monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

"If you're looking at the CBO for accuracy, you're looking in the wrong place,” Spicer said. [The Hill, 3/8/17]

Sean Spicer ✔ @seanspicer
Bill gutting #ObamaCare would save half-trillion over a decade, CBO finds@thehill http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/264696-cbo-bill-to-gut-obamacare-would-save-half-trillion-over-a-decade …
6:13 PM - 4 Jan 2016

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
CBO now estimates that over 2.5M will lose jobs directly because of ObamaCare. REPEAL now before it is too late.
6:11 AM - 18 Apr 2014

"essential reading"

While concerns about political and media polarization online are longstanding, our study suggests that polarization was asymmetric. Pro-Clinton audiences were highly attentive to traditional media outlets, which continued to be the most prominent outlets across the public sphere, alongside more left-oriented online sites. But pro-Trump audiences paid the majority of their attention to polarized outlets that have developed recently, many of them only since the 2008 election season.

1. Compare similarities and differences. The ability to compare similarities and differences among two or more objects, living things, ideas, events, or situations at the same or different points in time. Implies the ability to organize information into defined categories.

2. Identify central issues or problems. The ability to identify the main idea or point of a passage, argument, or political cartoon, for example. At the higher levels, students are expected to identify central issues in complex political arguments. Implies ability to identify major components of an argument, such as reasons and conclusions.

3. Distinguish fact from opinion. The ability to determine the difference between observation and inference.

4. Recognize stereotypes and cliches. The ability to identify fixed or conventional notions about a person, group, or idea.

5. Recognize bias, emotional factors, propaganda, and semantic slanting. The ability to identify partialities and prejudices in written and graphic materials. Includes the ability to determine credibility of sources (gauge reliability, expertise, and objectivity).

6. Recognize different value orientations and different ideologies. The ability to recognize different value orientations and ideologies.

7. Determine which information is relevant. The ability to make distinctions between verifiable and unverifiable, relevant and non-relevant, and essential and incidental information.

8. Recognize the adequacy of data. The ability to decide whether the information provided is sufficient in terms of quality and quantity to justify a conclusion, decision, generalization, or plausible hypothesis.

9. Check consistency. The ability to determine whether given statements or symbols are consistent. For example, the ability to determine whether the different points or issues in a political argument have logical connections or agree with the central issue.

10. Formulate appropriate questions. The ability to formulate appropriate and thought-provoking questions that will lead to a deeper and clearer understanding of the issues at hand.

11. Predict probable consequences. The ability to predict probable consequences of an event or series of events.

12. Identify unstated assumptions. The ability to identify what is taken for granted, though not explicitly stated, in an argument.

I've wondered why more of the Republicans here don't provide links to articles of similar scope and depth — instead of obvious crap like this.

Clinton Aide Squeals: ‘Everyone Knew’ About Obama’s Illegal Wiretapping

Hillary Clinton’s former campaign manager Robbie Mook has become the latest Democrat to roll over and squeal on his former comrades, telling Fox News Wednesday that he and everyone else in the Clinton campaign knew Obama was wiretapping Trump Tower.

Anyone who says otherwise is lying to save their skin, Robbie Mook says, as Democrats scramble to clear their names. Democrats ran an arrogant, sloppy spying campaign against Trump because they assumed that a Clinton victory was certain. They didn’t think Trump would ever be in a position to expose their crimes.

Meet the Hundreds of Officials Trump Has Quietly Installed Across the Government
We have obtained a list of more than 400 Trump administration hires, including dozens of lobbyists and some from far-right media.

A Trump campaign aide who argues that Democrats committed “ethnic cleansing” in a plot to “liquidate” the white working class. A former reality show contestant whose study of societal collapse inspired him to invent a bow-and-arrow-cum-survivalist multi-tool. A pair of healthcare industry lobbyists. A lobbyist for defense contractors. An “evangelist” and lobbyist for Palantir, the Silicon Valley company with close ties to intelligence agencies. And a New Hampshire Trump supporter who has only recently graduated from high school.

These are some of the people the Trump administration has hired for positions across the federal government, according to documents received by ProPublica through public-records requests.

"The president is a neophyte to politics — he's been doing this a little over a year. I think a lot of the things he says, I think you guys sometimes take literally. Sometimes he doesn't have 27 lawyers looking at what he does which I think is t time refreshing and at times can also lead us to have to be sitting at a press conference like this answering questions that you guys are asking." ---Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif.

He went on to say that he thinks tweeting is good and the president shouldn't be attacked for it but that he shouldn't have to be "lawyered up" before he tweets. Apparently it's just accepted by everyone that the president is a childish cretin with no common sense.

Devin Nunes was a member of Trump's transition team and is now the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

So we have congressman who is charged with oversight of the intelligence community excusing the president's lunacy by saying he doesn't know what he's doing and blaming the press for taking him at his word.

This is how far we've gone down the rabbit hole, people.

Digby: This is how far we've gone down the rabbit hole, people.

Since the 2016 presidential election, more than 1,400 companies — and counting — have yanked their advertising from the right-wing website Breitbart News, where President Donald Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, was formerly the editor-in-chief.

The ad removals are the result of consumer backlash spearheaded by the Sleeping Giants, an anonymous collective of progressive activists who organize their protests on social media. The group has been urging people to blitz corporations with wake-up calls about the message the corporations are sending when they advertise on Breitbart, which is known for incendiary content that is frequently unsourced, false, and/or deliberately distorted.

Advocating and counselling murder, terrorism, the typical rapes, ... .

Nice guy.