monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

A liberal source calls the BLM movement "protest". This is true. There is protest.

A conservative source calls it "rioting". Also true. There is riots.

U.S. Sold $40 Billion in Weapons in 2015, Topping Global Market

America’s concern for the poor is about to be tested

Poor Americans are facing the gravest threat to the federal safety net in decades as President-elect Donald Trump takes office accompanied by a Republican-controlled Congress. The risks to essential benefits for tens of millions of low- and moderate-income Americans include losing coverage extended to them by the Affordable Care Act, threats to the fundamental structure of the Medicaid health-insurance program for the poor and further reduction of already squeezed funding for scores of other important programs serving the most vulnerable Americans.

First, Republicans are expected to seek significant cuts in what’s known as non-defense discretionary spending, which includes many important programs for low- and moderate-income people, such as rental vouchers for low-income families, programs to fight homelessness, job training, funding for poor school districts, Head Start for young children and Pell grants to help low-income students afford college. The reason for these cuts is that, for the first time, starting next fiscal year, Republican leaders appear inclined to let the harsh “sequestration” budget cuts take full effect. That would shrink funding for this budget category to its lowest level in at least half a century, measured as a share of the economy. And even deeper cuts, as proposed by the most recent House Republican budget and the president-elect, are possible.

The aspect of all this I find very interesting is the right's hunger for enemies who can be cast as evil and as "the other".

the message from BLM is also something to REALLY look into.

Israel has evidence that U.S. President Obama's administration is behind Friday's Security Council resolution, Israel's Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer told CNN on Monday.
"We will present this evidence to the new administration through the appropriate channels. If they want to share it with the American people they are welcome to do it," Dermer told CNN.

“He’s likely to be unsuccessful on any sort of broad increase in U.S. manufacturing jobs," said James Pethokoukis, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "That line may blip up or down based on how the economy is doing but these are long-term trends that aren’t likely to change.”

Trump transition officials did not respond to a request for comment on how the administration would measure economic success.

In the face of all these challenges, Trump could simply use anecdotal examples of new manufacturing and coal industry jobs, seize on any further increase in wages, decide the jobless rate is now legitimate and declare victory.

“The president-elect judges his own personal wealth based on his own feelings,” Pethokoukis said. “So on any given day, he could just decide based on his feelings that America is great.”

Donald Trump pushed back against criticism of his companies' bankruptcy history Tuesday, repeating his argument that like other smart businessmen, he "used, brilliantly, the laws of the country" to his advantage.

ALL DAY. Show me one example of the founders asking for this to stop.

Late last week, apropos of nothing, Donald Trump rattled much of the world with an alarmingly ambiguous tweet about nuclear weapons: “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.” Within hours, the president-elect’s aides, eager to lower the temperature, downplayed the significance of the statement.

Kellyanne Conway told Rachel, for example, “What he’s merely saying is he wants us to be ready to defend ourselves and he’s not making new policy.” Jason Miller added soon after that the president-elect is not starting a new arms race.

Trump said the exact opposite on Friday morning, telling MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski:
“Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.”

...The uncertainty, here and around the world, about what Trump means by “expand” and “them,” all while the incoming president contradicts his own top aides, makes an alarming situation considerably worse. Indeed, it’s not at all clear who Trump sees as our competitor in his newly imagined “race” – because it’s certainly not Russia, led by Team Trump’s closest international pal, Vladimir Putin.

What’s more, as we discussed last week, there’s a pattern of reckless incompetence on this issue. In one of the GOP primary debates, Trump seemed baffled by a simple question about the nuclear triad. In one of the general election debates, Trump was asked about nuclear first-use policy, and delivered two completely contradictory answers over the course of a few seconds.

This is the same Republican who, over the course of his campaign, suggested more countries – specifically South Korea, Japan, and Saudi Arabia – should develop nuclear-weapons programs for their own national security interests.

Around the same time, Trump seemed genuinely confused by the meaning of the word “proliferation.”

Now, however, he’s president-elect and prepared to start an international arms race. What could possibly go wrong?

You do realize that most of the problems we have with terrorists was was caused by Bush 43 and his two insane wars. He established the organizations trying to blow up the west all by himself.

The best book about the 2016 campaign is a Marvel comic about Loki

This is a strange article to write. A few months ago, I did not expect to be recommending a comic as the essential guide to the 2016 election. But then, these are strange times in which to live. We are watching a president-elect who really does lie to our faces, and seems to have found that we like it.

While I read these comics, Donald Trump was bragging that he’d won “a massive landslide victory.” In an official statement, his transition team called it “one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history."

Trump did not win one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. He did not win an above-average Electoral College victory. He did not win an average Electoral College victory. He did not win a slightly below-average Electoral College victory.

Trump’s Electoral College haul — 306 votes to Hillary Clinton’s 232 — ranks 46th out of the 58 presidential elections the United States has held. That puts him in the bottom 20 percent. The claim Trump is making is not debatable, it is not complex, it is not arguable. And the fact that he has made it repeatedly — and that his transition team has made it on official letterhead — means it is not a mistake.

Google Fixes Algorithm to Remove Holocaust-Denying Results and Other 'Non-Authoritative Information'

Donald J. TrumpVerified account
‏@realDonaldTrump
The world was gloomy before I won - there was no hope. Now the market is up nearly 10% and Christmas spending is over a trillion dollars!

Paul Waldman ‏@paulwaldman1 10h10 hours ago
Paul Waldman Retweeted Donald J. Trump
Dow Jones avg the day Obama took office: 8,309

Dow avg the day before the 2016 election: 18,263

But the markets hate Democrats, I guess.