of the voters in those states (not counting DC) have claim to three electoral votes to my one. If it were not for our Electoral College system, Hillary would be the President Elect.

[The Twisted Genius]

Origin and pl,

I have a year's training as a cartographer. Cartography is a powerful tool in which factual information can be convincingly manipulated to represent almost any point of view desired. A map which shows a county as red or blue infers that all voters in that county voted either 100% republican or 100% democratic. It also infers equal population density in all counties. This Gizmodo article shows have the same data can be presented in different manners. The final map showing population density and great intermixing of republican/democratic voters is much closer to reality than the state or county maps.

[different clue]

"Working with Democrats" will be a strange challenge . . . because which Democrats does one work with? Clintonites or Berniecrats? The Clintonites are hardening into a posture of deep long-festering hatred for the Berniecrats on the ground that we cheated Her Majestic Borgness out of her rightful election.

Berniecrats will be focused on our agenda items. Trump may oppose many of those. Such is life. But if Trump really means it when he says no more bad trade deals, then Berniecrats can work with Trump even while suffering defeats from Trump on some of the other things. (And I hope Trump deepens his understanding from "good or bad deals" to the Sessions level of "American economic sovereign or not"). But if the Clintonites tell Trump "we will obstruct you every way we can if you ever work with a single Berniecrat", then what will Trump do?

[different clue]

But also, remembering that personnel is policy, I will be hazzing a sad bigly
if Trump nominates Sarah Palin to be Secretary of The Interior.

[The Twisted Genius]

I guess I should include a link to the Gizmodo article I was talking about.

http://gizmodo.com/5960290/this-is-the-real-political-map-of-america-hint-we-are-not-that-divided