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Moronic Analysis from Slate
You Played Yourself, Democrats. Again.By Jim Newell
Dec. 20 2016 4:47 PM
This was the Year of Democratic Self-Owns. You know the pattern. It is marked by some hoped-for development that in theory would crush Republicans but, at the moment of action, embarrasses Democrats in ways that should have been foreseeable. Obviously we are speaking here of Democrats’ hope that the Republican Party would nominate Donald J. Trump for president. The Republican Party did its part and gave the Democrats a nominee who could not win. In response, the Democrats nominated one of their own. The stoppable force met the movable object and won on an electoral coin flip. In a few weeks, Donald J. Trump, the name-leasing tradesman popularized on television’s The Celebrity Apprentice, will preside over a unified Republican federal government working in close coordination with state-level unified Republican governments to remake the country in their image.
Think of all the misplaced confidences along the way.
Let’s go all the way back to late 2014 and the then-popular theory that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton would retain Barack Obama’s “rising American electorate” coalition of unmarried women, minorities, and young people while performing leaps and bounds better than Obama among the white working class. Clinton allies were talking about putting Indiana, Missouri, and Arkansas in play. The members of the white working class had other ideas, and they cost Clinton the election.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/12/the_democrats_electoral_college_dream_gets_crushed.html
1. Democrats picked up seats in the House and Senate.
2. Clinton got nearly three million more votes than Trump.
3. Forget the Russians: if James Comey keeps his goddamn mouth shut and doesn't violate protocol, Hillary wins the White House and Dems retake the Senate.
4. Why didn't Jim Newelll write this article two months ago?
Just another case of self-rationalizing 20/20 hindsight from what passes for a "journalist" these days.
Residents of China's capital getting out of town to escape smog
Source: Reuters
Wed Dec 21, 2016 | 6:44am EST
By Jake Spring | BEIJING
Residents of China's capital were wearing face masks and using air purifiers to try to avoid heavy pollution blanketing the city for a fifth day on Wednesday, but others were giving up the fight and joining a rush of "smog avoidance" travel.
Beijing led the country for searches on the travel website Qunar.com for "avoid smog", "wash your lungs" and other terms related to traveling to escape pollution, said Michelle Qi, a spokeswoman for the site's parent company, Ctrip.com.
Northern China has been shrouded in almost record pollution all week, disrupting flights, traffic and shipping, and closing factories and schools.
Searches for plane tickets from Beijing to southern China, including coastal locations like Hainan province, quadrupled this week, Qi said. Popular foreign destinations include Thailand and Japan, she said
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-pollution-travel-idUSKBN14A15H?il=0
Just imagine, America: a couple years of Trump and this could all be ours!
Operation Democratic Backbone
Cenk makes a couple of good points concerning the Democratic base, but there's also a substantial amount of bullshit: when he mentions that Hillary had more money and donors, he conveniently neglects to mention that she also got more votes. A LOT more! And we WOULD have won the Senate and kept the White House if James Traitor Comey had kept his mouth shut!
U.S. executions hit 25-year low as capital punishment wanes-study
Source: Reuters
Wed Dec 21, 2016 | 12:11am EST
By Jon Herskovitz | AUSTIN, Texas
The number of U.S. executions fell to a quarter-century low in 2016 as new death sentences plummeted, indicating capital punishment is on the decline, a study released on Wednesday showed.
The number of U.S. executions in 2016 was 20, the lowest since 1991, according to the study from the Death Penalty Information Center, which monitors capital punishment.
While 31 states have the death penalty, only five held executions in 2016. Georgia carried out the most at nine while Texas was next at seven, it said.
The number of new death sentences in 2016 is expected to hit 30, a low not seen since the U.S. Supreme Court declared existing death penalty statutes unconstitutional in 1972, it said. That figure is down by more than 90 percent from a recent high of 315 in 1996.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-executions-idUSKBN14A0AO
No need to worry, America: Under Trump's SCOTUS, jaywalking will be a capital crime.
The Subpoena That Rocked The Election Is Legal Garbage, Experts Say
Source: Huffington Post
12/20/2016 02:25 pm ET Updated 3 hours ago
The warrant connected to the FBI search that Hillary Clinton says cost her the election shouldnt have been granted, legal experts who reviewed the document released on Tuesday told The Huffington Post.
FBI Director James Comey shook up the presidential race 11 days before the election by telling Congress the agency had discovered new evidence in its previously closed investigation into the email habits of Clinton, who was significantly ahead in the polls at the time.
When Comey made the announcement, the bureau did not have a warrant to search a laptop that agents believed might contain evidence of criminal activity. The FBI set out to rectify that two days later, on Oct. 30, when agents applied for a warrant to search the laptop, which was already in the FBIs possession. The FBI had seized the computer as part of an investigation into former Rep. Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
The unsealed warrant reveals Comeys intrusion on the election was as utterly unjustified as we suspected at time, Brian Fallon, a Clinton campaign spokesman, said on Twitter Tuesday.
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-subpoena-that-rocked-the-election-is-legal-garbage-attorney-say_us_58597cd9e4b03904470b0633
Comey was not available for comment, as he's on a skiing vacation in the Urals.
Public Climate Information Threatened Under Trump
By Bobby Magill
December 20th, 2016
Websites maintained by the federal government are among the first online stops for the general public — from students, local policymakers and everyone else — to learn about climate change. There is rising concern among scientists and climate communications experts that those websites may be among the first to be deleted, politicized or degraded with inaccurate climate information after President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January, all of which would impact the public’s understanding of the science and urgency of climate change.
Trump is populating his cabinet with appointees who reject established climate science and have pledged to overturn nearly all of the government’s climate regulations and pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate pact.
EPA administrator nominee Scott Pruitt has falsely said that scientists disagree about the human connection to global warming, and debate about it should be encouraged. Pruitt, currently Oklahoma’s attorney general, says on his official website that he is “a leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda.”
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/climate-information-threatened-under-trump-20993
The title of the article is a bit misleading, as Trump threatens absolutely everything!!!
Euro slips further toward one-to-one with dollar
Source: AP
By DAVID McHUGH
Dec. 20, 2016 10:30 AM EST
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — The dollar's upward march has sent the euro currency to its lowest level in 14 years, easing the financial pressure on traveling Americans but giving European exporters a boost.
The euro, used by 19 countries, was down 0.3 percent at $1.0367 mid-afternoon Tuesday, drawing closer to the psychologically important level of one euro per dollar, or so-called parity.
A major factor has been the prospect of more interest rate hikes by the U.S. Federal Reserve following a quarter point increase in its benchmark rate last week. Higher interest rates in the U.S. increase returns on dollar investments and spur demand for the currency.
European monetary authorities — meaning the European Central Bank in Frankfurt — have widened the rate gap further by extending stimulus efforts aimed at pushing market rates down. The ECB's benchmark remains at a record low of zero compared with the Fed's range of 0.5-0.75 percent.
Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/91cc53b5789346928592bae4df85e521
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