monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

The push deeper into Europe may seem an oddly international approach for a brand that scorns the ideals of a global order. Yet Breitbart has a clear operational model: moving into markets where it can win an audience by appealing to anti-globalisation and anti-immigrant sentiment and by aligning itself with an existing opposition party. A connection to a political entity lends it credibility and also allows Breitbart to draw fragmented online communities together into an organised platform, says Angelo Carusone of Media Matters for America, which monitors conservative media in Washington, DC.

In Britain, where it launched in 2014, Breitbart loudly promoted the campaign of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) to leave the European Union. The Leave team used its content, and UKIP’s Nigel Farage became a columnist. Raheem Kassam, an editor on the site, went to work as Mr Farage’s aide. He has since returned and is leading Breitbart’s push to expand further.

Conditions are similarly ripe in France and Germany, media observers say. Elections are due in both countries next year and far-right candidates—Marine Le Pen of the National Front in France and Frauke Petry of Alternative for Germany—hope to do well. Breitbart will cheer on their respective parties.

Republicans ready to launch wide-ranging probe of Russia, despite Trump’s stance

What are we seeing in Donald Trump’s presidential transition so far? The emerging outlines of a bipolar presidency.

I’m not attempting a clinical diagnosis here. Maybe a better description is a Jekyll and Hyde administration. The president-elect is alternately making good choices (such as retired Marine Gen. James N. Mattis as defense secretary) and horrible ones (Ben Carson at Housing and Urban Development); sounding themes of national reconciliation and sounding crazed on Twitter; attempting magnanimity (opposing prosecution for his vanquished opponent, Hillary Clinton) and rubbing it in (attacking presidential rival Evan McMullin and basking once again in chants of “Lock her up!”).

Trump’s personnel choices seem designed to either reward personal loyalty or embody a certain perception of competence — the competence of generals who know how to give orders and of billionaires who know how to make money. Failed politicians, in this view, need to be schooled. Never mind that the habits of command are not immediately transferrable to some of the main tasks in a democracy — persuasion, compromise and public policy innovation.

...Republicans are now finding strategic brilliance in this attempt to keep the whole world off balance. But what happens when President Trump can truly throw the whole world off balance?

For many French voters, François Fillon is more than a leading contender for president in next year’s elections: He is viewed as a crusader in the throes of a holy war.

When Fillon handily won both rounds of France’s conservative primaries last month, he campaigned mostly on a genteel conservatism of economic restructuring and strengthened national security. But in a country that firmly defines itself as “secular” in its constitution, Fillon’s unexpected victory represented an astonishing prospect: the political reawakening of Catholic France after decades of slumber.

As right-wing and populist leaders across Europe — such as Viktor Orban in Hungary and Marine Le Pen in France — increasingly turn toward Christian values, Fillon has ignited a wave of nostalgia for a nation of traditional families and quaint village churches.

..Fillon, the presidential nominee of the center-right party now known as the Republicans, has repeatedly pledged to defend “family values” — which has often translated into staunch opposition to same-sex marriage and, lately, to adoption by same-sex parents. When the fervent Roman Catholic responds to terrorist violence, he often does so in the lofty language of religious rapture. The war against the Islamic State, he wrote in his recent book, is “a battle of the end times,” sounded with “trumpets of the apocalypse.”.

I actually can't really predict how the republican congress is going to deal with Trump. I don't know if they are going to follow his lead or their own. I also don't know how Trump is going to deal with congress. I know Pence is more involved with congress, but I don't know Pence's views on Russia and cyber security, do you?

Donald Trump on Thursday night defended his decision to select several billionaires to serve in his administration, arguing that he wants successful people to be "negotiating" for the country.

"One newspaper criticized me: ‘Why can’t they have people of modest means?’” Trump said at a victory tour rally in Des Moines, Iowa. “Because I want people that made a fortune! Because now they’re negotiating with you, OK?”

"It’s no different than a great baseball player or a great golfer,” he added. “These people have given up fortunes of income in order to make a dollar a year, and they’re so proud to do it, and you watch, you watch what’s gonna happen. It’s gonna happen fast, too."

Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Education Department, Betsy DeVos, has spent two decades successfully pushing "school choice" in her home state of Michigan — a policy that she and her husband vowed in 1999 would “fundamentally improve education.”

Except the track record in that state shows that it hasn’t.

Despite two decades of charter-school growth, the state’s overall academic progress has failed to keep pace with other states: Michigan ranks near the bottom for fourth- and eighth-grade math and fourth-grade reading on a nationally representative test, nicknamed the “Nation’s Report Card.” Notably, the state’s charter schools scored worse on that test than their traditional public-school counterparts, according to an analysis of federal data.

“Sometimes you have to prime the pump,” Trump told Time Magazine, explaining why he wants a big infrastructure spending package — the sort of Keynesian economic spending policy that Tea Partyers regularly denounced as a dire threat to the republic throughout the Obama years.

...It should be noted that many Republicans did support a highway spending package at the end of last year. But now, Republicans are privately conceding that the underlying Keynesian principle that they may well accept under Trump is basically the same one many condemned under Obama — as a dire threat to transform the country into something no longer recognizably American.