Says It All...

As America Opens Its Eyes...

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Americans Now Evenly Divided on Impeaching Trump

PPP's new national poll finds that Donald Trump's popularity as President has declined precipitously just over the last two weeks. On our first poll of his Presidency voters were evenly divided on Trump, with 44% approving of him and 44% also disapproving. Now his approval rating is 43%, while his disapproval has gone all the way up to 53%. If voters could choose they'd rather have both Barack Obama (52/44) or Hillary Clinton (49/45) instead of Trump.

Just three weeks into his administration, voters are already evenly divided on the issue of impeaching Trump with 46% in favor and 46% opposed. Support for impeaching Trump has crept up from 35% 2 weeks ago, to 40% last week, to its 46% standing this week. While Clinton voters initially only supported Trump's impeachment 65/14, after seeing him in office over the last few weeks that's gone up already to 83/6

America is beginning to wake up to the reality they elected a HORSES ASS in November.

Continue reading BELOW THE FOLD .

trump's Propaganda Must Be Exposed And Destroyed...

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Purveyor of Truth

Chris Cuomo has it exactly right. Although his words were much to polite in describing the constant allegations of "fake news" trump uses in his attempt to delegitimize journalists and news organizations that disagree with his agenda and policies.

While this site absolutely agrees that the Office of the President is always deserving of respect the present occupant of the Office of the President  is deserving of little to no respect whatsoever.

Attacks on the press for being ‘fake news’ have become a staple of President Trump‘s rhetoric, with CNN — hosts/reporters included — often being called out by name.

“The only thing that’s bothersome about it, is that I see being called ‘fake news’ as the equivalent of the n-word for journalists, the equivalent of calling an Italian any of the ugly words that people have for that ethnicity.That’s what fake news is to a journalist.,” CNN’s Chris Cuomo told Michael Smerconish on SiriusXM POTUS (Ch. 124) Thursday.

“It is an ugly insult and you better be right if you’re going to charge a journalist with lying on purpose and the president was not right here and he has not been right in the past,” Cuomo added.

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Cuomo was targeted in a @realDonaldTrump tweet in reference to his line of questioning aimed at Sen. Richard Blumenthal. Cuomo quickly refuted Trump’s commentary, showing a video clip that disputed the president’s claims.

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“It is naive for someone to not see the value in a clear picture of the good, bad and ugly that is going on in the mind of the most powerful man in the world,” Cuomo explained, referring Trump’s tweets. “This is a gift to journalists. It is a gift to any empowered citizen who wants to know what the motivations are for the workings of their government. We’ve never gotten this kind of unvarnished insight into a president’s motivations.”

Cuomo also made clear that he believes “the president deserves respect.”

“The office deserves respect. The office demands fairness. The office demands testing of what is said and what is done,” Cuomo said.
“And when he says something that is false, or as you say ‘demonstrably false,’ that matters,” he added. “His words have implications, we’re seeing them, we’re hearing them echo around the international political sphere. It matters what he says.”

While Cuomo admitted, “I think there’s a learning curve in that job for everybody,” he reminded journalists that they have a specific role when covering the president.

To fill in the blanks LIFT THE FOLD.

trump's Alternative False Facts Apparently Catching On... Among republicans Anyway

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Trump administration seen as more truthful than news media: poll

Democracy and our democratic republic is screwed. Republicans have finally succeeded in dumbing down America enough that it is willing to accept that down is up and up is down. That faith is science and science is conjecture. That by jettisoning our principles as a nation we will somehow become Great Again. That non Anglo Saxon cultures are a mortal threat to or security. That an ex KGB brutal authoritarian is to be trusted. That a man who stated he was a Leninist and wanted to bring the establishment down is deserving of a place on the NSC. That the education of the next generation should be entrusted to a women that knows squat about education. That truth and journalistic integrity is false facts and conspiracy theory is truth. There is more but you folks who believe the BS can do the homework yourself. If you actually care about the country and our republic.

The Trump administration is more trusted than the news media among voters, according to a new Emerson College poll.

The administration is considered truthful by 49 percent of registered voters and untruthful by 48 percent.

But the news media is less trusted than the administration, with 53 percent calling it untruthful and just 39 percent finding it honest.

The numbers split along party lines, with nearly 9 in 10 Republicans saying the Trump administration is truthful, compared with more than 3 in 4 Democrats who say the opposite.

The Emerson poll found that 69 percent of Democrats think the news media is truthful while 91 percent of Republicans consider the Fourth Estate untruthful.

Independents, meanwhile, believe both the administration and the news media are untruthful, with 52 percent saying the administration is untruthful and 47 percent saying the same about the media.

The poll echoes Gallup's annual poll on the public's trust in media, which showed before the election that 32 percent of Americans trusted the institution, including just 14 percent of Republicans.

The poll was conducted Feb. 5-6 with a sample of 617 registered voters and a margin of error of 3.9 percentage points.

 

One can only imagine what our rational founding fathers would think if they could know what their experiment in democracy has devolved into. The future can thank the republican party and trump for losing the promise.

GOP Making It Easier to Hack and Suppress...

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With trump as our president, a man no one should trust, and the legislative branch firmly in republican/conservative control is it surprising this happened? Or that is was and remains largely unknown by the American electorate.?

Never a conspiracy theorist it has become increasingly difficult not to believe and accept that voter suppression, rather than voter fraud, is the greater threat by far to our democratic republic.

In a little-noticed 6-3 vote today, the House Administration Committee voted along party lines to eliminate the Election Assistance Commission, which helps states run elections and is the only federal agency charged with making sure voting machines can’t be hacked. The EAC was created after the disastrous 2000 election in Florida as part of the Help America Vote Act to rectify problems like butterfly ballots and hanging chads. (Republicans have tried to kill the agency for years.) The Committee also voted to eliminate the public-financing system for presidential elections dating back to the 1970s.

“It is my firm belief that the EAC has outlived its usefulness and purpose,” said Committee chair Gregg Harper (R-MS), explaining why his bill transfers the EAC’s authority to the Federal Election Commission. 

Thirty-eight pro-democracy groups, including the NAACP and Common Cause, denounced the vote. “The EAC is the only federal agency which has as its central mission the improvement of election administration, and it undertakes essential activities that no other institution is equipped to address,” says the Brennan Center for Justice.

This move is particularly worrisome given reports that suspected Russian hackers attempted to access voter-registration systems in more than 20 states during the 2016 election. Moreover, the Presidential Commission on Election Administration set up by President Obama in 2014 outlined an “impending crisis” in voting technology and the Brennan Center found that 42 states used voting machines in 2016 that were at least a decade-old and at risk of failing. The EAC was the agency tasked with making sure these voting systems were both modernized and secure.

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It’s particularly ironic that the Trump administration is preparing to launch a massive investigation into nonexistent voter fraud based on the lie that millions voted illegally while House Republicans are shutting down the agency that is supposed to make sure America’s elections are secure. It’s more proof of how the GOP’s real agenda is to make it harder to vote.    

More BELOW THE FOLD .

America Is Resisting The Minority and Un American Rule of trump... And It's Working

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Purveyor of Truth

Patriotic Americans must keep marching, protesting (peacefully), and challenging every undemocratic, un-American, and authoritarian thing on trump's agenda. It is having the desired positive affect.

VOX - It’s easy to miss amidst Donald Trump’s frenetic pace of activity and nonstop media coverage, but the most important story in American politics right now isn’t about what Trump’s doing: It’s that the opposition is working.

The millions of people who marched in Washington and other cities around the world on inauguration weekend and then demonstrated again at airports the following weekend are making a concrete difference in the world. So are the tens of thousands who’ve called members of Congress or showed up in person at their events.

Trump is getting things done, but all presidents do that. Look at what he’s not getting done. A Republican-controlled Congress bowed to public outrage over an attempt to water down an ethics office. Trump dramatically downscaled his own executive order barring entry to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries. He’s having unprecedented difficulty getting his Cabinet nominees confirmed even though the Senate’s rules have changed to make confirmations easier than ever. Conservatives in Congress have put their big plans to privatize Medicare and public lands on hold. And the drive to repeal the Affordable Care Act is running into very big trouble.

None of this is based on the discipline and self-restraint on the part of the White House. It’s thanks to bold acts of resistance. The result is lives have been saved, many more lives have been demonstrably improved, and the proven template for future success has been created.

Not only have the resisters already markedly altered the trajectory of public policy, they have begun to make a difference in each other’s lives and their own conceptions of themselves. And this is the greatest threat to the Trump movement.

For the moment, Trumpism holds the vast preponderance of political power despite its thin electoral base. That means Trumpism will make progress, even in the face of effective resistance. But for the positioning to hold, Trump needs to convince his opponents that they are failing, so the prophesy will become self-fulfilling.

That is why it’s crucial for Trump’s opponents to be aware that protestors’ efforts are not futile. We know they can succeed because they are already succeeding. What’s needed is for Trump’s critics to continue to resist the siren song of sectarianism and keep at it. If they do, Trumpism will be buried.

More BELOW THE FOLD

Returning To Pre Dodd-Frank? Another Executive Order... trump File Day #10

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Republicans are again in charge. trump, the billionaire business and tax tax cheat is signing another executive order to roll back Dodd-Frank. Removing safeguards put into place by the Obama administration to shield the nation's economy from another meltdown trump is anxious to return to the freer wheeling unregulated days of yesteryear.

President Trump signed two directives on Friday, ordering a review of financial industry regulations known as Dodd-Frank and halting implementation of a rule that requires financial advisers to act in the best interests of their clients, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity.

Trump himself made his intentions clear in a meeting with small business owners Monday. "Dodd-Frank is a disaster," Trump said. "We're going to be doing a big number on Dodd-Frank."

These executive actions are the start of a Trump administration effort to reverse or revise financial regulations put in place by the Obama administration and seen by Trump and his advisers as onerous and ineffective.

Based on the description given by the administration official who briefed reporters, the directives the president is expected to sign Friday won't immediately do a big number on the law. The directive will instruct the Treasury secretary to meet with the agencies that oversee the law to identify possible changes.

"Americans are going to have better choices and Americans are going to have better products because we're not going to burden the banks with literally hundreds of billions of dollars of regulatory costs every year," said National Economic Council director Gary Cohn in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. Cohn, who was president and COO at the investment banking firm Goldman Sachs before joining the administration, added, "The banks are going to be able to price product more efficiently and more effectively to consumers."

The president of the nonprofit Wall Street watchdog Better Markets issued a statement blasting Friday's actions.

"The American people trusted candidate Trump when he said he was going to protect them from Wall Street's recklessness, but President Trump has betrayed that trust," Dennis Kelleher's statement says. "He is unleashing Wall Street on Main Street, which is exactly what the financial protections of Dodd Frank were put in place to prevent."

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Dodd-Frank, passed in 2010, is made up of many provisions across many different regulatory agencies, some of which — like the Labor Department's Fiduciary Rule — have yet to be implemented.

The intent of the law was to implement comprehensive safeguards to monitor and regulate financial institutions so their potential failures would not pose a risk to the entire economy.

Full NPR article BELOW THE FOLD.

Pelosi Hits Bannon Hard and trump By Extension... Trump File Day #9...

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Purveyor of Truth

It's time rational republicans and conservatives grow a set of palle and start standing up to the insanity trump has ushered into our government.



Never a Pelosi fan really, but on this one she is SPOT ON.

Article below the fold.

Conspiracy Theorists Possibly To Receive Press Credentials... (trump file day 8)

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Whoopee! Alex Jones and InfoWars to possibly get press credentials from the trump House in DC. Alternative facts and conspiracy journalism to gain prominence in the era of trump.

There’s too much crazy shit happening to keep track of it all. But let’s take a moment to reflect on the fact that Alex Jones, the nation’s leading conspiracy theorist and an ally of the president, appears to be on the verge of getting White House briefing room access for his conspiracy website

“I know I can get White House credentials, we've already been offered them, we're going to get them, but I've just got to spend the money to send somebody there,” Jones said in a video posted to his YouTube account last week. “Might be good to put a few reporters there, it's just all a money issue.”

After we reported Jones’ comments, a White House press aide issued a non-denial denial, telling BuzzFeed News that Jones himself “is not credentialed” and that the “White House press office has not offered him credentials.” Jones then claimed he had been taken out of context and was just considering applying for credentials.

But on Tuesday, Jerome Corsi -- Infowars’ newly-minted Washington, D.C., bureau chief and the author of the birther tome Where’s The Birth Certificate? -- announced that he had submitted the pertinent information to the White House to receive credentials. According to Corsi, the “White House press office today didn’t think there would be any problem in Infowars and Alex Jones and me getting press credentials.”

Here’s a brief list of Jones’ panoply of horribles:

Full article BELOW THE FOLD .

Conservatism In The Age Of The Tea Party and trump...

-MANY PRESENT DAY CONSERVATIVES-

People so close minded the vice grip on their brain has rendered them unable to think beyond conservative platitudes and hyperbole. Breitbart and InfoWars often constitute their base of knowledge.

Merriam Webster:  not willing to consider different ideas or opinions :  having or showing a closed mind  - He's becoming increasingly closed-minded in his old age.