monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Scott Walker's Wisconsin continues to scrub its websites of climate change mentions

contemplating the apparent intelligence of the average voter I have to admit its a possibility.

It looks like Sean Spicer is going to be a complete douchebag.

Quote:

President-elect Donald Trump’s press secretary pick questioned Sunday whether Hillary Clinton will be “punished” for what he said were her attempts to influence the election.

When asked about the U.S. intelligence assessment that Russian hackers tried to influence the presidential election in favor of Trump during a Sunday segment on ABC’s “This Week," Sean Spicer turned the question around.

“When are we going to start talking about the other side of this? Which is: What did Hillary Clinton do to influence the election? Is she being punished in any way?” Spicer asked, referencing the fact the Democratic nominee received debate questions ahead of time during the primary.

...Why aren’t we talking about ... other influences on the election?” he asked.

“Why aren’t we talking about Hillary Clinton getting debate questions ahead of time?

LINK
The least important part of this is "questions" in the plural. It was a single question so far as I can discover (but note that the reporting here also makes that mistake). And we'll note it was absolutely appropriate for CNN to can Brazille for this.

The obvious douchebaggery from Spicer here is trying to draw an equivalence between one candidate receiving a debate question ahead of time with an unfriendly foreign nation's insertion into the US election in an effort to influence which candidate would be victorious.

Quote:

Who is the person Trump has appointed to be his modern-day J. Edgar Hoover?

That's a concern many have commented on. Knowing this guy's record of seeking vengeance on perceived opponents/critics, what might he get up to given access to and control over all the existing mechanisms of surveillance and the Justice Department? Add to that his demand for deep personal loyalty in those under him and the picture gets more than a little alarming.

". . . but, but, the Clintons."
That appears to be the standard right-wing response.

Frugal1 wrote:

Liberaltardation is real, and it is widespread here on A2K.

Libtards are not aware of their affliction, and neither are their friends.

These individuals deserve a wide berth.

If you were to develop a brain tumor would you seek the advice and treatment from someone who has a degree in one of the many branches of psychology?

Have you ever considered seeking counseling from someone who has a degree in psychology? Maybe someone who has an understanding of behavioral health?

Quote:

Wouldent it be great to live until the end of Trumps term? Hopefully only 4 years.

Aside from the damage this guy is sure to cause, an interesting aspect here is how long he'll last before enough Republicans/conservatives come to see him as a serious problem and begin steps to rid themselves of him. I will be very surprised if he lasts four years.

But do we really want Pence?

For six years, since they took back the House of Representatives, Republicans have added to a pile of legislation that moldered outside the White House. In their thwarted agenda, financial regulations were to be unspooled. Business taxes were to be slashed. Planned Parenthood would be stripped of federal funds. The ­Affordable Care Act was teed up for repeal — dozens of times.

When the 115th Congress begins this week, with Republicans firmly in charge of the House and Senate, much of that legislation will form the basis of the most ambitious conservative policy agenda since the 1920s. And rather than a Democratic president standing in the way, a soon-to-be-inaugurated Donald Trump seems ready to sign much of it into law.

The dynamic reflects just how ready Congress is to push through a conservative makeover of government, and how little Trump’s unpredictable, attention-grabbing style matters to the Republican game plan.

That plan was long in the making.

I have no doubt Trump will abuse the power of the presidency because he already has a history of abusing power.

Why Corporations Are Helping Donald Trump Lie About Jobs

President-elect Donald Trump would like everybody to believe that his election is energizing the economy by forcing businesses to create thousands of jobs in the United States. And companies like Sprint seem perfectly happy to go along with this fiction because they know they can profit handsomely by cozying up to Mr. Trump.

On Wednesday, Mr. Trump said Sprint’s top executive had told him the company would add 5,000 jobs “because of what’s happening and the spirit and the hope.” But it turns out that the jobs are part of a previous commitment by Sprint’s parent company, SoftBank, whose chief executive said at Trump Tower in December that it would invest $50 billion and create 50,000 jobs in the United States. And even that promise was part of a $100 billion technology fund that SoftBank announced in October, before the election. In sum, Mr. Trump’s statement was hot air, just like his tweet in which he thanked himself for an increase in a consumer confidence index last month.

It’s easy to see why SoftBank and Sprint might want to help Mr. Trump take credit for creating jobs. SoftBank’s chief executive, Masayoshi Son, wants the Department of Justice’s antitrust division and the Federal Communications Commission to allow a merger between Sprint and T-Mobile...This is crony capitalism, with potentially devastating consequences.

America Becomes a Stan
...with only a couple of weeks until Inauguration Day, Donald Trump has done nothing substantive to reduce the unprecedented — or, as he famously wrote on Twitter, “unpresidented” — conflicts of interest created by his business empire. Pretty clearly, he never will — in fact, he’s already in effect using political office to enrich himself, with some of the most blatant examples involving foreign governments steering business to Trump hotels.

This means that Mr. Trump will be in violation of the spirit, and arguably the letter, of the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which bars gifts or profits from foreign leaders, the instant he recites the oath of office. But who’s going to hold him accountable? Some prominent Republicans are already suggesting that, rather than enforcing the ethics laws, Congress should simply change them to accommodate the great man.

U.S. Lending Support to Baltic States Fearing Russia

“You’ll find out on Tuesday or Wednesday.”

A Year To Protect Democracy

The most important political task of 2017 transcends the normal run of issues and controversies. Our greatest obligation will be to defend democracy itself, along with republican norms for governing and the openness that free societies require.

To say this is not alarmist. Nor is it to deny the importance of other issues. Preserving the gains in health insurance coverage achieved by the Affordable Care Act should be a high priority. So should preventing a shredding of the social safety net and stopping budget-busting tax cuts for the best-off Americans.

But even these vital matters are secondary to preventing a rollback of democratic values and a weakening of the institutions of self-rule, at home and around the world.

There should be no mistaking the dangers democracy confronts. The rise of far-right parties in Europe, the authoritarian behavior of governments in Turkey, Hungary and Poland, and the ebbing of center-left and center-right parties that were part of the postwar democratic consensus would be troubling even without the rise of Donald Trump. His emergence should sharpen our concern. “A right-wing demagogue in charge of the world’s most influential repository of democratic values,” wrote Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf, “is a devastating fact.”