OMGoodness, Trump just called for Media Blackout of the EPA!!!!! Ok, now Im REALLY nervous.!!!!!!!!!!! That calls for some action, but what can we do about that? Ive already called my senators.......

@ Thom's questions:

"So - what should progressives do?
Should they work with Trump to help achieve one of their most important policy goals?
Or would that legitimize a President who - regardless of what he says about the TPP - still poses a serious threat to American workers and American democracy?"

...all of the above!

Since we're stuck with a completely illegitimate sexual pervert fouling the seat in the Oval Office, and a stolen election, the two-faced corporate Democrats better quit gazing at their puss-gut navels, join with progressives in their party, and get ahead of this circus clown!

They need to squeeze him for all he's worth (which is almost nothing), salvage what they can for the benefit of the People (remember us?), and throw him back in the face of the Republican Party and the corporate-fake media, who enabled this fascist's rise to ultimate, authoritarian power.

Hopefully, if the established Democratic Party can find their center of balance once again, they can divide Republicans' sorry asses and expose their utter hypocrisy on these vicious, job-killing "un-free" trade deals, which they have been pushing for decades to screw over American workers and widen the wealth gap.

Fight back, gawddamn it!

@ Ou812:

Keep sucking the big one.

:-O

Outside, objective truth exists whether I say it or not. And no, you absolutely won't change my mind with false corporate news, (or swamp gas) lies, half truth's, and cherry-picked partial facts, of which you have no proof, whether you say so or not. Again, look in the mirror as you type, little troll.

The first whopper is the recount snafu; the workers assigned the job were forced to run the same numbers through the same machines with different results. If anything, it exposed the foolishness of using error-prone machines in the first place, with faulty computerized tabulations that never seem to spit out the same results twice and that have no adequate paper trails.

The machine count didn't match the voting rolls for at least two glaring reasons: the machines were off; the rolls were purged. The proof in the pudding, among much other evidence, is the wide disparity in the gold standard of exit polling, which was wildly off the mark in key states and demonstrated quite clearly that huge percentages of Democrats thought their votes counted when they obviously didn't. But that's only one, albeit critical, metric.

Our state-run, third-world-country voting national nightmare should be replace by universal standards with good old old-fashion -- and much more reliable -- paper ballots, which can be recounted properly, monitored by the U.N., and where Republican-appointed judges with conflict of interest issues cannot arbitrarily shut it down.

Anyway, the recount effort was never the larger story, even though that's what ended up in the shallow, blurb news that sucked up all the oxygen in the daily news cycles, of which you are evidently, sadly, an avid consumer. It was primarily initiated to expose the much more widespread fraud perpetrated by Republican Secretaries of State over decades, and to reform the system, so that it won't happen again in succeeding elections.

There was never any massive voter fraud, which is just another Republican lie with absolutely no proof; however, there was massive election fraud with lots of proof. For obvious reason (which is too in depth to cover here in a blog post), the establishment -- including the Democratic Party unfortunately -- avoids the real facts like a plague.

Of course, you would have known all this already had you done your homework and researched the references that were presented quite extensively on Thom's program numerous times (among the wealth of written-down, recorded, on-the-record material that is available if one cares to look), and even right here on this forum by several other members. Obviously, you don't peruse much information that exists in the wide world outside of your tiny bubble of right-wing misinformation and the superficial corporate infotainment framework.

...because you don't really give a damn about the truth that challenges your limited world view, do you, little troll?

On the long odds that you might actually wake up from your deep stupor, here would be a good place to start a 101 entry level research program, from where you can then expand out to the many other reliable sources that are easily available in the vast body of knowledge in this modern era of mass communication, and begin your long journey back to mental health and reality: Greg Palast's "The Best Democracy Money can Buy."

Honestly, you and your kissing-cousin trolls have been endlessly spewing out shallow, dead-end circles of total BS about hugely important issues that require serious, sober, much wider examinations to fully understand in the context of the bigger pictures from which they sprang. If you insist on clogging up this forum with little, meaningless, mind-numbing -- and, to be honest, simply boring -- lies and half-truths, which you've dug up from only God knows where, then you'll have to suffer through long, countervailing dissertations. Enjoy!

BTW, I wonder how much Trump ass-kissers would be hollering and stomping their feet if the situation was reversed -- if he won the popular vote by millions, lost the undemocratic Electoral College, and millions of his voters were disenfranchised?

Now, c'mon, you crooked little troll; be real for once. Don't lie with a straight face, with that big twelve-incher stuck in your avatar's mouth. Be intellectually honest.

Otherwise, just go away and troll elsewhere. Or, like Stopgap advised, at least come out of the closet and quit hating yourself. :--((

The office of president is degraded by Trumpolini's occupation of that office.

And I don't care if ridicule is "sophomoric." I only care if it's effective at rattling his little snowflake ego, and sometimes sophomoric insults can be the most effective.

I certainly hope so. I keep hoping for more Republicans to put country first, but the group that has done that is tragically small ... and only the very strong seem able to withstand the pressure of their Whips.

I have been appalled at the attitudes displayed by these nominees. No respect for the senators questioning them and no interest in setting out their true opinions and/or plans.

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Helvetica}

ONLY a TITTLE of SANITY {a rhyme}

What’s going well?

Very durn’ little.

We’re in a spell

when America is brittle

and headed pell-mell

to a mental hospital

where Trumpsters dwell

with only a tittle

of sanity,

in inanity.

=====================

Deepspace says "You can't say you won the Electoral College if all the votes weren't counted. Millions of Democrats were purged off the rolls with the "Interstate Crosscheck" scam, and millions more were disenfranchised through voter suppression laws and old, error-prone voting machines sprinkled around Democratic districts in key states, which spit out notable percentages of "unreadable" ballots."

Another lefties excuse. You saying it doesn't make it true. Where's the evidence?, Where's the proof? The recount in Wisconsin resulted in MORE votes for President Trump. The recount in Michigan (before a federal judge cancelled it) showed more people in Wayne County (Detroit) voted than were registered. Probably won't change your mind, but those are the facts.

The "left" is only about 500 people, or whatever number makes up what remains of the tiny Communist Party in America these days. Everyone else, who the right-wing fringe thinks is the left, is actually the majority, when they are polled on generic liberal issues. Normal people only look like "the left" when you're about to fall completely off the extreme right side of the political stage.

From the get-go, most liberals -- who are the middle -- were absolutely against the TPP, which would have already been dead on arrival in Congress. Trump is just grandstanding, yet again, by trying to take credit for something that most Democrats and Republicans would never have voted for anyway. (In private, most corporate Republicans were actually for it, but none of them wanted to give Obama any kind of "win.") Nevertheless, for everyone's sake, it is a good thing that he kiboshed it from his side of the equation. No argument there.

Never forget, though, that every "un-free" trade agreement in history was always born from Republican DNA, over which both Presidents Clinton and Obama were clearly out of step with the base. They foolishly sold out to Wall Street and Republicans in their infuriating efforts to find common ground with their corporate campaign donors and their political enemies -- much to the chagrin of most liberals.

You can't say you won the Electoral College if all the votes weren't counted. Millions of Democrats were purged off the rolls with the "Interstate Crosscheck" scam, and millions more were disenfranchised through voter suppression laws and old, error-prone voting machines sprinkled around Democratic districts in key states, which spit out notable percentages of "unreadable" ballots.

It was a stolen election, and Trump is still the illegitimate Pretender to the Throne.

The three million popular votes that Trump lost by were all workers too, as were the other 62 million Americans he never fooled. Also, most unions, other than cops, nearly always endorse Democrats, and their rank and file nearly always vote Democratic. Traditionally, the Democratic Party has always been the party of the workers, and the Republican Party has always been the party of the super rich.

...and La La land is populated by "overjoyed" wing-nuts. It's the meds.

:--))

Mike Coffman is only in office because of Koch money.

I call him Donny-boy...and I feel quite certain he'd hate it.

Deep space:

If you want to see a two tier health plan, you need go no further than Canada. I lived in Ontario for 6 years. OHIP, The Ontario Health Insurance Plan, provides wellness care for everyone. If one has supplemental insurance through their employer, you'll be able to see any doctor. (Most Doctors won't accept new patients unless they have supplemental insurance). Those without supplemental insurance, are relegated to a clinic if you are lucky you'll see an MD, if not you'll see a PA. You'll never see the same DR twice, plus plan on spending at least a half a day waiting to be seen. It's a mess for those at the bottom.