monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Our nation entered this conflict reluctantly, yet with a clear and firm purpose. The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder.

Remember kids, this thread is about President Plump.

It is bullshit that the popular vote for Mrs. Clinton came from California.

Democrats who are having trouble getting out of the first stage of grief — denial — aren't being helped by the fact that, now that all the votes are counted, Hillary Clinton's lead in the popular vote has topped 2.8 million, giving her a 48% share of the vote compared with Trumps 46%.

To those unschooled in how the United States selects presidents, this seems totally unfair. But look more closely at the numbers and you see that Clinton's advantage all but disappears.

As we noted in this space earlier, while Clinton's overall margin looks large and impressive, it is due to Clinton's huge margin of victory in one state — California — where she got a whopping 4.3 million more votes than Trump.

California is the only state, in fact, where Clinton's margin of victory was bigger than President Obama's in 2012 — 61.5% vs. Obama's 60%.

Your source for your claim about California does not say that she won the popular only in California

She polled more votes because she won 20 states.

You are practicing deception, nothing new in your history here.

You don't understand the electoral system in the United States, nor the purpose of the Electoral College.

You're a conservative operative who wants to divert the discussion from President Plump.

You only succeed overnight (as regads teh United States) when there are usually not intelligent, informed people who can challenge your bullshit.

Lash and you just want to bash Clinton because it diverts the discussion.

You're ignorant, obsessed with hilarious conspiracy theories, and you're a nasty baggage.

Get yourself a hobby.

You might like to look into Hans Blix, and not the instigator of the BS that led to the illegal invasion, Walter.

On the contrary; the Iraqis were not in the process of rebelling against Saddam when we decided to invade.

The revelations overcame Edgar Maddison Welch like a hallucinatory fever. On December 1st, 2016, the father of two from Salisbury, North Carolina, a man whose pastimes included playing Pictionary with his family, tried to persuade two friends to join a rescue mission. Alex Jones, the Info-Wars host, was reporting that Hillary Clinton was sexually abusing children in satanic rituals a few hundred miles north, in the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant. Welch told his friends the "raid" on a "pedo ring" might require them to "sacrifice the lives of a few for the lives of many." A friend texted, "Sounds like we r freeing some oppressed pizza from the hands of an evil pizza joint." Welch was undeterred. Three days later, armed with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, a .38 handgun and a folding knife, he strolled into the restaurant and headed toward the back, where children were playing ping-pong. As waitstaff went table to table, whispering to customers to get out, Welch maneuvered into the restaurant's kitchen. He shot open a lock and found cooking supplies. He whipped open another door and found an employee bringing in fresh pizza dough. Welch did not find any captive children – Comet Ping Pong does not even have a basement – but he did prove, if there were any lingering doubts after the election, that fake news has real consequences.

I'm sure Walter is aware of the findings of Hans Blix. The quote is an example of the typical pro-war propaganda that was commonly used by neo-conservatives at the time.

is accurate. Your commentary is gratuitous.

It wasn't a war. It was an invasion.

Opinions have no place in a debate.

And there was a Korean "police action" and a "conflict" in Vietnam.

Who cares?

Roy Moore’s campaign appearance Monday night in northeast Alabama—his first rally since his Senate campaign was blown open by allegations of sexual impropriety and an assault involving teenagers—had the atmosphere of an old-fashioned religious tent revival. A Baptist preacher thanked God for Moore during an invocation, and prayed, “May we win this battle against a lost and dying world.” The head of the county Republican Party called the election “a spiritual battle we’re fighting.” The candidate called for a return to morality and said America can become great again only by acknowledging God. The standing-room audience frequently punctuated Moore’s comments with “amen.”

James Woolsey, the former CIA director and board member at Mike Flynn’s lobbying firm, took part in a “lengthy conversation” Saturday with the president, reported Business Insider.

Koch brothers’ ‘passive’ role in Time Inc. takeover met with skepticism

James Woolsey, the former CIA director and board member at Mike Flynn’s lobbying firm

A former top aide to White House chief of staff John Kelly intends to launch a last-minute write-in campaign in the race for Alabama's open Senate seat.

Retired Marine Col. Lee Busby, 60, of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, said Monday he plans to challenge Democratic candidate Doug Jones and embattled Republican Roy Moore for the state's open seat. He also launched a bare-bones website counting down to the Dec. 12 special election.

Three months ago, The Washington Post reported that even as Donald Trump ran for president, he pursued plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. The next day, The New York Times published excerpts from emails between Felix Sater, a felon with ties to Russian organized crime, and Michael Cohen, one of Donald Trump’s lawyers and Sater’s childhood friend, about the project. Sater was apparently an intermediary between Trump and Russia, and in a Nov. 3, 2015, email to Cohen, he made the strange argument that a successful deal would lead to Trump’s becoming president. Boasting that he was close enough to Vladimir Putin to let Ivanka Trump sit in the Russian president’s desk chair, Sater wrote, “I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected.”

These stories were, at the time, bombshells. At a minimum, they showed that Trump was lying when he said, repeatedly, that he had “nothing to do with Russia.” Further, Sater’s logic — that Putin’s buy-in on a real estate deal would result in Trump’s election — was bizarre, suggesting that some part of the proposed collaboration was left unsaid.

...It wasn’t Putin who fashioned a Republican Party willing to tolerate something close to treason if it’s the price of corporate tax cuts. Even if all the Republicans in Congress read Harding’s book, they probably wouldn’t act. But at least they’d know what they’re abetting.

Senators Race to Pass Tax Bill by Sweetening Gains for Rich
By JIM TANKERSLEY, ALAN RAPPEPORT and THOMAS KAPLAN
As lawmakers scrambled to shore up votes from wavering colleagues, the deal-making centered on changes that would widen the bill’s divide between the rich and the middle class.