A.N

No one did it better. RVHS ⚫️ #MannequinChallenge pic.twitter.com/QN8s0ulvq6

— a-aron (@aaronzacharyh) November 5, 2016

“Groups of people are gathering and freezing themselves in place, often in elaborate poses and scenarios, as one camera-toting person walks through the scene to zoom in on the details. As is often the case, teenagers are leading the way.”

Mannequin Challenge Is the New Viral Video Sensation You Probably Can’t Avoid

One of the Atlantic readers in the TAD community started a thread on singer/songwriters:

Those folks who wrote and performed intimate music that touched your soul. The Beatles, Dylan, Carole King, James Taylor, Cat Stevens, etc. Folk, Rock, Country, Whatever. Folks that had an instrument and something to say that touched you.

One reader recommends Imogen Heap’s “Just For Now”:

I think looping is an interesting niche for solo singer-songwriters. Something about layered melody and beats is kind of kewl, and solo-ness of it all is very personal look into the artist’s creativity and talent.

Lyrics here. The opening verse applies to many Americans right now:

It’s that time of year
Leave all our hopelessnesses aside
(If just for a little while)
Tears stop right here
I know we’ve all had a bumpy ride
(I’m secretly on your side)

(Submit a song via hello@. Track of the Day archive here. Pre-Notes archive here.)

Throughout his campaign, President-Elect Donald Trump repeatedly vowed to repeal and replace Obamacare, which he called “a disaster.”

That was music to his supporters’ ears. Repealing Obamacare is Republican voters’ biggest priority for the Trump administration, according to a recent Politico/Morning Consult poll. People who are unhappy with the Affordable Care Act overwhelmingly voted for Trump, and now 74 percent of Republicans want it gone.

The frustration with the health law is understandable; many people are struggling to afford medical care even if they have insurance. The problem is, it’s not clear Americans would have been better off had Obamacare never been passed.

First, some people might be confused about what, exactly, they’re angry at. When we talk about “Obamacare,” we’re talking primarily about the 12.7 million people who are buying individual insurance coverage through state marketplaces or Healthcare.gov. Roughly 60 million people voted for Trump last week, so they can’t all be on Obamacare plans. More than half of all non-elderly Americans still get insurance through work, and premiums on employer-based plans are actually growing more slowly than average. (About a third of Americans are either on Medicare or Medicaid, and the rest are uninsured. Only about 4 percent are on Obamacare plans.)

Before Obamacare, insurance premiums on the individual market were rising by about 10 percent a year. But, it’s important to note, the cost of any given person’s health plan purchased this way depended on how sick they were. Insurance companies could charge people more if they had cancer, for example, or deny them coverage entirely. Insurers were partly able to keep costs down just by keeping sick people off their plans. Under Obamacare, insurers can’t do that anymore.

In 2014, right after most of the Affordable Care Act sprang into action, a middle-of-the-road plan—the “second-lowest cost silver-level” plan—was between 10 and 21 percent cheaper than a similar plan was before the ACA in 2013. So concluded an analysis published in Health Affairs in July by the economists Loren Adler and Paul Ginsburg, two health-care experts at the Brookings Institution.

Since then, the price of individual-market plans has climbed higher. Health-care prices go up all the time, no matter what. We all wish they didn’t; they do anyway. But in the years since the ACA was implemented, individual-market premiums haven’t been rising as fast as they were before, according to Jonathan Gruber, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

They went up by “35 to 40 percent in the three years before ACA,” Gruber told me. “If you look at the three years since ACA, it’s still below that, including this year.”

Premiums Before and After Obamacare

The “including this year” part is important. News of soaring Obamacare premiums—they went up 22 percent this year—was everywhere right before the election. But according to Adler and Ginsburg’s projections, they are still lower this year than they would have been without the ACA, given how premiums were rising before the law. “People are getting more for less under the ACA,” they wrote.

Not everyone agrees with this analysis. Some conservative health wonks, such as the Hudson Institute’s Jeffrey Anderson, have disputed Ginsburg and Adler’s paper, arguing premiums are higher now than they would have been without Obamacare and pointing to yet another Brookings study supposedly proving that point. (Adler responded that the two studies use different sets of data. “Both studies are well done and valuable, just all of our analyses have their inevitable shortcomings,” he said.)

Either way, it’s clear that Obamacare is too expensive for some people, especially if they’re not qualified for the subsidies for low- and middle-income people who purchase insurance on the exchanges. People are now spending larger shares of their income on health care than before Obamacare, but that’s not because of the law—it’s because health-care costs are growing faster than incomes.

The vast majority of Obamacare enrollees—some 85 percent—receive federal subsidies that bring down the cost of their premiums. But those who don’t might indeed be facing unaffordable premiums. Hillary Clinton’s plan would have made those subsidies more generous. When Trump’s health proposal was initially released, it wasn’t clear if it would involve subsidies. But his campaign later told me that “those now receiving 'premium support' would be given subsidies or other forms of support to purchase health insurance in the private market through Health Savings Accounts.” Still, it’s not clear whether Trump’s subsidies would be more widespread or more generous than what’s currently on offer.

In an email, Ginsburg points out that, without subsidies, most Obamacare enrollees’ premiums are in fact higher than they would have been, “but that is more than evened out, on net, by the lower premiums that sicker people now face.”

Okay, so if you are one of the less than two million Americans who are not insured by an employer or the government, and are too wealthy for the subsidies, and are extremely healthy, you might be paying more for health insurance under Obamacare. (That is, unless and until you one day get sick.)

However, even Anderson concedes the higher premiums are the result of some of the consumer protections baked into Obamacare. As he wrote:

The Congressional Budget Office offers some useful language to help explain why: “Many of the [Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act] regulations tend to increase average premiums, particularly in the nongroup market. For example, when they sell those policies, insurers must now accept all applicants during specified open-enrollment periods, may not vary people's premiums on the basis of their health, may vary premiums by age only to a limited extent, and may not restrict coverage of enrollees' preexisting health conditions. Insurers must also cover specified categories of health-care services, and they generally must pay at least 60 percent of the costs of those covered services, on average.”

Indeed, Obamacare did a lot besides make everyone buy insurance, such as:

• Free birth control
• No charging women more for insurance
• No risk of having your insurance plan cancelled because you got sick
• Young adults can stay on their parents’ plan until they’re 26
• No risk of paying more, or being denied insurance, because of a pre-existing condition.

Trump has now said he wants to keep these last two elements of the law, which are very popular. (Here’s a good Steven Pearlstein piece explaining why this will be tough to do while still repealing Obamacare.)

In fact, maybe we’re arguing about the wrong things. While much of the debate over the merits of Obamacare has focused on whether individual-market premiums are higher or lower than they would have been, perhaps the biggest difference the law has made is allowing people to buy insurance who wouldn't have been able to otherwise.

As Charles Gaba, a blogger who tracks health-care numbers, described on his website, ACASignups.net:

For instance, let's take someone with cancer... Without the ACA, they'd be utterly screwed and would very likely go bankrupt trying to pay the full price for treatment, or die without it, or the first followed by the second. To them, it isn't a question of "I was paying $X, now I'm paying 25% more than $X"; it's a question of “before, I would've died; now I hopefully won't.”

Before 2014, the individual market for insurance was often nasty, brutish, and short, as John McDonough, a Harvard public-health professor who helped write the Affordable Care Act, reminded me in an email. Sick people and old people paid through the nose for coverage, if they could get it at all, and, he added, about 130 million people faced lifetime or annual limits on their health coverage. Many insurance plans didn’t cover basic services, like mental health care, which is now mandatory.

“So comparing an individual policy in 2008 versus today is like comparing a pineapple to an iPad,” McDonough wrote. “Two very different products.”

Now that Republicans have a good chance of repealing Obamacare, we’re about to see just what kind of pineapple we get.

Yesterday I wrote here: 

If Trump’s administration indulges in the racism, sexism and religious and other bigotries that Trump and his people have already promised to engage in, we can assume it’s because his voters are just fine with that racism, sexism and religious and other bigotries — even if they claim to have voted for him for other reasons entirely. After all, Trump didn’t hide these things about himself, or try to sneak these plans in by a side door. They were in full view this entire time. If you vote for a bigot who has bigoted plans, you need to be aware of what that says about you, and your complicity in those plans.

I also last night tweeted this:

And wouldn’t you know, because of both, I’ve gotten comments and emails and tweets from people upset that I pointed out that voting for a public racist with clear racist policies means that one is abetting racism. I assume that they know for sure that they’re not racist, and wouldn’t be racist, so being accused of racism stings. They didn’t vote for racism! They voted to make America great again!

Well, so, okay. Let me give you an analogy here.

Let’s say you want HBO. So you go to your local cable provider to get HBO and the only way they’ll let you get HBO is to sign up for a premium channel package, which includes HBO but also includes Cinemax. Now, maybe you don’t want Cinemax, and you don’t care about Cinemax, and maybe never personally plan to ever watch Cinemax, but the deal is: If you want HBO, you have to sign on to Cinemax too. You have to be a Cinemax subscriber to get HBO. And you go ahead and sign up for the premium channel package.

Pop quiz: In this scenario, did you just subscribe to Cinemax?

And you may say, no, I subscribed to HBO, but I couldn’t get it without Cinemax. I’m an HBO subscriber, not a Cinemax subscriber.

And then someone points out to you, well, in point of fact, you are a Cinemax subscriber, look, there it is on your TV channel guide. Some of the money you pay in for your premium channel package goes to Cinemax and funds its plans and strategies.

And you say, but I never watch Cinemax or ever plan to.

And they say, okay, but you still subscribe to it, and you knew that in order to get HBO you had to get Cinemax, and you signed on anyway. You’re a Cinemax subscriber whether you ever watch it or not.

And you say, well, look, I really wanted HBO.

And they say, sure, enough that you were fine with accepting Cinemax to get it. Just don’t pretend you’re not currently subscribing to Cinemax, too. You clearly are. Look, it’s right there on your cable bill. You’re a Cinemax subscriber.

Now, to bring that analogy back to the point at hand. This election, you had two major Presidential providers. One offered you the Stronger Together plan, and the other offered you the Make America Great Again plan. You chose the Make America Great Again plan. The thing is, the Make America Great Again has in its package active, institutionalized racism (also active, institutionalized sexism. And as it happens, active, institutionalized homophobia). And you know it does, because the people who bundled up the Make America Great Again package not only told you it was there, they made it one of the plan’s big selling points.

And you voted for it anyway.

So did you vote for racism?

You sure did.

And you say, but I’m not racist, and I would never treat people in a racist fashion, and I don’t like being called out as having done a racist thing.

And others say to you, okay, but you knew that when you signed up for the Make America Great Again plan that active, institutionalized racism was part of the package. Your vote supports racism. By voting, you endorsed a racist plan.

And you say, but I didn’t want that part. I wanted the other parts.

And others say to you, that’s fine, but you knew that to get the other parts, you had to sign on for the racism, too. And evidently you were okay with that.

And you say, no I’m not, I hate racism.

And others say to you, but apparently you like these other things more than you hate racism, because you agreed to the racism in order to get these other things.

And you say, well, the Stronger Together plan had horrible things in it too.

And others say to you, yes, and you didn’t vote for that, you voted for this. Which has racism in it. You voted for racism.

And you say, stop saying that.

And the others ask, why.

I’ve written before on how people can benefit from racism and other forms of discrimination without actively and intentionally discriminating against others, and if you have the time I recommend reading the piece. Lots of people benefit from an institutionalized system of bigotry, etc (including me) without being a bigot themselves, i.e., going out of their way to keep other people down. That’s the nature of a bigoted system so endemic that you don’t even notice it’s there for the same reason the proverbial fish doesn’t notice the water.

I think you can very easily make the argument that a lot people who voted for Trump are not and would not actively be racist to another person in their day-to-day lives. I live among Trump voters, and the ones I live among are lovely and kind and perfect neighbors. They are what nearly anyone would describe as good people, me included. As are, I think, the majority of the people who voted for Trump.

But the fact remains that in voting for Trump, they voted for racism: It was right there in the package deal, front and center, and hard to miss. They voted for it anyway. And you may argue that voting for racism as part of a larger package deal does not a racist make, and I wouldn’t necessarily disagree, as far as what people do to others in their personal and day to day lives. But voting for racism will make personal, day-to-day life harder for the targets of that racism. Two days after the election, we’re already seeing that.

It’s perfectly fine to point out to people who voted for racism, that indeed, this is what they voted for. And also that if owning up to the fact that they voted for racism is uncomfortable for them, they should take a moment to think about how bad it is for the targets of that racism, and how bad it has yet to get.

For the Trump voters, Trump’s racism may have been just part of the package deal, the Cinemax they had accept to get the HBO. For those who are the target of that racism (and sexism, and homophobia), however, it’s not Cinemax. It’s their lives. Day to day, and every day. And they’re all too aware of what Trump voters signed up for, to get what they wanted.

Protesters flooded Manhattan’s public spaces the last two nights, shouting and brandishing signs that read like a disenfranchisement mixtape, from “black lives matter” to “not my president” to “I’m just sad.”

The crowd ranged from abject to furious. But the very act of protesting meant they weren’t hopeless. The worst thing that can happen to a human body, individually or collectively, is a failure of hope.

President Obama reminded us as much on Wednesday, speaking from the White House lawn. “I think of this as a relay race,” he said in his staid way, even as he prepares to pass the baton to a man who spent years claiming that our first black president was lying about being born in the United States. A man who spent much of his own campaign inciting people to despise the most significant legislation achieved by this president—the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare)—as “totally awful” and “the absolute worst.”

There are many ways to hate the current American healthcare system, and much reason to. Bernie Sanders amassed ardent support around the idea that medicine is broken because of for-profit insurance companies. They have formed oligopolies that scrape enormous profits out of our suffering, and they are incentivized to provide as little care as possible. To many, Obamacare has taken only complex half-measures to reign this in.

But Trump’s hatred has been contradictory and unclear. Trump has offered almost no alternative and demonstrated much misunderstanding of basic tenets of the Affordable Care Act and the American medical system.

His challenge is to direct this hate productively. Trump does not yet know enough about the system to know what the real problems are. Yesterday Obama implored Americans to “stay encouraged”—not to become cynical. There is hope in the idea that once Trump understands the stakes, his interest in success and winning will prevail.

To say that he will “repeal Obamacare” is much like saying he’ll demolish the subway. Many New Yorkers do hate the subway. It’s often unreliable, it smells, and sometimes rats make it into the cars. It could be a catchy rally cry: demolish the subway! Indeed maybe some day a solution will involve tearing up all the tracks and creating an entirely new system of tunnels with really terrific trains. But to start by simply demolishing what we have would destroy the city.

Yet even before Trump takes the oath of office, expect that congress will begin legislation to undo foundational elements of the Affordable Care Act, according to John McDonough, professor of the practice of public health at Harvard. “This would be a momentous move backward, and the nation will be watching.”

It is not a partisan statement to say that this is a move backward: with a full repeal of the law, almost overnight  some19 million people would lose insurance. That’s according to projections by the Congressional Budget Office. And that number would increase to about 24 million in all subsequent years between 2017 and 2025 (compared with the number projected to be uninsured under Obamacare). Many uninsured would be middle-class people with significant health needs. The United States would have more people without health insurance than any other developed country.

House speaker Paul Ryan said yesterday that Congress would be able to do that easily. Sixty Senate votes would be needed to overcome a filibuster, but the Senate could also use budget reconciliation to avoid filibuster for elements that have significant budget impact—like the expansions of Medicaid and private health insurance that account for millions of newly insured Americans, as well as tax increases on wealthy households that went to fund Medicare.

Republicans got such a bill through Congress in January of this year. President Obama vetoed it. Trump would not.

And that would likely trigger a new death spiral: We’d be back to where we were in 2009. Relatively healthy people could buy a lousy plan for an affordable price. Sick people would be excluded. People in between would pay a lot. When people are uninsured, they’d go to the emergency room for care. The hospitals shift costs to people who are insured. Insurance companies shift costs to employers. Employers shift costs to employees.

Health-care is a three-trillion dollar industry that affects every part of our economy. Tracking the downstream effects of millions of uninsured people ties your brain in a knot. And then you, too, have to go to the emergency room.

This is all only to mention the medical care system, of course. The social determinants of health—the circumstances that shape our daily lives and are the primary factors in our health, like the food we eat, the lead in our water, financial stressors, the safety we feel in our homes and communities, the visceral effects of sexism, racism, and xenophobia—these would remain and demand to be addressed. If Trump follows through with the massive tax cuts he has promised, preventive health measures and infrastructure would narrow. This will mean only more spending in the medical system to treat problems instead of creating an environment that prevents them.

“I don't think they really want to repeal the whole thing, despite all the rhetoric,” Michael Sparer, chair of the department of health policy and management at Columbia, told me. “You've got 20 million people who have health insurance right now who didn't have it before. Taking it away from them overnight isn't something anybody is going to want to do, politically.”

There are also three million young adults who are getting care through their parents’ insurance, and millions of Americans who are benefiting from other aspects of the Affordable Care Act, like minimum benefit packages and community health centers, a long-standing bipartisan idea.

“It’s one thing to say you’re not going to help people buy health insurance,” said Sparer. “It’s another to say you’re going to take it away.”

Some of the Senators who voted for that Obamacare-repeal measure in January could have been doing it knowing that Obama would veto it, McDonough notes. These Republicans wouldn’t have to return to their electorate and explain why many people are now uninsured. Some may vote differently if and when they understand the consequences.

And there is one other player in this process—the major player, actually—the insurance industry. Pence said during a surreal health-oriented rally last week that he would protect people with pre-existing conditions. This would be the most government-heavy suggestion yet: a law that requires insurers not to discriminate, but without a law that requires everyone to purchase insurance (the individual mandate). The idea speaks to the lack of understanding on the part of the incumbent President and Vice President. The insurance industry is too large and powerful to allow this to happen.

“There are scary things that could happen,” said Sparer. “The worst case scenario for the insurance industry is the conditions that were put in place—that you can't discriminate against people with preexisting conditions, you can't have lifetime annual limits—the nightmare for the industry is that those stay but the mandate goes. That would be fiercely opposed by the insurance industry.”

It was only because those two elements were paired together that the industry allowed Obamacare to pass in the first place—and even still was not happy with it. If Trump decides to take on the industry, he will be taking up Sanders’ cause. This will lead him back toward a single-payer, Medicare-for-all model, where health is in the hands of the people and its elected representatives.

Trump has praised this approach in the past. This is the way that he could be the first president to see an America where every citizen has health insurance. This is the way he could fundamentally disrupt the status quo.

As with New York’s subway system, no reasonable representative would tear up everything without a plan for something reasonable to replace it. Trump will be forced to weigh his promises to “repeal Obamacare” with his desire to be a really great president whose supporters don’t immediately start to hate him when they lose access to health care.

“My guess is there's going to be a lot of talk about repeal, and then the Democrats will filibuster, then Trump will say he's a deal maker and is going to have to negotiate with these terrible Democrats,” said Sparer, “and they will find a way to take out some parts of the ACA while keeping what's working. At which point there's going to be a very difficult and controversial battle about what stays and what goes. The battle over what ‘Trumpcare’ will be is going to be fierce.”

Only after Obama hands the baton to Trump will we know which direction he intends to run. Taking office often has a moderating effect. Even in the spirit of avoiding cynicism, my advice is that if you need any medical care, schedule appointments now. But there is reason to hold onto hope.

Because, like I suspect a great many people, I couldn’t get to sleep tonight.

1. Well, I certainly missed that turn of events, didn’t I? To be fair to myself, pretty much everyone missed it — apparently even Trump’s pollsters thought he was going down in defeat last night — but I’m not responsible for other people, I’m responsible for me, and, well: Missed that one totally. I never thought Trump would win the election. I was wrong. He won it. My being wrong is on me.

Would he have won it with a different opponent? Would he have won it if the Supreme Court hadn’t gutted the Voters Right Act? Would he have won it if a significant number of people hadn’t voted for third party candidates? Or if James Comey hasn’t done his little email stunt in the last couple of weeks? These are interesting questions that don’t change the fact that in this reality, Donald Trump is the president-elect. The woulda, shoulda, coulda of things is irrelevant to that.

2. With that said, it is of note that the polling for this election cycle was essentially disastrously wrong, and — again to be fair — it was pretty much only Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight who warned people that if it was wrong, that the predictions for the race would fail in basically the manner that they did. Silver and his site predicted the outcome incorrectly just like everyone else, but he gets credit for saying “if I’m wrong, this is how that’s going to work” and as far as I can see pretty much nailing that. So, yay, Nate Silver? I would have rather it gone the other way and we all had a post-election laugh at his over-cautiousness. But it didn’t, and once again Silver is the smartest dude in the room, for what it’s worth.

Be that as it may, there is clearly something systematically wrong with how polling is being done. If poll after poll had Clinton leading in states she went on to lose, and often leading by more than a margin of error, then something’s going on. I don’t mean in a conspiratorial, “the polls are being manipulated, man!” sort of way. Again, it’s something systematic in how the polls are conducted and who they are reaching (and probably also something to do with this particular election cycle in itself). How does that get fixed? I’m sure someone will tell us. Maybe Nate Silver.

Much of my confidence about this year’s election was rooted in the polling, which had been reasonably accurate for the last few election cycles (both presidential and congressional), and like I said, while I own my own mis-estimation and being wrong, it’s also a fact that I was wrong along with a whole lot of people, including people for whom polling is their actual job. It’s a discomfiting place to be.

3. It will be no surprise to anyone I’m unhappy with the result of this election. Donald Trump was manifestly the worst presidential candidate in living memory, an ignorant, sex-assaulting vindictive bigot, enamored of strongmen and contemptuous of the law, consorting with white nationalists and hucksters — and now he’s president-elect, which is appalling and very sad for the nation. I don’t see much good coming out of this, either in the immediate or long-term, not in the least because if he does any of the things he promises to do, his impact will be ruinous to the nation. Add to the fact that he’s the GOP candidate, and the GOP now will have the White House, Congress and will appoint the next Supreme Court justice, and, well. There aren’t any grownups in the GOP anymore, and we’re going to find out what that means for all of us.

Here are some of the things it could mean: A conservative Supreme Court for decades, backtracking on climate change, the repeal of Roe v. Wade, curtailment of free speech, loss of medical insurance to millions, tax policy that advantages the wealthy and adds trillions to the national debt, punitive racial policies, the return of torture as a part of the military toolbox, and a president who uses the apparatus of the US to go after his personal enemies. And these are only the things Trump has said he’s ready to do — we don’t know what else he will do when he’s literally the most powerful man on the planet, with a compliant legislature and judiciary.

The GOP conceit is that somehow they will be able to control Trump, which is a theory that’s worked so well up to now. More realistically, I think the best that can be hoped for is that Trump simply becomes apathetic and bored and leaves actual governance to others, i.e., the Dubya maneuver. This didn’t work particularly well then, but it might be marginally better than the alternative. But no matter what, I don’t have much optimism for the next four years.

4. I’m a well-off straight white man, which means of all the segments of the population, the Trump years will likely punish me the least — I may have to adjust my investments so I don’t lose tons of money when the stock market tumbles (or just be willing to ride it out, just like in 2008), but otherwise, in the short-term at least, I’m likely to be fine. I can’t say the same for my friends and loved ones who are women or minorities or LGTBQ or who struggle financially to make ends meet, or some combination of all of those. I wish I could say to them that it’ll be fine and that they’ll be able to ride out the next four (or, God forbid, eight) years, but I can’t. Trump, himself racist and sexist, brought a bunch of racists and sexists and homophobes to the dance, and now he’s obliged to dance with them. Things could get pretty ugly for everyone who isn’t a well-off straight white man. Things are likely to get ugly.

A lot of my friends are scared of Trump’s America, in other words, and they should be. As Maya Angelou once said, when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. Donald Trump has shown us over and over again who he is; the worst of his supporters — the ones who will now feel like they have free rein to indulge their various bigotries — have shown us who they are, too. And while not every Trump voter is among the worst of people, they share the responsibility of having made anyone who isn’t straight, and white, and male, and well-off, less secure, less safe, and more frightened. That’s what they bought for us when they pulled the lever for Trump.

5. And we have to face up to fact that it was white people who brought Trump to us — Trump got the majority of white men and white women who voted. We can parse out why that was (and we can talk about how the minority vote was suppressed), but at the end of the day, the fact remains: Trump will be in power because white people wanted him there.

If Trump’s administration indulges in the racism, sexism and religious and other bigotries that Trump and his people have already promised to engage in, we can assume it’s because his voters are just fine with that racism, sexism and religious and other bigotries — even if they claim to have voted for him for other reasons entirely. After all, Trump didn’t hide these things about himself, or try to sneak these plans in by a side door. They were in full view this entire time. If you vote for a bigot who has bigoted plans, you need to be aware of what that says about you, and your complicity in those plans.

I voted against Trump — voted against him twice, in fact, since I also voted against him in the primary — and I voted against him in no small part because I found his bigotry shameful, and still do. I am proud that he did not get my vote; I’m as proud of that vote as any I’ve offered up. And as an American, I have no plans to take his bigotry lying down. I hope you won’t, either.

6. That said, it might be a little much to ask people to stand and fight today. It was a long night, and a depressing night, for a lot of us. Take a day. Or two. Or a week. Or however much the time you need for yourself to get your head around this thing.

But at the end of that time, I hope you come back to us. Looking at the numbers as they stand right now, Trump won by just about 300,000 votes Clinton got at least 100,000 more votes than Trump out of about 120 million individual votes cast. There’s a lot of us who will stand with you, when you’re ready to stand again with us. There’s work to be done over the next four years and beyond. We need to get to it.

If nothing else, Donald Trump’s tax-audit troubles will likely soon be over, assuming they ever existed. The present IRS commissioner still has a couple of years left in his 5-year term. Once he departs, whether on schedule or sooner, he can be replaced by someone more congenial.

Trump’s income troubles may soon vanish, too. Kings, dictators, and other potentates may discover a sudden eagerness to license Trump-themed properties. Savvy foreign ministers might book rooms at the new Trump hotel on their visits to Washington.

Bill Clinton pioneered unprecedented methods of self-enrichment in the post-presidency. No president has ever dared test the potential for self-enrichment during a presidency. It is large.

There are checks and balances of course: congressional oversight; the courts; independent agencies. But that machinery of government is machinery by metaphor only. In reality, it is collective human action, and it only operates if those humans decide to make it work.

So it’s on Americans.

Through a career in the public eye dating back to the Carter administration—and over the course of a campaign defined by gutter abuse and brazen lying—Donald Trump has revealed his character. He accepts no limits on his appetite or his willfulness. He identifies with dictators; he despises dissent; he cannot tolerate criticism. He does not comply with law. He respects no institution or principle.

What happens next to the American republic will depend on whether Trump chooses to abide by, or can be restrained within, legal and bureaucratic limits—or whether his fellow partisans, seeking their own immediate political objectives, instead empower and enable him.

The record of Republican elected officials to date is not confidence-inspiring. They have followed Trump’s lead, even when it violated their own declared convictions, even when he personally insulted and mocked them. They have chased power and the realization of their ideological dreams, even at the cost of their own integrity and dignity.

Now comes the supreme gamble: an opportunity to remake America in a way it has not been remade since Lyndon Johnson’s burst of liberal activism in 1965—only this time, without the support of a democratic mandate.

Like George W. Bush in 2000, Donald Trump lost the popular vote. More Americans opposed him than favored him. The constitutional rules allow him and his adopted party to proceed. It’s up to them whether to proceed cautiously or recklessly. The early indications suggest they will push as hard as they can. It’s a risky plan, both for party and nation. The country cannot be governed by partisan imposition. The attempt to bypass democratic consent will not end well. And this time it may permanently damage republican institutions.

The party now titularly led by Donald Trump has gained the right to govern. What’s also needed is a cross-party commitment to protect the institutions despised and threatened by Donald Trump. How to do just that will be the great political theme of the year ahead.

November is Prematurity Awareness Month, and it’s also Madeline’s birthday month. I am missing my oldest girl so much. We should be preparing for a ninth birthday party and a house full of third graders. When November rolls around, I have a lot of flashbacks to our time in the NICU with Maddie. I’m reposting a piece I wrote two years ago about what it’s like to be a Preemie Parent. If you know a Preemie Parent, reach out to them today. Let them know you’re thinking about them, and their child. No matter how old their preemie may be, they’ll never lose that lingering fear, never forget the smell of the NICU soap, never forget how small or sick their baby once was.

Madeline, four days after she was born. She’d just had her forehead IV removed, and was on a ventilator, IVs, umbilical cath, pulse ox, chest tubes, and was extremely swollen from the fluids being pumped into her body.

The first time I was told my child was going to die, I was about seven weeks pregnant. There was no way of knowing it then, but those words started me on my path to becoming a Preemie Parent.

The next time I was told my child was going to die, I was nineteen weeks pregnant. My water had just broken, and my doctor gave my baby almost no chance for survival. A few weeks later, that doctor reminded me that termination was an option. Mike and I told her no.

When I was admitted to the hospital on bed rest, the doctors didn’t say my baby was going to die, but they never said she was going to live. The statistics were against her, you see. Babies who PPROM at 19 weeks rarely survive, and those who do have a host of problems. But I’d beaten the odds by not immediately going into labor, and I was certain my baby would beat the odds, too. The doctors told us they’d likely take the baby at 30 weeks gestation, so that was our goal.

I read everything I could about NICUs and premature babies. Being the parent of a premature baby is something no one expects. Your typical expectant parent doesn’t stock up on preemie clothes and diapers, or research medical terms and nutritional techniques. Even though I had some time to educate myself, I was completely unprepared for NICU life – especially Madeline’s introduction to it.

The doctors decided to give me an emergency c-section in my 28th week of pregnancy because I was passing blood clots. They feared I was having a placental abruption, and delivered Madeline over eleven weeks early. Because my water had broken ten weeks before that, Madeline’s lungs were developmentally on par with a 24-25 week baby. It was dire. They transferred her to another hospital with a better NICU. They told me she was going to die.

She made it through the night, but every time my phone rang the next day it was someone telling me she was going to die. Again. For her first two weeks in the NICU, she almost died every day. She was the sickest baby in the unit by far, with two nurses constantly dedicated to her care.

We lived minute to minute. I planned her funeral. I learned metric measurements. I scrubbed my hands under scalding water every time I wanted to see her. I filled a notebook with numbers and abbreviations (SAT, VENT, TEMP). I wondered what color her eyes were. I was afraid she’d die before I could hold her. I memorized every single medication and dosage schedule.  I watched her eyelashes grow in. I asked questions, so many questions. I learned when to use my voice and how to be an advocate for my child.

This is the typical life of a preemie parent in the NICU. You make sure you’re there for rounds. You ask when tests are going to be run, and you learn how to read a head scan or lung x-ray. You ask about diuretics. You love the nurses so much. You pump and hope the tiny bit of milk you eek out can help you baby. You live for the moments you get to do normal things like change a diaper or give a bath. You know the NICU is a roller coaster so you’re constantly waiting for something to go wrong. Holding your child is a luxury. You often feel like you need permission to interact with your baby.

Madeline was in the NICU for ten weeks, and we saw a lot. Babies came through with conditions I’d only seen on the Discovery Channel. Babies had medical emergencies and everyone would be kicked out of the unit. Sometimes it was my baby with the emergency.

Sometimes babies died, and I was reminded how close we’d come, and how far we’d come.

Prematurity doesn’t go away after NICU discharge. It follows you to pediatrician appointments and clinic visits. It’s on your insurance forms, and sometimes on school paperwork. It impacts your child’s life for the rest of their life, even indirectly. It also impacts your other children; they might have been full-term but you realize how fragile life is. You’ll never look at anything the same after you’ve held your tiny baby in your hand.

Next week is the eight year anniversary of the day I became a Preemie Parent. Even though my Madeline is gone, her premature birth is still a driving force in my life. She was born during Prematurity Awareness Month, eleven weeks too soon. We got seventeen wonderful months with her, but in the end, prematurity was a cause of her death. In the United States, over half a million babies are born too soon – that’s one in every nine births. Way too many. This has to be stopped.

Every year on Madeline’s birthday I hope there will be a medical breakthrough that helps end prematurity. It’s too late for my Maddie, but it isn’t too late for Annabel and James. I never want them to know what it’s like to be a Preemie Parent. I never want them to hear the words, “Your child is going to die.”

Madeline, four days before she got sick.

© copyright Heather Spohr 2016 | All rights reserved.

This content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means, without the prior written permission of the author.

These delicious breaded cauliflower florets are baked in the oven with a parmesan-crumb crust, they remind me of my Moms fried cauliflower I used to love as a kid – without all the frying!

Great for kids or adults. I would serve them as a side dish, or double the portion for a meatless main with a big salad on the side.

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This isn’t your regular meatball, it’s HUGE, baked in the oven similar to how you would make a meatloaf, then topped with marinara and melted cheese – I’m OBSESSED!

This creation is a result of asking my husband what he wants for dinner. Tommy doesn’t care about eating light, so naturally he comes up with some decadent ideas, and because I love a challenge I had to make it work – the results, he LOVED it!

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I saw this on Buzzfeed recently, and I quickly filed it away with other stuff that cheers me up: a Japanese dog owner named Semba (@myouonnin) makes hilarious cardboard-cutout costumes for her cute (and very patient) pup, Chihuahua-mametaro and posts pictures (and videos) on her Twitter feed. I am a) happy this exists and b) happy I’ve saved all those Amazon Prime boxes. Check out more at Buzzfeed and on Semba’s Twitter.

A reader writes:

I have uterus didelphys—a.k.a. having two uteri, two cervixes, and two vaginas. (On top of that I have a hormonal imbalance, which one doctor said was PCOS [polycystic ovary syndrome]—I had a trans-vaginal ultrasound done and my ovaries are riddled with cysts—but a second doctor said it’s not PCOS.) Each of my uteri is smaller than a normal-sized one. But my menstrual cycle is like clockwork, and there are no other downsides besides high-risk pregnancy.

The doctor told me that the organs of the female reproductive system are duplicated at one point during development, but eventually the organs merge and become one. For mine to have not merged is like a mutation! I’ve thought of it like the X-Men. It’s pretty cool, IMO, because I can break the ice by telling people I have two vaginas.

Read On »

Cat lovers, this is for you:

“Ever find yourself driving behind someone with one of those “Baby On Board” stickers on their car, thinking how nice it would be if you had a way to communicate a something equally impertinent back to them? Well, now you can! No baby in the car, but you do have a cat back at home.”

Kodak has unveiled Ektra, a smart phone aimed at photographers. It runs on Android and features a 21 megapixel fast focus camera with a f2.0 aperture. The camera also boasts DSLR functionality and can capture video in 4K.

Drool.

The debate made me feel panicky and furious. And so we registered I’m With Nasty.

We made Nasty Woman T-shirts,

and Nasty Hats,

and Such a Nasty Woman pins,

and Make America Nasty pins (Michelle’s idea, because she’s a genius).

50% of profits go to the Hillary for America campaign. We’re paying rush fees to get them to you as soon as we can. Let’s fight this man who thinks no one respects women… more than him.

America, I’m with Nasty.

The post Nasty Woman T-Shirts appeared first on Mighty Girl.

SNL’s ongoing “Black Jeopardy” series has been, in part, about divisions. In each edition, black American contestants answer Kenan Thompson’s clues with in-jokes, slang, and their shared opinions while an outsider—say, Elizabeth Banks as the living incarnation of Becky, Louis C.K. as a BYU African American Studies professor, or Drake as a black Canadian—just show their cluelessness.

When Tom Hanks showed up in a “Make America Great Again” hat and bald-eagle shirt to play the contestant “Doug” this weekend, it seemed like the set-up for the ugliest culture clash yet. The 2016 election has been a reminder of the country’s profound racial fault lines, and SNL hasn’t exactly been forgiving toward the Republican nominee on that front: Its version of Trump hasn’t been able to tell black people apart, and it aired a mock ad painting his supporters as white supremacists—which, inarguably, some of them really are.

But this time the Black Jeopardy contestants came to be pleasantly surprised as Doug answered the questions correctly. SNL’s viewers might have felt a similar sense of amazement as they realized that this particular sketch didn’t quite come at the expense of Trump’s supporters. Smartly and hilariously, it suggested an idea that’s novel in 2016: Maybe America isn’t as helplessly divided as it seems.

Part of the common ground is economics—many white Trump supporters are as familiar with financial desperation as many black Americans are. Thompson’s host Darnell Hayes asks Doug whether he’s sure he wants to play black Jeopardy; Doug says he’s just hoping to win some money, so “get ’er done.” When lottery scratcher tickets get mentioned, Doug chimes in, “I play that every week.” On a question of what to do when your brakes are busted, Doug correctly answers, “You better go to that dude in my neighborhood who’ll fix anything for 40 dollars” (Hayes: “You know Cecil?!” “Yeah, but my Cecil’s name is Jimmy”).

But the sketch goes further, pointing out that social conditions shape worldview and culture. Everyone on stage distrusts the idea of giving their thumbprint to an iPhone. Everyone on stage agrees that elections are decided by the elite (the Illumanti?) before the votes are cast. Doug’s lifestyle even means he’s come to love Tyler Perry movies: “I bought a box set at Walmart. And if I can laugh and pray in 90 minutes, that’s money well spent.”

Hanks and Thompson’s performances help nail the sketch’s humor and strange poignance. The gravelly Doug seems matter-of-fact as he battles his nervousness, stumbling into the occasional questionable remark about “you people.” The host Hayes, meanwhile, goes from dismissal to total delight. At one point, he comes over to shake Doug’s hand; Doug recoils, scared Hayes has been offended, but then they awkwardly embrace.

A vision of healing? Not quite. The final Jeopardy question category is “Lives That Matter.” Everyone freezes, knowing that Doug’s answer—which we don’t see—might not be so agreeable as his previous ones. “Well it was good while it lasted, Doug,” Hayes says. One implication is race isn’t just an illusory divide. Another is both hopeful and a bit depressing: People casting opposing ballots in November might not realize just how much they have in common.

As I mentioned in my last post, I’m having fun exploring the new Trader Joe’s in New Orleans. I asked everyone on Instagram to share their favorite products with me so I could sample the best the store had to offer and one item that was suggested multiple times was their frozen seafood paella. While the paella wasn’t bad, I was a little underwhelmed, and after glancing at the ingredient list I knew I could make something similar at home. And that’s how this super easy Seafood Rice Skillet was born.

Why is mine a “skillet” and not a paella? Well, for multiple reasons, but the main reasons being that A) I did not use saffron ($$$), B) I used long grain rice, and C) I made it in a skillet and not a paella pan. I like to change recipes to work for me and these changes were made to fit my budget, ingredient availability, and cooking style. But guess what? This Seafood Rice Skillet is still amaze-balls. Not a term I normally use, but totally fitting here.

I did end up using the frozen seafood mix from Trader Joe’s (shrimp, scallops, and calamari), but if you can’t find something similar near you, you can totally use just shrimp alone. If you can find a seafood broth, or maybe a little clam juice, you can sub some of that in for part of the chicken broth and have this be even more seafood-y. And of course, if you have short grain rice, you can use that in place of the long grain, but make sure to adjust the broth to rice ratio to match the directions on the package.

Alright, ready to see this super easy and impressive skillet meal??

Seafood Rice Skillet

4.8 from 4 reviews

Seafood Rice Skillet

 

Save Print

Prep time

10 mins

Cook time

40 mins

Total time

50 mins

 

Total Cost: $8.70

Cost Per Serving: $1.45 (1.5 cups each)

Serves: 9 cups

Ingredients

• 2 Tbsp olive oil $0.22
• 1 onion $0.25
• 2 cloves garlic $0.16
• 1 red bell pepper $1.00
• ½ Tbsp turmeric $0.15
• 1 tsp smoked paprika $0.10
• ¼ tsp cayenne pepper $0.02
• 2 cups uncooked long grain white rice $1.12
• 3 cups chicken broth* $0.41
• 1 cup frozen peas $0.48
• ½ lb. frozen seafood mix $4.00
• 1 fresh lemon $0.59
• Handful fresh parsley, chopped $0.20

Instructions

1. Dice the onion and mince the garlic. Add the olive oil, onion, and garlic to a large deep skillet. Sauté over medium heat until the onions are soft and transparent (about 5 minutes). Meanwhile, dice the red bell pepper. Add the diced bell pepper to the skillet and sauté for 1-2 minutes more.
2. Add the uncooked rice, turmeric, smoked paprika, and cayenne to the skillet. Stir to combine. Pour in the chicken broth, stir briefly, then place a lid on the skillet.
3. Turn the heat up to high and bring the broth to a boil. Once it reaches a full boil, turn the heat down to low and let simmer for 15 minutes.
4. After 15 minutes, add the frozen seafood and frozen peas. Fold the seafood and peas into the skillet, then replace the lid. Let the seafood and peas cook over low heat until the shrimp turn pink (about 5-10 minutes). Stir once half way through to check the seafood buried in the rice for doneness.
5. Once the seafood has finished cooking, top the skillet with chopped parsley and serve with lemon wedges. Squeeze the lemon juice over top of the seafood rice just before eating.

Notes

*I used Better Than Bouillon to make my chicken broth and it contains enough salt to sufficiently season the dish. If using a low sodium broth, you may need to add a touch of salt.

3.5.3208

Step by Step Photos

Begin by dicing one onion and mincing two cloves of garlic. Add the onion and garlic to a large deep skillet along with 2 Tbsp olive oil. Sauté the onion and garlic until the onion are soft and transparent.

While the onion and garlic are sautéing, dice a red bell pepper. Add the bell pepper to the skillet and continue to sauté for 1-2 minutes more.

Add 2 cups uncooked long grain white rice, 1/2 Tbsp turmeric, 1 tsp smoked paprika, and 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper.

Stir until everything is well coated in spices.

Add 3 cups chicken broth to the skillet, place a lid on top, and turn the heat up to high. Let the skillet come to a boil. Once it reaches a boil, turn the heat down to low and let simmer on low for 15 minutes.

This is the seafood blend that I used. It’s a mix of shrimp, scallops, and calamari. I used half of this bag, or 1/2 lb. If you can’t find something similar to this, you can use just shrimp.

After simmering on low for 15 minutes, most of the broth should be absorbed by the rice. Add 1/2 lb. of the frozen seafood mix and 1 cup frozen peas. Seafood cooks very quickly, even from frozen, so you don’t want to add it before the rice is cooked.  Over cooking seafood makes it very tough.

Fold the seafood and peas into the cooked rice, place the lid back on top of the skillet, and let it cook over low heat for another 5-10 minutes, or until the shrimp have turned pink and opaque. You may need to stir once half way through to check the doneness of the shrimp buried in the rice. 

One the seafood is cooked through, top the Seafood Rice Skillet with chopped parsley and lemon wedges.

Squeezing fresh lemon over the top of your bowl really gives this dish a nice fresh POP, so don’t skip it! :)

The post Seafood Rice Skillet appeared first on Budget Bytes.

Yuni Kim Lang‘s hair piece made me look. Beautifully absurd.

Big thanks to Postable for sponsoring my blog and RSS feed this week.

Postable prints, addresses and mails all of your holiday cards for you. You can type your messages on the website and they take care of the rest. The card collection is truly stellar with amazing designers like Rifle Paper Co. and it’s all 100% recycled.

It’s especially great for company holiday cards and they even have a free address book that collects all of the addresses for you. Full end-to-end snail mail service.

Go to postable.com and receive 15% off your cards with code SWISSMISS until 12/31

(Interested in sponsoring a week of my RSS feed, learn more here.)

I love when someone tries to redesign an object in an unconventional way, in this case, tweezers. The unique circular shape of these tweezers by Clemens Auer is beautiful.

Photo by Rebecca Woolf.

Fable asked for rainbow hair for her birthday, and Rebecca made it go. Gorgeous.

The post Tot of Gold appeared first on Mighty Girl.

At this point there is no doubt that Donald Trump is the single worst major party presidential candidate in living memory, almost certainly the worst since the Civil War, and arguably the worst in the history of this nation. He is boastful and ignorant and petty, disdainful of the Constitution, a racist and a sexist, the enabler of the worst elements of society, either the willing tool of, or the useful idiot for, Vladimir Putin, an admirer of despots, an insecure braggart, a sexual assaulter, a man who refuses to honor contracts, and a bore.

He is, in sum, just about the biggest asshole in all of the United States of America. He’s lucky that Syrian dictator Bashar Hafez al-Assad is out there keeping him from taking the global title, not that he wouldn’t try for that, too, should he become president. It’s appalling that he is the standard bearer for one of the two major political parties in the United States. It’s appalling that he is a candidate for the presidency at all.

But note well: Donald Trump is not a black swan, an unforeseen event erupting upon an unsuspecting Republican Party. He is the end result of conscious and deliberate choices by the GOP, going back decades, to demonize its opponents, to polarize and obstruct, to pursue policies that enfeeble the political weal and to yoke the bigot and the ignorant to their wagon and to drive them by dangling carrots that they only ever intended to feed to the rich. Trump’s road to the candidacy was laid down and paved by the Southern Strategy, by Lee Atwater and Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove, by Fox News and the Tea Party, and by the smirking cynicism of three generations of GOP operatives, who have been fracking the white middle and working classes for years, crushing their fortunes with their social and economic policies, never imagining it would cause an earthquake.

Well, surprise! Here’s Donald Trump. He is the actual and physical embodiment of every single thing the GOP has trained its base to want and to be over the last forty years — ignorant, bigoted and money-grubbing, disdainful of facts and frightened of everything because of it, an angry drunk buzzed off of wood-grain patriotism, threatening brown people and leering at women. He was planned. He was intended. He was expected. He was wanted.

But not, I think, in the exact form of Donald Trump. The GOP were busily genetically engineering the perfect host for their message, someone smooth and telegenic and possibly just ethnic enough to make people hesitant to point out the latent but real racism inherent in its social policies, while making the GOP’s white base feel like they were making a progressive choice, and with that person installed, further pursuing its agenda of slouching toward oligarchy, with just enough anti-abortion and pro-gun glitter tossed into the sky to distract the religious and the paranoid. Someone the GOP made. Someone they could control.

But they don’t control Trump, which they are currently learning to their great misery. And the reason the GOP doesn’t control Trump is that they no longer control their base. The GOP trained their base election cycle after election cycle to be disdainful of government and to mistrust authority, which ultimately is an odd thing for a political party whose very rationale for existence is rooted in the concept of governmental authority to do. The GOP created a monster, but the monster isn’t Trump. The monster is the GOP’s base. Trump is the guy who stole their monster from them, for his own purposes.

And this is why the GOP deserves the chaos that’s happening to it now, with its appalling and parasitic standard bearer, who will never be president, driving his GOP host body toward the cliff. If it accepts the parasite, it will be driven off the cliff. If it resists, the parasite Trump will rip himself from it, leaving bloody marks as it does so, and then shove the dazed and wounded GOP from the precipice. That there is a fall in the GOP’s future is inevitable; all that is left is which plunge to take.

I feel sorry for many of my individual friends who are Republicans and/or conservatives, who have to deal with the damage Trump is doing to their party and to their movement, even if I belong to neither. But I don’t feel sorry for the GOP at all. It deserves Trump. It fostered an environment of ignorance and fear and bigotry, assumed it could control the mob those elements created, and was utterly stunned when a huckster from outside claimed the mob as his own and forced the party along for the ride. It was hubris, plain and simple, and Trump is the GOP’s vulgar, orange nemesis.

Trump will do the GOP long and lasting damage, and moreover, Trump doesn’t care that he will do the GOP long and lasting damage. Trump was never about being a Republican; he was just looking to expand his brand. As it turns out, like apparently so many things Trump does, he’s done an awful job of it — the name Trump, formerly merely associated with garish ostentation and bankruptcy, is now synonymous with white nationalism, sexual battery and failure — but the point is on November 9th Trump is going to move on and leave the wreckage of the GOP in his wake, off to his next thing (everyone assumes “Trump TV,” in which Trump combines with Breitbart to make white pride propaganda for the kind of millennial racist who thinks a Pepe the Frog Twitter icon is the height of wit — and I hope he does, because the Trump touch will drive that enterprise into the ground, and little would warm my heart more than a bankrupt Breitbart).

Trump is the party guest who sets fire to your house, gropes your spouse and drives over your neighbor’s cat when he leaves; the GOP is left to deal with the police and the angry neighbors. It’s almost piteous, except when you scrub back to five hours earlier to hear the GOP say “What, Trump wants to come to the party? Well, he’s an asshole who drove Fred Jones’ car into the pool the other weekend, but he’s always good for a laugh, isn’t he? Surely it will be fine,” and then tells him to bring his bad boy self right on over.

There is no good way for the GOP or its members to extricate itself from this mess. Trump has doomed them for this election cycle. But there is a moral way, and they should take it. When a grifter and a con man has suckered you into a shitshow, you have two options: bail out early and admit you got shit all over yourself, or stick with the con and affirmatively choose to drown in the shit. No GOP politician should ever have endorsed him; the moral hazard he presented was obvious and clear and became clearer the further he went along. But if they were foolish enough to have endorsed him, it’s not too late to bail out. He’s going to lose either way and drag the GOP down with him; these politicians might as well come out of it with their souls, besmirched but still their own.

And obviously to me, no one with sense should cast a vote for Trump. He’s not just a candidate, he is an active repudiation of what we should expect from the United States and those who lead it. A candidate who can’t open his mouth without a lie falling out — a lie that everyone including him knows is a lie — doesn’t deserve to be president. A candidate who threatens millions because of their religion does not deserve to be president. A candidate who promises to extralegally throw his political opponent into jail does not deserve to be president. A candidate who fosters white nationalism, racism and anti-semitism does not deserve to be president. A candidate who brags about sexual assault and then tries to dismiss it as mere talk does not deserve to be president.

These are not merely Democratic or Republican issues. These are American issues, human issues and moral issues. You can’t vote for Donald Trump and say you don’t know what you’re voting for. You’re voting for hate, and chaos, and the deluge. Anything else that you think you get from voting for him will be washed away in the flood.

Trump is the single worst major party presidential candidate in living memory, but he’s there because the GOP spent decades making him possible, and its base, trained for decades to look for someone like him, made him its standard bearer. He needs to lose and the GOP needs to be punished for him. Conservatism and classical Republican ideas won’t go away, nor should they. But if the GOP can’t break itself from its addiction to the bigoted and the ignorant, then it certainly deserves to die. It’s brought the country to the edge. Shame is only the beginning of what it should feel for it.

Update, 3:00pm 10/12/16: I’ve made my official presidential endorsement. It’s, uh, not for Donald Trump.

This video demonstrates how to use an elastic string anchored at the horizon of a canvas to sketch a drawing with two point perspective. Brilliant!

Get out of here.

Did you see this? Apparently it “blew up Twitter,” but I didn’t see it on there so I’m gonna share it with you here, too. In a recent interview with Bustle about how it’s fucked up that Tim Burton’s new movie is all white except for the bad guy who is black, Tim Burton said this:

“Nowadays, people are talking about it more,” he says regarding film diversity. But “things either call for things, or they don’t. I remember back when I was a child watching The Brady Bunch and they started to get all politically correct. Like, OK, let’s have an Asian child and a black. I used to get more offended by that than just… I grew up watching blaxploitation movies, right? And I said, that’s great. I didn’t go like, OK, there should be more white people in these movies.”

Huh. Fuck this guy, seems like he sucks.

Tim Burton Seems Bad was originally published in The Hairpin on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Read the responses to this story on Medium.

The candidate: Donald Trump

The gaffe: Speaking about veterans’ issues Monday morning, Trump was discussing suicides among ex-servicemembers. “When people come back from war and combat and they see maybe what a lot of the folks in this room have seen many times over, and you’re strong and you can handle it, but a lot of people can’t handle it,” he said, implying that PTSD victims were weak.

The defense: Trump, who likes to project strength in all circumstances, looks to have been trying to flatter his audience. It didn’t appear Trump was trying to ridicule victims; it was just a thoughtless comment.

Why it matters (or doesn’t): Let us count the ways this remark is bad. First, it blames those suffering for PTSD, suggesting they are not strong. Second, it’s scientifically bankrupt: No doctor would agree that PTSD is a sign of weakness. Third, it spotlights the fact that Trump avoided facing combat to test his own “strength,” obtaining draft deferments. Fourth, it fits in a string of comments ridiculing veterans, starting with saying he didn’t like John McCain because he was captured. Fourth, it’s another example of Trump’s insensitivity about mental illness. (“If I looked like Rosie [O’Donnell], I’d struggle with depression too,” he once said.)

The lesson: A politician who didn’t fight in battle should not question the mental strength of those who won their Purple Hearts the hard way.

If you’re going apple picking and need a fun, healthy treat – this is it! I’m in love with these apple treats, great for the kids or even adults. Drizzled with anything that strikes your fancy, here I did a variation with PB and chocolate as well as some with just chocolate. Caramel would also be great to give you a caramel apple combination!

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The AC is finally off and you discover that sadly, moths have been feasting on your sweaters all summer. Trees are starting to show off their golden hues and moms are covering up their little ones before they go out to play.

In this week’s illustration, fall hits Fort Reno, the highest point in Washington DC. Originally built in 1861, this Tenleytown monument was once the city’s largest and strongest defense. Later, it harbored freed slaves and eventually became a water reservoir. In more recent years it has served as a backdrop for summer concerts, and features one of the city’s greatest urban legends: back in 2000, Fugazi performed there amid an imminent thunderstorm – then, right at the climactic point, drums paused, lightning lit the sky and roared close behind them. To the public’s delight, nature repeated this exact performance the following year.

Buy this print.

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*Postcards from Washington DC is a personal challenge to produce a weekly illustration that highlights life in the capital.