This report from the Hedgeclippers details Trump’s big hoax, his pretense of being a populist who would fight for the little guy against Wall Street and bring down the elite.
The joke’s on us. All the elites he railed against are running the country.
Drain the swamp? He expanded it! Another joke.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Guardian has a long piece on the connections behind Trump’s funders the Mercers and data collection, the use of bots and algorithms, to influence public opinion and increase belief in those alternative facts. It’s a long read, well worth the time.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farage?CMP=share_btn_tw
“But there was another reason why I recognised Robert Mercer’s name: because of his connection to Cambridge Analytica, a small data analytics company. He is reported to have a $10m stake in the company, which was spun out of a bigger British company called SCL Group. It specialises in ‘election management strategies’ and ‘messaging and information operations’, refined over 25 years in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan. In military circles this is known as “psyops” – psychological operations. (Mass propaganda that works by acting on people’s emotions.)…
On its website, Cambridge Analytica makes the astonishing boast that it has psychological profiles based on 5,000 separate pieces of data on 220 million American voters – its USP is to use this data to understand people’s deepest emotions and then target them accordingly. The system, according to Albright, amounted to a ‘propaganda machine’…
Facebook was the key to the entire campaign, Wigmore explained. A Facebook ‘like’, he said, was their most ‘potent weapon’. ‘Because using artificial intelligence, as we did, tells you all sorts of things about that individual and how to convince them with what sort of advert. And you knew there would also be other people in their network who liked what they liked, so you could spread. And then you follow them. The computer never stops learning and it never stops monitoring.’ ”
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Thanks for the link, Christine!
Most have no clue as to what is actually going on and how much they are being mentally manipulated.
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Great info, Christine…thanks…wow. Get off Facebook and all social media is the Take Away.
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“Second Incident in One Week || Dozens of headstones broken at Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia ”
And this is this morning’s headline…so again rampant anti Semitism prevails and is encouraged by Trumpsters.
And yesterday, the American hero boxer and activist Muhammad Ali’s namesake son was questioned for hours at the airport about being American and Muslim, where his answers were not believed by the government interrogators.
Today, the LA Times features a multi page story of Latinos returned to Salvador. None were criminals, some were born in the US or came as babies.
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Draining the swamp means one thing to the people the malignant narcissist fooled to vote for him. To Littlefingers Donald Trump draining the swamp means flushing the U.S. Constitution down a toilet after wadding it up and using it to polish his gold toilet seat.
This will happen if the GOP lets it happen.
This will happen If the GOP fails to act and at least 5-percent of the people do not rise up in a bloody revolution/civil war. I read somewhere that it takes at least 5-percent of a country’s population to have a chance at a successful revolution. The malignant narcissist has his 5-percent, America’s racists and/or white supremacists. Where is ours?
I also recently read that most if not all of the large cities have large Democratic majorities while the GOP controls most of the rural areas and smaller towns.
For instance, even Salt Lake County in Utah (where Salt Lake City is located) voted for Hillary Clinton 175,863 to the malignant narcissist’s 138,043. 56-percent to 44-percent
The GOP is using extreme gerrymandering to take over state legislatures and the U.S. House of Representatives but that isn’t working to control cities where Democratic majorities are too large to successfully gerrymander.
Almost 81-percent of Americans live in the large cities and their immediate suburbs.
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First they take over the legislature than they gerrymander to make it stay that way. The fault lies with the Democrats for loosing the States they should never have lost.
I can understand the South even the West east of the Rockies
That they lost the rust belt, the mid west even Pennsylvania and upstate NY . Let me go vomit now and get it out of the way before I call Steve Isreals replacement on Monday to demand an impeachment. Another corporate lackey.
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WOW!
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New movie coming to a theatre near you soon:
The Salmon Swamp Monster Maull’s* The Minions of Murica.
*Those from the St. Louis area will understand.
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For those not from the St. Louis area, the marketing slogan of the company referenced: “Don’t baste it, Maull it”.
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LOL! Best barbecue sauce- ever! 😄
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Did you see that Ted Drewe’s recently won an award (by whom I don’t know) for having the best ice cream in the world, yes in the world??
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I did see that, and when I go to St.Louis to visit relatives, I still visit Ted Drewe’s!
And technically, it’s “frozen custard,” not “ice cream.” 😄
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Trump ran as a Republican, he belongs to the GOP, that says it all, done finished. The GOP is in no way shape or form a traditional or normal political party; not that a normal political party is anything to rave about. The GOP is instead a far right wing/libertarian/Ayn Randian off the farm movement. The GOP and Trump want to privatize everything and they want to destroy the New Deal and the Great Society programs. Their solution to everything is lowering taxes on the rich, the powerful and the big corporations which already are paying little to nothing in taxes. The vomitable GOP mantra: lower taxes, LOWER TAXES (on the rich), personal responsibility, limited government, smaller government that you can drown in a toilet bowl and “free” market solutions. The GOP “solutions” for health care: free market solutions, tort reform, Health Savings Accounts, buying health insurance across state lines, competition and making patients have more responsibility and more skin in the game. Translation: you’re on your own, tough luck, you should have become a millionaire, don’t get sick. And if you do get sick, then die, die, die right away. HSAs are the biggest and cruelest joke of a very cruel political party. Only the rich can put enough away into an HSA for it to be worth anything. Most Americans are barely able to put anything away for a rainy day let alone for a medical emergency. One visit to the ER can wipe out the average person’s HSA in a flash.
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Trump and Bannon hijacked the GOP, just as radical extremists hijacked Islam.
Where are the moderate Republicans? Where are those who said that divisions over foreign policy stops at the water’s edge?
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With respect, I disagree that Trump and Bannon hijacked the GOP. Their fascist ideas line up precisely with the establishment’s choice in 2016, Ted Cruz, it only has a different book cover. They distilled its essence and what we now have is a logical outgrowth of a strategy that began when Newt Gingrich assaulted the leadership of Bob Michel, one of the last decent, moderate Republicans. It crystallized when Bob Dole decided to run for president and oppose health care reform—something he supported in principle before he needed to shore up his bona fides with conservatives in 1996.
After 1996, moderate Republicans were few and far between. Chris Shays was one. Even Lamar Alexander sold his soul at the alter of doctrinaire Republican insurgent conservatism in order to keep his office and chair a committee. Arlen Specter walked a line for a while by watching polls and being the only Republican who steadfastly stood for science and medical research. The last Republican who believed in governing as a collaboration between majority and minority was Mark Hatfield. Today moderate Republicans like Joe Manchin and Heidi Heitkamp parade as conservative Democrats.
Trump, Bannon, Sessions, Priebus, the ALEC-directed Republican state legislatures, governors like Snyder, Walker, Scott, Bevin, Brownback, Fallon, Hutchinson, Abbott (and Lt. Gov. Patrick, who, in Texas has the real power), Paige, Haslem, and others are not aberrations. They are the mainstream GOP. Trump and Bannon (much as you have argued about DeVos in education) have not changed them; they only exposed the reality of what had been artfully and successfully repackaged and rebranded for the past 20-plus years.
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GregB
Pretty much !!!!!
I kind of like the Maher script on Reagan posted it before but it is great.
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That was pretty good Joel! Thanks for posting. Can’t disagree with a word of it.
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YES Joe…as in make America Crap Again.
Segregate schools, have back alley abortionists, have more tent cities as poor houses, enrich insurance and pharma as they diminish health care, destroy all the environment to produce profits, tax the poor to redistribute all money to the top.
Make America the most despised nation on earth.
All are the Bannon/Trump goals…and McConnell and Ryan should wear the pink caps with ears for going along with all of it, as should all their Repub colleagues who don’t fight for all Americans, but only pander to the rich
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Exactly, Ellen.
But forget the tent cities for the homeless, because the police will be in there to raze them and evict the homeless, as they have already been doing in a number of cities. Where the homeless are supposed to go after that, they don’t know and they don’t care. Get arrested for trespassing and go to jail, I guess. At least that will make the increasingly privatized prison industry happy. 😪
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Joe, Remember when we had Republicans like Clifford Case & Nelson Rockefeller?
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I remember.
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Now I voted for Jacob Javits the Republican Senator from NY . I think Rockefeller would not have been running when I first was able to vote and he moved to VP shortly after. . Rockefeller had the backing of NY Labor. Both were already seen as way to liberal. Even then by the Goldwater wing
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too
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Leaked tapes reveal Trump’s offer to his ‘real group’
By Mark Sumner Daily Kos
Monday Feb 20, 2017 · 9:05 AM CST
All those everyday working stiffs who think they have a friend in Trump need to spend a minute listening to him talk to the $200k a seat members of his club.
“So, this is my real group,” Trump said at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, on November 18, according to the audiotape. “These are the people that came here in the beginning, when nobody knew what this monster was gonna turn out to be, right?”
And for his “real group” Trump makes some special invitations that he wasn’t handing out to the small crowd he gathered at a Florida airport.
“We’re doing a lot of interviews tomorrow — generals, dictators, we have everything,” Trump told the crowd, according to an audiotape of his closed-to-the-press remarks, obtained by POLITICO from a source in the room. “You may wanna come around. It’ll be fun. We’re really working tomorrow. We have meetings every 15, 20 minutes with different people that will form our government.”
“We’re going to be interviewing everybody — Treasury, we’re going to be interviewing secretary of state,” he continued. “We have everybody coming in — if you want to come around, it’s going to be unbelievable … so you might want to come along.”
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Here’s the latest email from the White House. I’m SO glad that he wants to hear from me.
I filled out an accompanying survey with my suggestions on how to Make America Great Again. I started of by saying get rid of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education. Get rid of Steve Bannon. Racism and bigotry have no place in our government. Set up an independent inquiry into Trump’s conflict of interest, lack of moral ethics and connections with Russia. etc.
………………..
The White House
In just two days, President Donald J. Trump will deliver his highly anticipated first Address to a Joint Session of Congress.
There is an incredible spirit of optimism sweeping across the Nation, and in preparation for this address, the President has hosted numerous listening sessions at the White House. During these meetings he has heard from men and women from all over the country about issues that are impacting American families, communities, and workers.
Now is your chance to give your input. We want to know what issues you want President Trump to focus on and your ideas for the future of our country.
The President is checking off the promises he made to the American people, and he won’t stop until the job is done.
The forgotten men and women of this great Nation will be forgotten no longer. That is the heart of this movement. As President Trump has made clear, this is your country and this is your Government, and now we want to hear from you.
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More lies. More crap from the malignant narcissist in the White House.
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I think that portraying Trump as an internationally unhinged figure who is detached from reality is accurate. He is trying to destroy our world by crying out “Fake News” whenever something doesn’t agree with his alternative facts.
………….
Can the US Remain a Super Power Under Trump? @alternet
It will be difficult under a leader who is an international figure of disdain and is often visibly detached from reality.
…It will be difficult for the US to remain a super-power under a leader who is an international figure of fun and is often visibly detached from reality. His battle cry of “Fake News” simply means an inability to cope with criticism or accept facts or views that contradict his own. World leaders who have met him say they are astonished by his ignorance of events at home and abroad.
This cannot go on very long without sizeably diminishing American global influence as its judgement and actions become so unpredictable. Over the last three quarters of a century, countries of all political hues — dictatorships and democracies, republics and monarchies — have wanted to be an ally of the US because it was the most powerful player in world affairs.
It will remain so but the degree and nature of its primacy is changing significantly for four reasons. The US has a leader who appears unhinged to an extent not true of any of his predecessors. Secondly, political combat in the US has reached an all-absorbing ferocity not seen since the 1850s. This does not mean that the last act of this crisis will be a civil war, but American society is more divided today than at any time since the conflict between North and South. From the moment Trump took office he has shown no inclination towards compromise and his divisiveness inevitably makes America becomes a lesser power than it was….
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/can-us-remain-super-power-under-trump#.WLQ-ah6NUGY.gmail
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Carol Malaysia,
Other countries not only ridicule him, they won’t share state secrets with the US anymore for fear they will be tweeted or given to Putin. But then, the CIA is reluctant to tell him anything important
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Trump would have to almost totally destroy the EPA ($8 billion) and the State Department ($50 billion) to come up with his military spending increase of $54 billion. He’s totally looney.
…………………..
Trump lays out hike in military spending…BBC US & Canada
US President Donald Trump is seeking to boost defence spending by $54bn (£43bn) in his proposed budget plan for 2018, which is about a 9% increase.
The blueprint also calls for deep cuts elsewhere, including to foreign assistance and environmental budgets…
,,,,,,,,,,,,
Analysis – Anthony Zurcher, BBC News North America Reporter
Keeping both of his campaign promises – boosting the military and protecting welfare – will put the president in a tough bind.
If he wants to boost the defence budget by $54bn without adding to the deficit, that money will have to come from somewhere – and mandatory spending on welfare and debt interest takes nearly 70% of the budget off the table.
Early reports are that the Environmental Protection Agency is facing sharp cuts, but its total annual budget is just over $8bn -a drop in the bucket.
The State Department has also been singled out as a source for the needed funds, and its $50bn annually (including $22bn in direct aid) makes it a fatter target.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39108194
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Oh, Carolmalaysia, there are plenty of other departments that he can cut funds from to give more money to the military. HHS, the Interior Department, Housing and Urban Development, the Labor Department, and so on.
I mean, let us just cut or eliminate Food Stamps, housing help for the poor, medical research, the CDC, any consumer protections whatsoever, sell off all the national forests, parks, monuments, etc. and if that’s not enough, they will get around to cutting and privatizing Social Security and Medicare.
See? Plenty of money.
{{Sigh}}
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