monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Someone posted a series of tweets a while ago, and I think it really gets to the core of these persistently repeated falsehoods:

Trump administration tells EPA to freeze all grants, contracts

The Trump administration has instructed officials at the Environmental Protection Agency to freeze its grants and contracts, a move that could affect everything from state-led climate research to localized efforts to improve air and water quality to environmental justice projects aimed at helping poor communities.

An email went out to employees in the agency’s Office of Acquisition Management within hours of President Trump’s swearing-in on Friday.

Sean Spicer’s Stalinist apparition
Sean Spicer is the appropriate face of the new Trump administration. He is the White House press secretary, the spokesman and all of that, and he came into the briefing room on Saturday wearing the blank expression of Laurence Harvey after turning over the queen of diamonds in “The Manchurian Candidate.” You’ve heard of a molotov cocktail. Spicer was wearing a molotov face.

Vyacheslav Molotov was Joseph Stalin’s foreign minister. He was so scared of Stalin that when the Soviet dictator ordered Molotov’s wife exiled to Siberia and called for a vote by the leadership on the issue, Molotov abstained. In his dealing with foreign governments, Molotov never strayed from Stalin’s line, no matter how unreasonable. When confronted with facts, logic or the truth, he might break into a sweat. Usually, though, he just looked like Spicer.

As I have posted on several occasions, Trump has numerous facts which support his claims.

So why call it a "falsehood?"

When House Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s redbrick Georgian revival house in Janesville, Wis., was surrounded last July by women whose children were murdered by undocumented immigrants, conservative writer Julia Hahn published a scathing report and a blurry snapshot of Ryan’s departing SUV.

The headline: “Paul Ryan flees grieving moms trying to show him photos of their children killed by his open borders agenda.”

Three months later, Hahn wrote a 2,800-word story alleging that Ryan (R-Wis.) was the ringmaster for a “months-long campaign to elect Hillary Clinton.” It was just one of a torrent of posts over the past year that cast Ryan as a “globalist” who is cozy with corporations and an enemy of Donald Trump-style populism.

Now Hahn, 25, is expected to join the White House staff, serving as an aide to strategist Stephen K. Bannon, the controversial former Breitbart chairman and a powerful confidant of President Trump.

Because of what the press is doing now to me, I have secret service protection. We have packages delivered to my house with white substances.”

You've just been pointing to AB-60s which clearly state, on the card itself:
"This card is not acceptable for official federal purposes."

Attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions won’t commit to recusing himself from potential Justice Department investigations into controversies involving President Donald Trump — from Russia to business conflicts of interest — despite his vigorous campaigning on behalf of Trump during the 2016 election season.

In written responses to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sessions said repeatedly that he is “not aware of a basis to recuse myself” from issues surrounding Trump such as potential violations of the Emoluments Clause, a constitutional ban on officials accepting payments from foreign governments.

That differs from Sessions’ vow to recuse himself from any ongoing issues involving the federal probe into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. Sessions said during his confirmation hearing that he would step aside from any such investigations because his political rhetoric against Clinton during the campaign “could place my objectivity in question.”

But for Trump-related issues, Sessions declined to make the same commitment.

Is American Democracy Strong Enough for Trump?

As an American citizen, I have been rather appalled, like many others, at the rise of Donald Trump. I find it hard to imagine a personality less suited by temperament and background to be the leader of the world’s foremost democracy.

On the other hand, as a political scientist, I am looking ahead to his presidency with great interest, since it will be a fascinating test of how strong American institutions are. Americans believe deeply in the legitimacy of their constitutional system, in large measure because its checks and balances were designed to provide safeguards against tyranny and the excessive concentration of executive power. But that system in many ways has never been challenged by a leader who sets out to undermine its existing norms and rules. So we are embarked in a great natural experiment that will show whether the United States is a nation of laws or a nation of men.

...So I’m willing to let Trump govern without trying to obstruct every single initiative that comes from him. I don’t think his policies will work, and I believe the American people will see this very soon. However, the single most dangerous abuses of power are ones affecting the system’s future accountability. What the new generation of populist-nationalists like Putin, Chávez in Venezuela, Erdogan in Turkey, and Orbán in Hungary have done is to tilt the playing field to make sure they can never be removed from power in the future. That process has already been underway for some time in America, through Republican gerrymandering of congressional districts and the use of voter ID laws to disenfranchise potential Democratic voters. The moment that the field is so tilted that accountability becomes impossible is when the system shifts from being a real liberal democracy to being an electoral authoritarian one.

Spicer said that this is "demoralizing" for Trump.

The press secretary also argued that the media's treatment of Trump was unprecedented.

"I've never seen it like this," Spicer said.

U.S. judge finds that Aetna misled the public about its reasons for quitting Obamacare

Aetna claimed this summer that it was pulling out of all but four of the 15 states where it was providing Obamacare individual insurance because of a business decision — it was simply losing too much money on the Obamacare exchanges.

Now a federal judge has ruled that that was a rank falsehood. In fact, says Judge John D. Bates, Aetna made its decision at least partially in response to a federal antitrust lawsuit blocking its proposed $37-billion merger with Humana. Aetna threatened federal officials with the pullout before the lawsuit was filed, and followed through on its threat once it was filed. Bates made the observations in the course of a ruling he issued Monday blocking the merger.

Aetna executives had moved heaven and earth to conceal their decision-making process from the court, in part by discussing the matter on the phone rather than in emails, and by shielding what did get put in writing with the cloak of attorney-client privilege, a practice Bates found came close to “malfeasance.”

Aetna claimed this summer that it was pulling out of all but four of the 15 states where it was providing Obamacare individual insurance because of a business decision — it was simply losing too much money on the Obamacare exchanges.

Now a federal judge has ruled that that was a rank falsehood.

As for Aetna’s claimed rationale for withdrawing from all but four states, Bates [the judge] accepted that the company could credibly call it a “business decision,” since the overall exchange business was losing money; he just didn’t buy that that was its sole reason. He observed that the failings in the marketplace existed before Aetna decided to withdraw...

Try to imagine how Trump reacted when watching those marches grow and grow. Did he say to himself, "Wow, they're really concerned about my presidency. They may not have voted for me, but I represent these people, so I'd better take this seriously. So I'm going to show them I can be their president too. I may not win all of them over, but they're going to see that I'm not what they think."

Of course he didn't — the suggestion is laughable. He was surely seething at all these "haters and losers," a description he has favored in the past, as in, "I would like to extend my best wishes to all, even the haters and losers, on this special date, September 11th" or "Every time I speak of the haters and losers I do so with great love and affection. They cannot help the fact that they were born f---ed up!" (Those are real tweets.)

You're a whitey who never suffered from discrimination. I have.

"If he has to use swamp people to make America great again, why not?” said Fred Harris, a 42-year-old Trump voter who once took part in the chant at a Pennsylvania rally.

There are many who hope Trump’s supporters will hold him accountable. That they will insist he fulfill his promises about jobs or universal health coverage—and when those promises are broken, that their fervent support will turn into rage at having been duped, causing Trump anguish and eventually costing him re-election.

This is wishful thinking.

And those of us who worked Intell were horrified by the clown performance in front of the Memorial wall at CIA. That duplicitous asshole dishonored the men and women who died in service to their country. He used that wall as a prop to brag about his Time mag covers and complain about reporters......IN FRONT OF A MEMORIAL TO THE DEAD. if any of you want to spin that, just stop, just freaking stop, because those people died trying to protect YOU. Don't be dopes or ungrateful bastards, just shut up. Those stars are as important as the names on the Vietnam Nam memorial or the names of the dead from Iraq and Afghanistan. Just be grateful there are people who will put
their lives on the line for a bunch of sendintary assholes who like to complain about how some people suck the life out of America.

Donald Trump Is Becoming an Authoritarian Leader Before Our Very Eyes

...Trump’s self-centered decision process is authoritarianism, and it’s anything but irrational. He campaigned in an authoritarian style, with rallies where he riled up large crowds to jeer at the press and protesters. One of the defining tactics of his campaign was disinformation, coupled with accusations of the same against the media. That hasn’t changed now that Trump is president. The administration’s unified anti-press and anti-fact message over the weekend is part of a deliberate, long-term strategy that was hatched many months ago, and is only likely to intensify. The president will wage a rhetorical war against the media, with the intent of delegitimizing one of the few institutions that can hold him accountable, and he will wage it with his most effective weapon: Lies, damned lies, and false statistics.