Since Donald Trump began his stunning ascent from real estate mogul and reality television star to wall-building, Muslim-ban-promising Republican candidate to GOP nominee to president, there have been plenty of piercing editorials about him and his policies.

But perhaps none have been as scathing as the one published Sunday by the Los Angeles Times.

“It was no secret during the campaign that Donald Trump was a narcissist and a demagogue who used fear and dishonesty to appeal to the worst in American voters,” the Times editorial board wrote in the first of a four-part op-ed titled “Our Dishonest President.”

In September, the same editorial board called Trump “unqualified and unsuited to be president” and said his election would be “catastrophic for the nation.”

“Still, nothing prepared us for the magnitude of this train wreck,” the paper said Sunday.
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It’s becoming a trend. Earlier this month, in response to being called out by angry constituents during a town hall meeting, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) yelled at one of them to “shut up.”

This time, things got ugly in a hurry for Rep. Andy Harris’s (R-MD) town hall meeting at Chesapeake College in Wye Mills, Maryland.

As the Freedom Caucus member presented a Power Point presentation on his views about health care, the crowd booed and jeered him loudly.

At one point, Rep. Harris threatened a woman in the audience, telling her he’d have her thrown out if she didn’t stop yelling:

https://twitter.com/tommyxtopher/status/847950910055743488



The crowd was having none of it, as John Fritze of the Baltimore Sun reported:

[div style="border:1px solid #000000;padding:10px;class="excerpt"]
John Fritze ✔ @jfritze

Rep. Andy Harris to woman in front row of rows hall on Eastern Shore: "If you yell one more time like that..." Crowd goes ballistic.

With Wall Street as greedy as it ever was, and the Trump administration seeking to ditch banking restrictions enacted in 2008 to protect the little people, a handful of cities are considering a do-it-yourself alternative: Public banking is just what it sounds like—financial institutions owned and operated by a government entity. Officials in Philadelphia and Oakland, California, are taking a hard look at the idea, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, has done a feasibility study that concluded a city-run bank would benefit the community, socially and economically. If done right, the report found, the bank would create a "robust local lending climate" and bring in millions of dollars per year in revenue.

From 1910 to 1966, Americans could deposit and borrow small sums at US post offices.
There are already successful public banks in France, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere. There's even a robust American model: North Dakota has had a state-run bank for nearly a century. Although created by socialists, the Bank of North Dakota retains ironclad support among the red state's residents, many of whom credit it for helping North Dakota weather the 2008 financial crisis. Moreover, from 1910 to 1966, US post offices operated as de facto public banks where people could deposit and borrow small sums.

Leading the push in Oakland are progressive City Council members Rebecca Kaplan and Dan Kalb. "Public banking can give us a bank that is more responsive to the needs of the community," Kaplan told me, "rather than prioritizing the needs of shareholders who don't live in our community or the needs of corporate profit."

Kaplan says there are two key reasons Oakland should pursue public banking. The first is that it can help low-income people—and especially people of color who may face discrimination at corporate banks—secure loans at a fair rate. "Oakland has long suffered from redlining," Kaplan points out, and for-profit institutions can't necessarily be trusted to refrain from discriminatory tactics.
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If it feels, to you, like Donald Trump is doing a terrible job as president—you’re not alone. Recent polls have shown the president’s support cratering to historic lows, and a new Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday confirmed Trump’s unpopularity. Trump’s job approval rating stands at 37 percent with a whopping 56 percent of Americans disapproving of the job Trump’s doing. By comparison, nearly two-thirds of Americans approved of Barack Obama at a similar stage, and George W. Bush had an approval rating nearing 60 percent, while roughly 1-in-4 Americans disapproved of the former presidents two months into their first terms.

Inside the numbers, Trump’s support is eroding among Republicans—dropping 10 points—and his support among white voters and men—two demographics whose support was crucial to his election win—has also dipped. Trump’s personal characteristics are also proving to be deeply unpopular. According to Quinnipiac’s nationwide survey conducted March 16–21, some 60 percent of Americans think the president is not honest and does not share their values; 66 percent believe he is not level-headed; and 57 percent say President Trump does not share their values.



The majority of Americans also disapprove of how Trump is handling the major issues facing the country.



Only 19 percent of Americans believe that President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower during the election, according to the survey.

The weaponized fake news stories that have emerged of late are certainly not confined to just one end of the political spectrum and are dangerous to political discourse regardless of partisan tilt. But a recent spate of articles trumpeting the so-called “rise of progressive ‘fake news’” omits the context necessary to understanding why the right-wing fake news ecosystem is so uniquely destructive, and in doing so collapses the collective understanding of fake news into a trite and distracting argument about “both sides.”

During the presidential campaign, fake news purveyors -- by and large right-wing, hyperpartisan fringe websites -- unleashed a blizzard of politically motivated lies packaged as legitimate news largely designed to undermine Hillary Clinton and boost Donald Trump. The onslaught of fabrications was effective: Fake news stories outperformed real ones on Facebook in the final campaign stretch, and most Americans who saw fake news during the election believed it.

But as it becomes clearer how and why right-wing fake news stories proliferated and succeeded, media outlets are now beginning to document an ostensible “uptick in fake news … with a distinctly liberal bent,” as The Guardian’s Sam Levin describes it, and to compare it to the flood of conservative fake news stories shared during the election.

The Atlantic’s Robinson Meyer similarly writes that progressives have recently embraced fake news just like “conservative Facebook users [shared] stories that had nothing to do with reality” during the election, in what Meyer calls a “funny reversal of the situation from November.” And a BuzzFeed article claims that progressive “alarm, paranoia, and genuine outrage” are ushering in an increase in “ the left’s own distinct brand of the online phenomenon known as fake news.”

Some examples these outlets point to indeed fit the mold of weaponized fake news and are cause for concern. There are also other recent cases of unsubstantiated claims rocketing through the liberal blogosphere. Yes, fake news-purveying websites that cater to progressive audiences do exist and do, as BuzzFeed contends, “undermin(e) legitimate causes for outrage on the left.”

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Women’s health and family planning capabilities are once again being targeted by Republicans, as the Senate just voted to roll back crucial protections, put in place by President Obama, that shielded organizations like Planned Parenthood from discrimination in funding by state governments.

And Vice President Mike Pence was all too happy to help them do it:


[div style="border:1px solid #000000;padding:10px;" class="excerpt"] Steven Dennis ✔ @StevenTDennis

Smiling VP Mike Pence just cast tie-breaking vote on bill allowing states to block public-health grants to Planned Parenthood.
11:37 AM - 30 Mar 2017 · Washington, DC

(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer spent the better part of the week trying to sell the absurd lie that he did not know who walked House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) into the White House to be fed information that he used to defend Donald Trump. Eventually, Spicer abandoned that lie and said he is just not going to talk about “process” anymore, but a pair of new and promising threads emerged in its wake.

Spicer is not incapable of delivering an emphatic response, but he waffled when asked a pair of new questions involving the Nunes cover-up.

First, and most glaringly, Spicer completely fell apart when NBC News’ Kristen Welker asked him if Trump had directed White House officials to feed Nunes classified information:

https://twitter.com/tommyxtopher/status/847578235990716417

WELKER: Thanks, Sean. Did the President direct anyone in this White House or in his national security team to try to find information or intelligence to back up his assertion about wiretapping?

SPICER: I don’t — I’m not aware of anything directly. I’d have to look into that in terms of — again, there’s two sides to this. One is the information side, and two is the policy and the activities and the legal piece of what happened. And I don’t — those are big buckets, if you will.

WELKER: So it’s possible.

SPICER: I’m not going to comment on it.

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In light of his earlier work, the US intelligence community saw him (Steele) as "credible" (their highest praise).

The FBI thought the same; they had worked with Steele going back to his days in MI6.

~~
~~

{the article states that Steele come to the U.S. and was debriefed by the FBI}

But the CIA never interviewed him, and never sought to.

This comes from several people who are in a position to know.

They are alarmed at how the investigation is going, and worry it is being fumbled.

{the article did not put 'fumbled' in quotes, --- I think it should be. The FBI is investigating it. THe CIA is apparently not involved in this investigation even though they have expertise/knowledge of people, activities outsid the U.S. which the FBI most definitely does NOT. Then there's Comey._Bill USA}

In testimony at the Senate Intelligence Committee hearings on Russia's attempt to interfere in the 2016 election, cyber expert Clint Watts testified that Trump "used Russian active measures" against his political opponents over the course of the campaign.
Oliver Willis | Shareblue

Cyber expert Clint Watts, testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee as it investigates Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, told the panel that Donald Trump “used Russian active measures against his opponents” during the campaign.

Watts is currently a Robert Fox Fellow for the Foreign Policy Research Institute and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University. He served as a U.S. Army infantry officer, a FBI Special Agent on a Joint Terrorism Task Force, and as a consultant to the FBI’s Counter Terrorism Division and National Security Branch.

Active measures, or aktivniye meropriyatiya, is a Russian technique dating back to the days of the KGB and the Cold War of dispensing disinformation and propaganda in order to influence events within another country, particularly the United States.

link to Clint Watts' testimony before the House Intelligence committee

[blockquote style="border:solid 1px #000000;padding: 11px;"] WATTS: "The answer is very simple and it’s what nobody is really saying in this room. Which is, part of the reason active measures have worked in this U.S. election is because the Commander-in-Chief has used Russian active measures at time, against his opponents. On 14 August 2016, his campaign chairman, after a debunked –

LANKFORD: When you say his, who’s his?

WATTS: Paul Manafort —

LANKFORD: Okay.

WATTS: — cited the fake Incirlik story as a terrorist attack on CNN, and he used it as a talking point. On 11 October, President Trump stood on a stage and cited a – what appears to be a fake news story from Sputnik News that disappeared from the Internet. He denies the intel from the United States about Russia. He claims that the election could be rigged. That was the number one theme pushed by RT, Sputnik News, white outlets, all the way up until the election. He’s made claims of voter fraud, that President Obama’s not a citizen, that, you know, Congressman Cruz is not a citizen.

So, part of the reason active measures works, and it does today in terms of Trump Tower being wiretapped is because they parrot the same line."


The investigation is proceeding despite Republican attempts at sabotage, and the evidence of Russian meddling, while also in contact with the Trump team continues to pile up. It is vital for Americans to know what happened to their election, and what Donald Trump’s role in Vladimir Putin’s attack was.

One of the biggest mysteries in the strange case of Rep. Devin Nunes, the House Intelligence Committee chair who’s trying — and failing — to substantiate President Trump’s wiretapping claims, may have just have been solved.

In a bombshell report Thursday, the New York Times named the sources who provided Nunes with classified intelligence reports purportedly validating some of Trump’s wiretapping claims — and both of them are Trump administration political appointees working directly in the White House complex.

That means Nunes — the lawmaker charged with leading an investigation into the administration’s unfounded wiretapping allegations — used information he received from the Trump White House itself to publicly try to deflect blame from Trump. It also means Nunes was misleading the American public when he said his sources were whistleblowers, and that he went to the White House compound because it was the only secure place to review classified information. (This is not true: Capitol Hill has secure facilities for just this reason.)

Instead, we now know Nunes’s sources, and they’re far from disinterested parties. They are Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the National Security Council’s senior director for intelligence, and Michael Ellis, a White House counsel attorney who, prior to the Trump administration, worked for Nunes. Cohen-Watnick uncovered the raw intelligence, according to the Times, and Ellis briefed Nunes on it directly.

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