Category: Election

World War II Vets Would Not Have Stood for President-Elect

Remembering this December 7th – Pearl Harbor Day – has special significance for us today in this new Era of Trump. The 75th anniversary of the attack by Japanese forces on US air and naval power in Hawaii in late 1941 finds few surviving members still with us. And our collective memory of “the day of infamy” – as President Franklin Roosevelt declared it the next day before Congress – which pushed the country into World War II – has all but faded.

But yes, we need to remember this day – and all that it represents – all the contradictions of that historic moment and context. And all the parallels from that day to ours today.

Yet this day does have a special meaning for us now -…

By Jim Miller

Last week in the bluntly titled “Trump Presidency Could Kill Labor Unions,” distinguished journalist Harold Meyerson ponders the possibility that the 2016 Presidential election was “an extinction-level event for American labor.”

Noting the sad fact that a high percentage of union households (about 43 percent nationally) went for Trump, Meyerson wastes no time in outlining what the costs will be for working class folks in America:

One in 5 Say They’re Joining the Underground Resistance

The OB Rag ran a poll for over a week recently, querying readers with What Are You Going to Do Now that Trump is President-Elect? The poll was similar to one we ran before the election in mid-September asking the same basic question. In this poll, one hundred eleven readers responded. As we all are aware by now that our country and city are divided on Mr. Trump, the poll results reflected those divisions.

His Supporters Have Been Snookered!

By John Lawrence

In a 60 Minutes interview with Leslie Stahl, Trump back pedaled on his major campaign promises and a lot else. When asked what his sit-down with President Obama was like he replied,

“I found him [President Obama] to be terrific. I found him to be– very smart and very nice.Great sense of humor, as much as you can have a sense of humor talking about tough subjects, but we were talking about some pretty tough subjects.”

So no more questions about his legitimacy to be President? No more wondering whether he was born in Kenya? I guess not now that he, Trump, is a member of the club.

It’s official – as of today, Thursday, December 1, 2016, Hillary Clinton now leads Trump by more than 2.5 million popular votes. Clinton has 65,152,310 votes to Trump’s 62,626,216 votes.

That’s nearly 2 full percentage points – 48.2% vs 46.3% – of the overall percentage. Other candidates remain at 5.5%.

As part of our daily public service announcements, it is now declared that today – Tuesday, November 29, 2016, Hillary Clinton is now ahead of Trump by 2,332,745 votes in the popular vote count total.

Since Tuesday, November 22nd, Clinton’s lead over Trump has increased by over half a million votes, exactly 578,541.

COME INSIDE FOR LINK TO 2016 NATIONAL POPULAR VOTE TRACKER

Update: the Clinton Campaign Has Now Joined Stein’s Efforts

“We deserve elections we can trust,” Stein said.

By Nadia Prupis / Common Dreams

Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein on Wednesday – Nov. 23rd – called for a ballot recount in Wisconsin, Michigan, and and Pennsylvania, and apparently took less than a day to raise more than her campaign’s initial goal of $2 million.

“After a divisive and painful presidential race, in which foreign agents hacked into party databases, private email servers, and voter databases in certain states, many Americans are wondering if our election results are reliable,” Stein said in a statement. “That’s why the unexpected results of the election and reported anomalies need to be investigated before the 2016 presidential election is certified. We deserve elections we can trust.”

By Robert Reich / RobertReich.org

Trump’s First 100 Day agenda includes repealing environmental regulations, Obamacare, and the Dodd-Frank Act, giving the rich a huge tax cut, and much worse. Here’s the First 100 Day resistance agenda [with thanks to Alan Webber]:

1. Get Democrats in the Congress and across the country to pledge to oppose Trump’s agenda. Prolong the process of approving choices, draw out hearings, stand up as sanctuary cities and states. Take a stand. Call your senator and your representative (phone calls are always better than writing).

• Your senator’s number: www.senate.gov/senators/contact
• Your representative’s number: www.house.gov/representatives

2. March and demonstrate—in a coordinated, well-managed way. The “1 Million Women March” is already scheduled for the Inauguration —and will be executed with real skill.

As of this morning, Monday, Nov. 28th, Hillary Clinton leads Trump by 2,238,882 popular votes. This is 48.1% of the overall Presidential vote for Clinton versus 46.5% for Trump. “Others” (Jill Stein and Gary Johnson mainly) have 5.4% of the total.

This information is from the national popular vote tracker.

COME INSIDE FOR THE LINK

These are some reasons why 60 to 70 people protested Trump at the foot of Newport Avenue in OB on Saturday.

First, OB is a great place to hold an anti-Trump protest. OB voters voted heavily against Trump in the presidential election.

For instance, according to election results, in Precinct#235000 – where the rally against Trump was held, 68.7% of the voters voted for Clinton and 21.4% for Trump, with the others at 9.9%. A total of 454 people voted. (All these figures are of the last count, while thousands of provisional ballots are still being counted.)

Across Abbott from where the rally was held and on the north side of Newport, in Precinct #235300, 75.2% of the ballots were for Hillary Clinton and only 17.0% for Trump, with other candidates getting 7.8%. 347 votes were cast.

Physics Doesn’t Care About Politics or Whether Anyone Believes in Science

By Jim Miller

A little less than two weeks before the election, the Guardian was one of the only media outlets to note the release of a devastating report by the Living Planet Index that outlines how, “The number of wild animals living on Earth is set to fall by two-thirds by 2020, according to a new report, part of a mass extinction that is destroying the natural world upon which humanity depends.”

One might think that such stark news would have trickled into the Presidential race, but, given the debased nature of the contest and the pathetic state of the national corporate media, it was nowhere to be seen in the slime fest that was the 2016 election.

At it’s peak, there must have been nearly 70 people protesting Trump at the foot of Newport Avenue, on Saturday, Nov. 19th.

Billed as “OB Sez No to Trump”, the gathering was boisterous and peaceful, and had been organized by the Green Store and the OB Rag. The signs said it all.

There were a couple of speakers, chants – some guitar music, a few TV cameras, and then a sidewalk march up to the OB Library, for another short rally.