monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Based on this information I'm sure then that CAIR should trouble you. They have an undue influence in Washington, after all, they have known connections to terrorists organizations and have even had members arrested for funding terrorist groups.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/25/us/25charity.html

How many times has Obama had reps of CAIR to the WH? Talk about undue influence...

Well how do you feel about the hundreds of millions the Clinton's made through influence peddling and abuse of the office Hillary held as well as single speeches that brought in far more than the sum cited for a bbok in your post? Was that all OK?

Trump is unlike Hillary & 0bama who teamed up to lie to the world, and scam the people. cice, either has a problem understanding Trump's words or he just refuses to listen. He reminds me of a supporter of ALL things liberal, he's close minded.

Oh...Ya gotta love this one:


NEWS ANALYSIS
If Donald Trump Targets Journalists, Thank Obama
115

ADAM MAIDA
By JAMES RISEN
DECEMBER 30, 2016
WASHINGTON — If Donald J. Trump decides as president to throw a whistle-blower in jail for trying to talk to a reporter, or gets the F.B.I. to spy on a journalist, he will have one man to thank for bequeathing him such expansive power: Barack Obama.

Mr. Trump made his animus toward the news media clear during the presidential campaign, often expressing his disgust with coverage through Twitter or in diatribes at rallies. So if his campaign is any guide, Mr. Trump seems likely to enthusiastically embrace the aggressive crackdown on journalists and whistle-blowers that is an important yet little understood component of Mr. Obama’s presidential legacy.

Criticism of Mr. Obama’s stance on press freedom, government transparency and secrecy is hotly disputed by the White House, but many journalism groups say the record is clear. Over the past eight years, the administration has prosecuted nine cases involving whistle-blowers and leakers, compared with only three by all previous administrations combined. It has repeatedly used the Espionage Act, a relic of World War I-era red-baiting, not to prosecute spies but to go after government officials who talked to journalists.

Under Mr. Obama, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. have spied on reporters by monitoring their phone records, labeled one journalist an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal case for simply doing reporting and issued subpoenas to other reporters to try to force them to reveal their sources and testify in criminal cases.

I experienced this pressure firsthand when the administration tried to compel me to testify to reveal my confidential sources in a criminal leak investigation. The Justice Department finally relented — even though it had already won a seven-year court battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court to force me to testify — most likely because they feared the negative publicity that would come from sending a New York Times reporter to jail.


In an interview last May, President Obama pushed back on the criticism that his administration had been engaged in a war on the press. He argued that the number of leak prosecutions his administration had brought had been small and that some of those cases were inherited from the George W. Bush administration.

“I am a strong believer in the First Amendment and the need for journalists to pursue every lead and every angle,” Mr. Obama said in an interview with the Rutgers University student newspaper. “I think that when you hear stories about us cracking down on whistle-blowers or whatnot, we’re talking about a really small sample.

“Some of them are serious,” he continued, “where you had purposeful leaks of information that could harm or threaten operations or individuals who were in the field involved with really sensitive national security issues.”

But critics say the crackdown has had a much greater chilling effect on press freedom than Mr. Obama acknowledges. In a scathing 2013 report for the Committee to Protect Journalists, Leonard Downie, a former executive editor of The Washington Post who now teaches at Arizona State University, said the war on leaks and other efforts to control information was “the most aggressive I’ve seen since the Nixon administration, when I was one of the editors involved in The Washington Post’s investigation of Watergate.”

When Mr. Obama was elected in 2008, press freedom groups had high expectations for the former constitutional law professor, particularly after the press had suffered through eight years of bitter confrontation with the Bush administration. But today, many of those same groups say Mr. Obama’s record of going after both journalists and their sources has set a dangerous precedent that Mr. Trump can easily exploit. “Obama has laid all the groundwork Trump needs for an unprecedented crackdown on the press,” said Trevor Timm, executive director of the nonprofit Freedom of the Press Foundation.

Dana Priest, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The Washington Post, added: “Obama’s attorney general repeatedly allowed the F.B.I. to use intrusive measures against reporters more often than any time in recent memory. The moral obstacles have been cleared for Trump’s attorney general to go even further, to forget that it’s a free press that has distinguished us from other countries, and to try to silence dissent by silencing an institution whose job is to give voice to dissent.”

The administration’s heavy-handed approach represents a sharp break with tradition. For decades, official Washington did next to nothing to stop leaks. Occasionally the C.I.A. or some other agency, nettled by an article or broadcast, would loudly proclaim that it was going to investigate a leak, but then would merely go through the motions and abandon the case.

Of course, reporters and sources still had to be careful to avoid detection by the government. But leak investigations were a low priority for the Justice Department and the F.B.I. In fact, before the George W. Bush administration, only one person was ever convicted under the Espionage Act for leaking — Samuel Morison, a Navy analyst arrested in 1984 for giving spy satellite photos of a Soviet aircraft carrier to Jane’s Defense Weekly. He was later pardoned by President Bill Clinton.

Things began to change in the Bush era, particularly after the Valerie Plame case. The 2003 outing of Ms. Plame as a covert C.I.A. operative led to a criminal leak investigation, which in turn led to a series of high-profile Washington journalists’ being subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury and name the officials who had told them about her identity. Judith Miller, then a New York Times reporter, went to jail for nearly three months before finally testifying in the case.

The Plame case began to break down the informal understanding between the government and the news media that leaks would not be taken seriously.

The Obama administration quickly ratcheted up the pressure, and made combating leaks a top priority for federal law enforcement. Large-scale leaks, by Chelsea Manning and later by Edward J. Snowden, prompted the administration to adopt a zealous, prosecutorial approach toward all leaking. Lucy Dalglish, the dean of the University of Maryland’s journalism school, recalls that, during a private 2011 meeting intended to air differences between media representatives and administration officials, “You got the impression from the tone of the government officials that they wanted to take a zero-tolerance approach to leaks.”


The Justice Department, facing mounting criticism from media organizations, has issued new guidelines setting restrictions on when the government could subpoena reporters to try to force them to reveal their sources. But those guidelines include a loophole allowing the Justice Department to continue to aggressively pursue investigations into news reports on national security, which covers most leak investigations. In addition, the guidelines aren’t codified in law and can be changed by the next attorney general.


More significantly, the Obama administration won a ruling from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in my case that determined that there was no such thing as a “reporter’s privilege” — the right of journalists not to testify about their confidential sources in criminal cases. The Fourth Circuit covers Virginia and Maryland, home to the C.I.A., the Pentagon and the National Security Agency, and thus has jurisdiction over most leak cases involving classified information. That court ruling could result, for example, in a reporter’s being quickly jailed for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the Trump administration’s Justice Department to reveal the C.I.A. sources used for articles on the agency’s investigation into Russian hacking during the 2016 presidential election.

Press freedom advocates already fear that under Senator Jeff Sessions, Mr. Trump’s choice to be attorney general, the Justice Department will pursue journalists and their sources at least as aggressively as Mr. Obama did. If Mr. Sessions does that, Ms. Dalglish said, “Obama handed him a road map.”

James Risen is an investigative reporter for The New York Times.

I agree that was pretty lame of Reagan..

I think we are privy to Trumps thoughts and motivations. His thoughts are often a jumble of incoherent ideas spliced together into a further jumble of incoherent thoughts and ideas. Trump plays tic tac toe at most..

Trump tells you who he is, directly. I do not see subtext with him. In fact, isn't this what people like about him?

That he doesn't follow rules is obvious. He doesn't follow himself. Like a typical politician he has backpedalled on a number of issues, lied about a number of things, the most recent being his being responsible for Sprint jobs (and related the '1100' jobs he saved with Carrier).

It wouldn't be so bad if he didn't set himself up as the anti of what he actually is. He was proud of not being an insider of being against all the crazy things that Washington does. That was his primary platform message, draining the swamp. That's how he got elected. You can't pin him down on anything. One day he says one thing and the next another. And he doesn't care. There's absolutely no accountability. Just like with other politicians. Where's the difference?

So, yeah what's frustrating isn't that he acts just like any another politician, I expect that from his words and actions, but the partisan break he's given by followers who somehow still believe he's not a typical politician in how he will conduct his policy. In fact the only thing not typical about Trump is his lack of restraint on his mouth. The rest is the same.

And in my view the reason why folks who voted for Trump's don't seem to care about his pivots and irrational statements is because its either too dissonant to accept they've been duped or they are typical partisan marionettes being pulled along, not by Trump per se, but by their adherence to an ideology no matter who occupies that seat.

To whit: Republicans used to hate Russia because communism was awful? No, the shortcut to thinking was that people hated Russia because their gov't representatives told them it was awful - I would guess the vast majority know nothing about communism to make an effective critique. They don't even know that no country is actually communist (Russia is considered an 'Advanced Socialism state)!

Now their representative is telling them Russia is ok and so they are pulled along in the wake of their party's new stance. Orwell is laughing so hard he's crying..Was that Oceana who was bombing us now? Wait no it was Eastasia, no wait it was..

The result of democratic rule in urban America.


California Democrats legalize child prostitution

By TRAVIS ALLEN • 12/29/16 1:58

California Rules That Children Can No Longer Be Called Prostitutes
Inform

Beginning on Jan. 1, prostitution by minors will be legal in California. Yes, you read that right.

SB 1322 bars law enforcement from arresting sex workers who are under the age of 18 for soliciting or engaging in prostitution, or loitering with the intent to do so. So teenage girls (and boys) in California will soon be free to have sex in exchange for money without fear of arrest or prosecution.

This terribly destructive legislation was written and passed by the progressive Democrats who control California's state government with a two-thirds "supermajority." To their credit, they are sincere in their belief that decriminalizing underage prostitution is good public policy that will help victims of sex trafficking. Unfortunately, the reality is that the legalization of underage prostitution suffers from the fatal defect endemic to progressive-left policymaking: it ignores experience, common sense and most of all human nature — especially its darker side.

The unintended but predictable consequence of how the real villains — pimps and other traffickers in human misery — will respond to this new law isn't difficult to foresee. Pimping and pandering will still be against the law whether it involves running adult women or young girls. But legalizing child prostitution will only incentivize the increased exploitation of underage girls. Immunity from arrest means law enforcement can't interfere with minors engaging in prostitution — which translates into bigger and better cash flow for the pimps. Simply put, more time on the street and less time in jail means more money for pimps, and more victims for them to exploit.


As Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O'Malley, a national leader on human trafficking issues, told the media, "It just opens up the door for traffickers to use these kids to commit crimes and exploit them even worse." Another prosecutor insightfully observed that if traffickers wrote legislation to protect themselves, it would read like SB 1322.

Minors involved in prostitution are clearly victims, and allowing our law enforcement officers to pick these minors up and get them away from their pimps and into custody is a dramatically better solution than making it legal for them to sell themselves for sex. That only deepens their victimization and renders law enforcement powerless to stop the cycle of abuse. SB 1322 is not simply misguided — its consequences are immoral.

Unfortunately for Californians, SB 1322 isn't an outlier — it's only the tip of the liberal iceberg. 2017 will see the Golden State subjected to wave after wave of laws taking effect that are well-intentioned but disastrous embodiments of progressive utopianism.

One such new Democratic-authored law throws open the door to even greater government dependency on the part of the poor by rolling back proven reforms. In 1996, welfare reform was one of the greatest social legislation achievements of the last century, ending the lifetime welfare system and putting millions of Americans on the road to self-reliance and self-respect. In its wake, California lawmakers passed a law barring increased payments to women who have more children while still on welfare, in order to encourage women to achieve independence before having more children.

It's a tough provision that works — which was apparently irrelevant to Gov. Jerry Brown, who just signed a bill repealing that prohibition. Henceforth, no matter how many children someone has while on welfare, the state government will ratchet up payments with each child, with no limit. Incredibly, the Democratic author of this bill claims she wants to discourage women from having more children while on welfare — but instead passed legislation replacing that effective reform with a law that restarts the cycle of welfare dependency.

Feds move to block firm that underpaid Senate cafeteria workers from contracts
Also from the Washington Examiner
Feds move to block firm that underpaid Senate cafeteria workers from contracts
By Sean Higgins
12/30/16 12:27 PM

In similarly inverted fashion, state Democrats have taken action to make California's youth unemployment rate — one of the nation's highest — even worse by boosting the minimum wage. It is an empirical fact that minimum-wage hikes increase unemployment among those who are the least skilled and most in need of entry-level jobs — our youth. Like other misguided liberal policies, this latest minimum-wage legislation will only lead to fewer jobs for our youth.

And the list goes on. Thanks to other new Democratic-sponsored bills, an estimated 50,000 felons will be voting in the next state election, many from their jail cells; if you go hunting with a buddy and lend him your shotgun, you'll be breaking the law; state employees will be forbidden from traveling on business to states which prohibit transgender bathrooms. The parade of inane and idiotic legislation in California is virtually unending.

The common thread running through this avalanche of liberal-left legislation is the total absence of common sense and a stubborn insistence on ignoring human nature. On a certain level, we shouldn't be surprised. After all, progressives still believe eliminating poverty is a matter of spending enough money on enough government programs. Despite spending $15 trillion on anti-poverty and welfare programs since 1965, our national poverty rate is actually slightly higher today than it was then.

California is loaded with natural resources and talented people who want to work hard, be successful and enjoy the fruits of that success. The tragedy is that California is in the grip of liberal politicians who believe we can help underage prostitutes by making it legal for them to be prostitutes; who believe we can reduce welfare dependence by increasing opportunities to become dependent; and who think we can increase employment by making it more expensive to hire people. California is ruled by a political party that places a higher priority on dictating to public schools their mascot choices than enabling parents to send their kids to the school of their choice.

Do Brown and the Democrat politicians behind this wave of bad legislation mean well? I believe they do, but unfortunately they're only succeeding in proving that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. It's the bad luck of Californians that they're dragging the rest of our state down that road with them.

This person they are calling an alt-right troll, is rich British gay man who has had black boy friends. He is already a millionaire due to the money he made from the sale of an internet company he founded. Milo pisses them off because he doesn't tow the "gay" line the way they think he should.

Beyond the fact that its specious that cutting payments will be effective in reducing pregnancy over a broad swath of women (the idea is that many of these pregnancies are unplanned - not rationally, er, conceived) what exactly does the opposite of this proposal do?

Not give more money to women who are having babies to take care of those kids? What would you propose? Let's leave aside for a moment the moral question of the mothers. Do the children have to suffer? So, they get to live in poverty because of what their mother did/didn't do/couldn't do/dad left etc.? They don't get to eat? Just throw them aside Spartan style?

What is a common sense and moral solution to this?

btw, that person's claim to understand human nature is..lets just say it conflates issues with nurture..

Why are these women getting pregnant when all of the 'nurturing' is funded by the tax payer? Do these women not care about their downloads?

This is becoming your standard fallacious reply to everything: "but, but, the Clintons".

There were consequences for Hillary Clinton's (and her husband's) past transgressions. There were lots of things she did that were not acceptable. Accordingly, millions and millions of people, myself included, refused to vote for her. She lost the election. And the same as there were consequences for Hillary's and her ilk's unacceptable acts and omissions, there will likewise be consequences for Trump's and his ilk's unacceptable acts and omissions. Why isn't that okay enough for you?

You don't get it and it's clear you don't get Trump. This is evidenced by you swallowing hook line and sinker the MSM narative that Trump is a freind to Russia. I know it's hard to be objective if you won't stop drinking the Kool-Aid. If you did just a little bit you might be able to see past your bias.

I completely agree. Russia hacked information and gave that information to the people. If it wasn't even an "attack". It was blowing a Democrat cover up and not allowing democrats to lie to US citizens. Obama is literally punishing Russia for finding information and telling you the truth.

If nothing else, 0bama is petulant.

My reply was addressed to Blatham, not you.
There was nothing either false or fallacious in it ( you appear to have a fixation on syllogisms ).
The context was a response pointing out the hypocrisy of Blatham's continued pretense of objectivity in his "decades long (ahem ! ) "study" of American politics, and the stark contrast between the accusations he was making towards Palin and others, compared to his repeated denials with respect to the Clintons.

What are the qualifications for membership in Clinton's "ilk" ?

Inequality in America is getting worse


http://money.cnn.com/2016/12/22/news/economy/us-inequality-worse/index.html?iid=surge-story-summary



The financial well-being of the average family is a house of cards, ready to fall at any given moment. That's a fact. A bout of unemployment or a serious illness or injury can destroy immediately the financial security a family spent a lifetime to build. And every position of national government power -- the head chairs of every administrative and regulatory agency -- will soon be occupied by the nation's wealthiest people spearheading their own self-serving agendas. It appears the inequality between the "haves" and the "have nots" will continue to grow, and "conservative" families will suffer just as much as "progressive" families.

It got worse during the 8 years of 0bama's rule, he thought is was the right thing to do - he was wrong.

This begs the question: When exactly was 0bama ever right?

I'm afraid I have to give your thesis a failing mark again. You are not going to make it into second year at this rate. And then your mother is going to be on your case.

You want to have your cake and eat it too... Obama has been in charge for 8 years, as many of us have been saying, he did nothing for the middle class but divide and conquer us into little groups. For all the "America is better off since Obama came into office", it seems your article is saying the very opposite. You also want to claim that it is going to get worse under Trump. How can you even know when things have gotten worse under Obama, which means his policies didn't work. A different set of policies are in order to try and fix things.

As one wag said earlier today, "Congratulations to those who picked "one" as the answer to "How many black presidents would it take to get the GOP into the pro-Russia cheering squad".

Bush and Obama both struggled on our economy. However, we must remember that Obama took over soon after the 2008-2009 recession, and the world economy was also struggling. The major problems have been that the middle class and poor continues to struggle.
But, according to history, democratic presidents did better for our economy.
That doesn't prove democratic presidents are better for our economy; it may be luck based on many world variables such as the cost of energy.