monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

South Florida has long been a laboratory for some of the nation’s roughest politics, with techniques like phantom candidates created by political rivals to siphon off votes from their opponents, or so-called boleteras hired to illegally fill out stacks of absentee ballots on behalf of elderly or disabled voters.

But there was never anything quite like the 2016 election campaign, when a handful of Democratic House candidates became targets of a Russian influence operation that made thousands of pages of documents stolen by hackers from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in Washington available to Florida reporters and bloggers.

The government that matters to me is local. I will always remember the day 14 years ago in St. Paul, Minn., when my daughter went into convulsions and I picked up the phone and in six minutes the rescue squad was in our living room, five uniforms looking after my girl and one uniform explaining to me about febrile convulsions. If you were in the midst of this crisis, Donald J. Trump would be the last person on earth you’d want to see come through the door. He would tell you all about how he won Michigan and bring in a podiatrist and give you a coupon toward one of his steaks. It’s going to be a long four years, people. Get back in touch with old friends. Take up hiking.
Read history. But not books about Germany in the 1930s — it’ll only make you uneasy.

In the Trump movie now playing in the American theater, connecting all the dots requires the artistry of a mapmaker and the insight of a psychic.

Or, perhaps, the critical eye of a movie reviewer.

The leading man, President-elect Donald Trump, is gradually revealing himself to be a hybrid of Daniel Plainview (“There Will Be Blood”), Keyser Soze (“The Usual Suspects”) and Gordon Gekko (“Wall Street”) — each a Machiavellian, sociopathic narcissist bent on reshaping the world in his own image.

Not to put too fine a point on it.

Whomever people thought they were voting for, sayonara to all that. The Trump of Fifth Avenue has returned to his palace. He’s the star of his own movie, and everyone else, especially the Republican base he so skillfully seduced, is mere crowd scenery. Sorry.

Donald Trump’s White House-in-waiting is already being roiled by divisions, with the conservative outsiders who helped power his historic victory colliding with a Republican Party establishment muscling its way in.

Insiders paint a picture of constant score-keeping and simmering suspicion within Trump world — one even called it “vitriolic.” And they foresee incoming White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, the party stalwart, and chief strategist Steve Bannon, the populist firebrand, headed for an inevitable clash

You realize 0bama changed the way employment/unemployment numbers
were reported so his destructive plans & policies were better able to fool
people like you.

Donald Trump used the latest stop on his so-called thank-you tour Tuesday to remind Wisconsin voters what he’s thanking them for.

The president-elect regaled supporters in West Allis with a roughly 30-minute tale of how a man who would have been content with losing after giving it his all wound up defying the polls and becoming America’s next president.

“Should I go over that evening just once quickly?” Trump asked, teasing the crowd just moments after insisting the media were “devastated” after his election night win.

Trump's flirtation with Bolton sends shivers through Senate

Donald Trump’s selection of ExxonMobil chief Rex Tillerson as secretary of state threatens to touch off a confirmation fight, but the man in the running to be Tillerson’s deputy could spark an all-out war in the Senate.

John Bolton, the mustache-sporting, Iraq War-cheering former United Nations ambassador, is possibly one of the least diplomatic diplomats ever to serve in the U.S. government. He has argued the U.S. should bomb Iran to stop its nuclear program, dismissed the idea of a Palestinian state and called the United Nations a "twilight zone."

Donald Trump warned Paul Ryan on Tuesday night that if the speaker “ever goes against me,” the president-elect will stop defending him — although he seemed to use a lighthearted tone when he said it.

During a "thank you" rally in West Allis, Wisconsin, Trump ticked off a list of local leaders who helped him to victory, thanking them for their efforts. But when he got to Ryan's name, some in the crowd started booing.

Ryan was a vocal Trump critic during the 2016 election, calling some of his remarks about minorities “racist” and rejecting Trump's campaign suggestion to ban Muslims from entering the country.

It seemed that some in the crowd had not forgotten those criticisms from Ryan.

“Speaker Paul Ryan! I’ve really come to …," Trump said, before the crowd cut him off with a mix of cheers and boos. “Oh, no! I’ve come to appreciate him. … He has been terrific, and you know, honestly, he’s like a fine wine: Every day goes by, I get to appreciate his genius more and more."

But then he added a warning, smiling while he said it: "Now, if he ever goes against me, I'm not going to say that, OK?"

You do know that since Obama has been in office the unemployment dropped from hovering around 10% to 4 point something? What do you think Trumps going to do, lower it to -5 %?

Was he serious? Well, no. McConnell said in an interview years later that these recommendations were political posturing, “playing for headlines” to distract voters from Watergate.

Wha!? GOP Now Claims Obamacare Doesn't Really Affect THAT Many People
When Republicans were campaigning against the Affordable Care Act, they often made it sound like the system was such a monstrosity, such a disaster, so big and overwhelming it was crushing the entirety of the the U.S. health care system and responsible for skyrocketing premiums in every sector of the insurance market. Now that they're on the verge of upending Obamacare, they are claiming that its reach is not so big after all. Suddenly, Obamacare's problems – and the number of people that repealing it will affect – are "relatively small."

This reduction in rhetorical scope is striking, given the language Republicans used to denounce the Affordable Care Act for the last six years.

"Obamacare is a malignant tumor that feeds and metastasizes on American liberty," Rep. Steve King (R-IA) once said of the law.

"Obamacare is doing tremendous damage across America, and in Utah in particular," Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said a year ago.

Reacting to a major 2012 Supreme Court decision upholding Obamacare, then-Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) gravely pronounced: "This ruling erodes the freedom of every American, opening the door for the federal government to legislate, regulate, and mandate nearly every aspect of our daily lives under the guise of its taxing power."

“If we don’t repeal and replace Obamacare, we will destroy health care in America,” Donald Trump warned a week before the election.

That was then.

This is now...

Rodrigo Duterte has announced he personally killed suspected criminals when he was mayor of his home city of Davao in the Philippines, cruising the streets on a motorcycle and “looking for trouble”.

The country’s president made the comments in a speech late on Monday night as he discussed his campaign to eradicate illegal drugs, which has seen police and unknown assailants kill around 5,000 people since he became president on 30 June.

“He’s in the tradition of Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, FDR and Ronald Reagan,” the former House speaker said.

Ok so your 2 premises are - 1. Hilary is definitely a liar. 2. We should only call liars out if they are public servants.

On point 1 - not saying you're wrong, but would love to hear about the most clear example and evidence that Hilary is a liar that really gets under your skin. Not hearsay, but something that is an undeniable fact.

On point 2 - I just fundamentally disagree. If someone is found to be lying to the public before they're in office, we should prevent them from taking any office altogether - rather than wait until they're in office to call them out.

Trump’s Secretary of State Pick Is the Best of a Bad Lot
Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson could serve as a check on hawkishness.

No, the change was designed to hide the real unemployment numbers and
the media went along with the plan by reporting that everything was fine &
getting better - it wasn't. Obamanomics & Obamacare are huge scams.