monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

President-elect Donald J. Trump on Thursday named David Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer aligned with the Israeli far right, as his nominee for ambassador to Israel, elevating a campaign adviser who has questioned the need for a two-state solution and has likened left-leaning Jews in America to the Jews who aided the Nazis in the Holocaust.

Mr. Friedman, whose outspoken views stand in stark contrast to decades of American policy toward Israel, did not wait long on Thursday to signal his intention to upend the American approach. In a statement from the Trump transition team announcing his nomination, he said he looked forward to doing the job “from the U.S. embassy in Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem.”

..Mr. Friedman, who has no diplomatic experience, has said that he does not believe it would be illegal for Israel to annex the occupied West Bank and he supports building new settlements there, which Washington has long condemned as illegitimate and an obstacle to peace..

DeVry University, a for-profit school that offers courses online and at dozens of locations nationwide, has agreed to a $100 million settlement of a federal lawsuit alleging that it falsely advertised the success of its graduates, the Federal Trade Commission announced on Thursday.

Conservative television commentator Larry Kudlow is a leading candidate to become chair President-elect Donald Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers, which is usually run by one of the nation’s most prestigious economists.

If selected, Kudlow would mark another un­or­tho­dox pick for Trump. Under both Republican and Democratic presidents, the council has provided expert economic advice to the president and attracts a staff of top-flight young economists. But Kudlow lacks a graduate or undergraduate degree in economics and has not written scholarly papers on the subject.

The biggest Pinocchios of 2016

There has never been a serial exaggerator in recent American politics like the president-elect. He not only consistently makes false claims but also repeats them, even though they have been proven wrong. He always insists he is right, no matter how little evidence he has for his claim or how easily his statement is debunked.

During the campaign, Trump earned 59 Four-Pinocchio ratings, compared with seven for Hillary Clinton. Since winning the presidency, Trump has earned four more Four-Pinocchio ratings, and his staff has earned one, as well. Unfortunately, we see little indication that this pattern will change during his presidency.

President-elect Donald Trump’s controversial soft spot for Russia is based on decades of courting wealthy Russians to buy condos in his luxury high-rises and invest in his other real estate ventures, a close look at his business dealings reveals.

Trump first traveled to Moscow in the 1980s, to discuss renovating hotels there. After several bankruptcies made it hard to raise money in the United States for his high-end hotel and condominium projects since the 1990s, Trump, and later his children, traveled to Moscow to talk deals and attract buyers, according to interviews with people who have worked with Trump over the years and news accounts. They show far greater commercial ties betwee
n Trump and Russia than generally known.

Is Democrat Whiplash covered by Obamacare?

15 December 2016 Last updated at 22:16 GMT
Former director of the CIA General Michael Hayden says the covert actions have been a victory for Russia, and Vladimir Putin was personally involved.
"I would put this in the win column as one of the most successful covert actions, covert influence programmes in the history of covert influence programmes," he says.
The Kremlin has denied any involvement and dismissed the allegations as "nonsense".

The president-elect has refused to concede the assessment of all 17 federal intelligence agencies that Russia was behind the attack and he has taken particular exception to the reported assessment of the CIA that those Russian efforts were specifically intended to benefit his candidacy and help install him as the next president.

More Republicans viewing Putin favorably
GOP sympathies for Putin and his homeland are rising

I have seen David Friedman, Donald Trump's nominee to be the next US Ambassador to Israel, described in the mainstream press as a supporter of settlement expansion. The analogies that readily spring to mind are too coarse for me to repeat. Let's say this is a wild understatement. Friedman represents the extremes of the most vicious and destructive elements of rightist Zionism and the indeed the most radical elements of American Jewry.

Quote:

Chemi Shalev captures the essence here.
By Israeli standards, Donald Trump’s designated Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, is an extreme right-winger. He might find a place in the settler movement or with Naftali Bennett’s Habayit Hayehudi Party, but only on its right-wing fringes. He makes Benjamin Netanyahu seem like a left-wing defeatist. From where Friedman stands, most Israelis, never mind most American Jews, are more or less traitors.

Kellyanne Conway, one of Donald Trump’s senior advisors, has no use for reports that Russian officials intervened in the American presidential campaign, helping her boss take office. Her pushback, however, could use a little work.

Conway insisted this week, for example, that the only people who are deeply concerned with the apparent attack on the U.S. political system are “people who want this to be the permanent campaign.”

Just 24 hours earlier, Donald Trump hosted the latest in a series of self-congratulatory campaign-style rallies in celebration of himself. Indeed, since Dec. 1, the president-elect has organized self-indulgent campaign-style events in Cincinnati, Fayetteville, Des Moines, New Orleans, Grand Rapids, West Allis, and Hershey – an average of a rally every other day for two weeks – with an eighth rally scheduled for Orlando today. Trump is the first president-elect in American history to interrupt his own transition period to hit the campaign trail for a multi-stop tour in which Trump speaks at length to his followers about how impressed he was with his candidacy.

What was that Conway was saying about the “permanent campaign”?

What’s more, at these campaign-style stops, Trump continues to relitigate the election he already won. Last night in Pennsylvania, for example, he even boasted that he won “a landslide victory,” despite the fact that we know this is obviously a silly lie.

Norman Ornstein ‏@NormOrnstein 5h5 hours ago
The glue that holds our republic together is in acceptance of norms of democratic behavior. Trump, McConnell, NC Republicans shattering them

You didn't think I'd drive all the way to Hershey just to hear what comes out of the mouth of a guy who boasts about grabbing women's vaginas, insists he's too busy for intelligence briefings while taking meetings with Kanye West, and, more than a month after winning, is still taking a victory lap. At some point, the party's gotta end, right?

First group I came upon was a bunch of guys going on about the press - "CNN is the worst," "NBC is the worst." Dave Delp, a social worker from Harrisburg, had a lot of things to say on the subject while he held a handmade sign that read, "Don't believe the liberal media."

So what are we missing, I asked.

For starters, he said, the truth. We don't even show the crowds at the rallies, he said, moments after I had posted a series of photos of the 7,000 or so supporters in attendance.

After a lot of back and forth, the truth that he and many others I talked to said the dishonest media was missing could be summed up like so: that the people gathered here, the people who voted for Trump, should be treated with respect.

Right around that time, Amy Ross walked by with her teenage daughter. "Let's stand near the press," she said. "I want to boo them, and I want to make sure they can see my face."

It was a theme that came up over and over as the night wore on

According to Trump, Greenblatt is one of his two main Israel advisers. The other is a bankruptcy lawyer who has represented Trump named David M. Friedman. Friedman serves as President of American Friends of Bet El settlement. In columns on the pro-settler website Arutz Sheva, he has accused President Obama of “blatant anti-Semitism” and suggested that unless Palestinian citizens of Israel decide “to support the state,” Israel should reconsider its policy of “bestowing upon them the benefits of citizenship.” In a column last July, he compared J Street to “Kapos during the Nazi regime.”