monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Donald Trump’s long-time but informal adviser Roger Stone says the Secretary of State job was dangled in front of Mitt Romney in order to “torture” him for previously opposing the president-elect.
During a Sunday appearance on InfoWars with Alex Jones, a conspiratorial media outlet that has become a mouthpiece of the next president, Stone called Romney a “choker” and said that Trump was simply toying with him.
“Donald Trump was interviewing Mitt Romney for Secretary of State in order to torture him,” Stone claimed on the program. “To toy with him. And given the history, that’s completely understandable. Mitt Romney crossed a line. He didn’t just oppose Trump, which is his democratic right, he called him a phony and a fraud. And a con man. And that’s not the kind of man you want as Secretary of State.”

Paul Rosenberg ‏@PaulHRosenberg 35m35 minutes ago
Paul Rosenberg Retweeted Seth Cotlar
"Hostile takeover" in this thread is good template for Trump's actions. But "coup" or "regime change" more accurate to scale & scope.

Here's a pattern that continues

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Trump taps former Texas Gov. Rick Perry to head Energy Department he once vowed to abolish

That is, extremist ideologues usually tied into very big corporate money setting to the task of dismantling the institutions of government that Americans, as voters supporting such institutions, have built up over the last century. And they are setting to this under cover of deceits to bait and then switch. How many seniors who voted for Trump grasp what is intended for Medicare? Or Medicaid? How many, newly insured or protected under the ACA conceive properly of their new futures? How many get what could, and likely will, happens as a consequence of deregulation of environmental laws? And that's to list just a few such areas of concern.

The really serious problem in all of this is how difficult it will be to rebuild these institutions once they've been dismantled or made powerless.

The US is setting out now on a path which has no precedents in the free world.

The Dangerous Acceptance of Donald Trump
...If Trump came to power, there is a decent chance that the American experiment would be over. This is not a hyperbolic prediction; it is not a hysterical prediction; it is simply a candid reading of what history tells us happens in countries with leaders like Trump. Countries don’t really recover from being taken over by unstable authoritarian nationalists of any political bent, left or right—not by Peróns or Castros or Putins or Francos or Lenins or fill in the blanks. The nation may survive, but the wound to hope and order will never fully heal.

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the Stock Market agrees

Current and temporary stock market tendencies aren't a great place to hang your hat, McG. As some folks are likely to remind you when the wind changes, which it always does.

“The defining feature of the plutocratic insurgency is its goal: to defund or de-provision public goods in order to defang a state that its adherents see as a threat to their prerogatives. (Note that, conceptually, plutocratic insurgencies differ from kleptocracies; the latter use the institutions of state to loot the population, whereas the former wish to neutralize those institutions in order to facilitate private-sector looting. In practice, these may overlap or co-mingle.) Practically speaking, plutocratic insurgency takes the form of efforts to lower taxes, which necessitates cutting spending on public goods; reducing regulations that restrict corporate action or protect workers; and defunding or privatizing public institutions such as schools, health care, infrastructure, and social space.”

Welcome to our new Trumpian world, folks

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Donald Trump’s long-time but informal adviser Roger Stone says the Secretary of State job was dangled in front of Mitt Romney in order to “torture” him for previously opposing the president-elect.
During a Sunday appearance on InfoWars with Alex Jones, a conspiratorial media outlet that has become a mouthpiece of the next president, Stone called Romney a “choker” and said that Trump was simply toying with him.
“Donald Trump was interviewing Mitt Romney for Secretary of State in order to torture him,” Stone claimed on the program. “To toy with him. And given the history, that’s completely understandable. Mitt Romney crossed a line. He didn’t just oppose Trump, which is his democratic right, he called him a phony and a fraud. And a con man. And that’s not the kind of man you want as Secretary of State.”

McConnell also voiced skepticism that a multi-trillion dollar infrastructure bill was a good idea or use of the GOP’s time and resources, which could be a departure from Trump who has said infrastructure is a top priority.

You don't think there is a substantive difference in posting articles that challenge your POV or beliefs versus say, simply calling individual posters "cheese-eaters" (among many worse invective)?

Do you think that both equally are worthy of debate?

Bait and switch. Or X (Trump) tells lie and Y (McConnell) tells truth.

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McConnell also voiced skepticism that a multi-trillion dollar infrastructure bill was a good idea or use of the GOP’s time and resources, which could be a departure from Trump who has said infrastructure is a top priority.

I'm sure most people accept these "news" with a grain of salt. It's not a big deal whether it's true or not. In the scheme of things, it's not that important.

I appreciate your analysis that the Select Committee on Benghazi did not so much investigate what precisely happened in September 2012 in Libya, and was rather focused on destroying Secretary Clinton as a viable candidate for the 2016 election.

I suppose from that point of view, you have to argue that it was time and money well spent.

I have no complaint with the posting of articles that challenge my perspective. I do weary of the prodigious outpouring of them ( a very large % of the total space on this and other threads) from one member. all accompanied by vague claims of an evil underlying conspiracy and derisive, mocking characterizations of all who disagree with him.

When that is followed by pleas from him to others to ignore those who challenge him directly on this, accompanied, as they are, with overtones of imagined authority, I am sadly bemused and disappointed.