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Bill USA

Bill USA's Journal
Bill USA's Journal
December 17, 2016

PBS reports on Fake News: they should start with the biggest fake news story: Clinton's email

"scandal".

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/will-new-tools-help-facebook-users-get-facts-fake-news/

attempted to post this comment on PBS Newshour site. But it doesn't look like they're going to let it appear so I'll post it here.


IF you are going to report on Fake News you should start out with the biggest Fake News story of the election: Hillary Clinton's email "scandal".

You GOP toadies who make up M$M have talked more about Clinton's emails than any thing else. When Comey in the congressional hearing was questioned by Rep Matt Cartwright about the lack of Classified Headers on ANY of the emails in question, Comey had to admit - THAT NOT ONE OF THE EMAILS HAD A CLASSIFIED HEADER ON IT. When Cartwright asked Comey if it wasn't, in the lack of any classified headers, a reasonable inference for Sec Clinton to infer that there was no classified info in any of the emails. COMEY HAD TO ADMIT THAT WAS A REASONABLE INFERENCE FOR SEC CINTON TO MAKE. THUS COMEY CONFIRMED CLINTON DID NOT LIE WHEN SHE SAID SHE HAD NOT SENT OR RECEIVED ANYTHING MARKED CLASSIFIED.



and: http://www.politicususa.com/2016/07/07/hearing-backfires-gop-fbi-director-clinton-email-judged-classified.html

How many people actually know that Clinton did not violate any laws or regulations in how she handled emails? How many people know that not one of the emails in question was initiated by Clinton. They were all sent to, or forwarded to her.

But PBS Newshour and all the rest of M$M dared not report this anytime, anywhere. That would have debunked the narrative of Hillary Clinton, the untruthful, untrustworthy 'witch of the West'.

But despite the thousands of hours of insinuations and tendentious reportage, to help the GOP, Hillary Clinton won the election. But in one case, the Fraudster was correct, the election WAS rigged. HE won because the Electoral College and rules by states to award all their electors to the candidate who won in their state rather than in proportion to popular vote. Democracy be damned!

to find out the truth about the emails, readers should see: The real Clinton email scandal is that a bullshit story has dominated the campaign;
http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/4/13500018/clinton-email-scandal-bullshit

and: The Hillary Clinton e-mail ‘scandal’ that isn’t:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-hillary-clinton-e-mail-scandal-that-isnt/2015/08/27/b1cabed8-4cf4-11e5-902f-39e9219e574b_story.html?utm_term=.af2c179ad7c8

IF people want to be informed of the FACTS they would be better off going to www.HuffingtonPost.com, www.Democaticunderground.com, www.Thinkprogress.org, www.Politicususa.com, www.Newsweek.com, to name a few sites. If people want to know the facts and what is really happening they should turn off M$M GOP approved news, such as yours.
December 17, 2016

Hillary Clintons Inaugural Address - Bill Moyers & Michael Winship

http://billmoyers.com/story/hillary-clintons-inaugural-address/


Imagine that a day or two before Donald Trump’s inauguration, Hillary Clinton, as the candidate who received the greatest number of votes — and after a period of personal reflection and evaluation — addresses the nation.

My Fellow Americans:

On Friday, January 20th, Donald Trump will be inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States. As mandated by our Constitution, he received a majority of the votes in the Electoral College and thus for the next four years will be given the powers and responsibilities of our nation’s chief executive.

But I believe that I, too, have a mandate, one given to me by the 65 million of you who supported me over Donald Trump in the popular vote, some 2.6 million votes more than he received.

If we are to continue as a democracy, for the next four years and beyond, those voices cannot stay silent.
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Such a speech by the candidate who won the election should be made. Trump's assuming the office of the President is illegitimate. I don't give a fuck if the Electoral College is a tradition or that states decided to award all their electoral votes to the candidate who won their state. It is in opposition to the democratic principle of one man one vote.



December 16, 2016

Trump has been lying about the Russian hack. He just accidentally admitted it himself.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/12/16/trump-has-been-lying-about-the-russian-hack-he-just-accidentally-admitted-it-himself/?tid=hybrid_experimentrandom_1_na&utm_term=.5ed94c4d32ae


https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=&w=1484

In recent days, Donald Trump has been spinning a new narrative about CIA charges of Russian interference in our election: The administration did not leak the news of this finding until after Trump won, which shows this is just an after-the-fact effort to undercut the significance of his victory over Hillary Clinton. As Trump tweeted Thursday: “If Russia, or some other entity, was hacking, why did the White House wait so long to act? Why did they only complain after Hillary lost?”

This is not some small offhand remark. It represents an effort by Trump — one that is going to continue — to construct an alternative narrative to replace the increasingly substantiated one in which Russia may have in fact tried to interfere in our election to help him, which would obviously carry enormous significance on many levels.

But Friday, Trump send out a new tweet that accidentally reveals that he knows this entire narrative is a lie:

Are we talking about the same cyberattack where it was revealed that head of the DNC illegally gave Hillary the questions to the debate?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 16, 2016


Trump is referring here to news that broke in late October: That a hacked email showed that interim DNC chair Donna Brazile may have leaked a Democratic primary debate question to Clinton’s campaign in advance. Brazile publicly blamed this leak on Russian hackers who were out to divide Democrats by feeding the perception among Bernie Sanders supporters that the DNC was putting its thumb on the scales for her. This built on a formal statement that the intelligence community put out earlier in October declaring itself “confident” that Russia was trying to interfere in the elections by hacking into DNC emails.
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December 16, 2016

As Trump makes plans to dismantle the Fed Government, will Putin be one of his consultants?

Gingrich urges Trump to take aim at the federal bureaucracy, starting with VA
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/12/16/gingrich-urges-trump-to-take-aim-at-the-federal-bureaucracy-starting-with-the-va/?utm_term=.2d58faf02a35


Newt Gingrich called on President-elect Donald Trump to wage “straight-out war” on the federal bureaucracy, starting with Veterans Affairs (VA), which Gingrich called the “archetype of disaster.”

In a Washington Post Live interview Friday with The Post’s James Hohmann, the former House speaker attacked veterans’ service organizations and the union representing VA workers. He urged Trump to adopt a simple message: “Do you think people who kill veterans should stay in their jobs … [should] we make the government union people happy and keep in their jobs people who we know broke the rules and killed veterans?”

Gingrich also was critical of veterans’ organizations that want Trump to keep VA Secretary Robert McDonald in his position.

“The Veterans Administration [the previous name for VA] is a total disgrace and it’s embarrassing that the senior veterans’ organizations endorsed the current veterans’ secretary because he has failed totally to clean it up,” Gingrich said. “And they did it because they prefer the current status where they have access to [VA] offices, rather than making sure veterans are taken care of.”
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December 16, 2016

How The Medias Email Obsession Obliterated Clinton Policy Coverage - Eric Boehlert, MMFA

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/11/02/how-media-s-email-obsession-obliterated-clinton-policy-coverage/214242


And let's be honest, endless email coverage, most of which revolves around pure speculation, is just another excuse not to cover policy.




As I suggested in August, Clinton emails are the new Whitewater. Meaning, it’s a “scandal” in search of a crime and it’s a scandal production staged by Republicans with the eager help of the press. And yes you can substitute “Clinton Foundation” for “emails” and you get pretty much get similar results.

Part of that is because journalists are heavily invested in the emails storyline and have been since March 2015. Journalists want there to be a blockbuster story, just like it seemed clear so many journalists wanted the FBI to “reopen” its investigation last week. (They’re not.)

Part of that stems from a never-ending attempt to criminalize the Clintons. And part of that’s because the campaign press wants more spectacle to cover during the closing days of the election. (Especially anti-Clinton spectacle.)

“The media’s urgency to maintain drama in an election that was increasingly looking like a blowout” made the return of the email storyline “inevitable,” according to professors Matthew Baum and Phil Gussin, writing in The Washington Post. “A dramatic horse race in which the outcome is uncertain and continually fluctuating is perpetually novel. Additional stories about the candidates’ long-standing policy positions? Not so much.”
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December 15, 2016

Trump's similarities to Putin are evident, but will we call him out for what he really is?

None Dare Call it Treason

I may not like it, but I’m not surprised that Trump tapped Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a crusading climate change denier and an advocate of dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency, to run the EPA, presumably into the ground. Anyone who interpreted Al Gore’s meeting with Trump as a sign of his open-mindedness on climate change got played, just like Gore got played.

Similarly, I’m cynical but not shocked that Trump’s picks for treasury secretary, National Economic Council and chief adviser – Steven Mnuchin, Gary Cohn and Steve Bannon – are alumni of Goldman Sachs. A billionaire managed to hijack Bernie Sanders’ indictment of Wall Street and brand Hillary Clinton as the stooge of Goldman Sachs. The success of that impersonation isn’t on Trump, it’s on us.

I’m infuriated, but not startled that Trump refuses to disclose his tax returns, divest his assets, create a credible blind trust, obey the constitutional prohibition of foreign emoluments or eliminate the conflict between fattening his family fortune and advancing American interests. That’s not draining the swamp, it’s drinking it.

It’s abysmal that Democrats didn’t have a good enough jobs message to convince enough Rust Belt voters to choose their economic alternative to Trump’s tax cuts for the rich. It’s disgraceful that the media normalized Trump, propagated his lies, monetized his notoriety and lapped up his tweet porn. It’s maddening that the Electoral College apportions ballot power inequitably. But as enervating as any of that is, none of it is as dangerous to democracy as the CIA’s finding that Putin hacked the 2016 election on Trump’s behalf. Without firing a single shot, the Kremlin is weeks away from installing its puppet in the White House.
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December 15, 2016

How big is the gap between the donor class and ordinary Americans? Bigger than you think.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/12/15/how-big-is-the-gap-between-the-donor-class-and-ordinary-americans-bigger-than-you-think/?utm_term=.53f36bf7e720


Money’s influence is a perennial concern in American politics. [font size="3"]And with President-elect Donald Trump filling up his potential cabinet with millionaires, billionaires and his campaign donors, the discussion has become more prominent. {how about 'more important"..B USA}[/font]

A central question is whether donors, as a result of their financial support of politicians, exert disproportionate influence over public policy. Political scientists’ research has drawn differing conclusions.

Some suggest that donors are able to persuade elected officials to support the positions they favor. Other studies suggest that while the wealthy might be more influential than middle-class or low-income Americans, money is just one source of power, with higher levels of activism and participation among the affluent also helping them shape government policy.

~~
~~

Our new report for the public policy organization Demos, “Whose Voice, Whose Choice?,“ details the composition of the “donor class.” We analyze survey data that provides new insight into their political beliefs. In contrast to a diversifying U.S. population, donors are overwhelmingly white, male, and wealthy. They also tend to hold more consistently ideological political views than average Americans, particularly on the Republican side.
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December 15, 2016

The oil and gas industry is quickly amassing power in Trumps Washington

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-oil-and-gas-industry-is-quickly-amassing-power-in-trumps-washington/2016/12/14/0d4b26e2-c21c-11e6-9578-0054287507db_story.html?utm_term=.58b265db20f3

After eight years of being banished and sometimes vilified by the Obama administration, the fossil fuel industry is enjoying a remarkable resurgence as its executives and lobbyists shape President-elect Donald Trump’s policy agenda and staff his administration.

The oil, gas and coal industries are amassing power throughout Washington — from Foggy Bottom, where ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson is Trump’s nominee to be secretary of state, to domestic regulatory agencies including the departments of Energy and Interior as well as the Environmental Protection Agency.

“It feels like the grizzly bear in ‘The Revenant’ has been suddenly pulled off our chest,” said Luke Popovich, a spokesman for the National Mining Association.

The energy sector is no stranger to political influence. The oil industry once claimed a president as its own: George H.W. Bush, who co-founded and ran Zapata Oil before becoming the nation’s 41st commander in chief.
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December 15, 2016

Michael Flynn ran company that lobbied for foreign clients while he received intel briefings

http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/18/politics/michael-flynn-donald-trump-national-security-advisor/

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, President-elect Donald Trump's preferred choice for National Security Adviser, was running a company that was lobbying on behalf of foreign clients even as he was receiving classified intelligence briefings during the campaign.

The revelation comes as the Trump camp has taken a series steps to curb the involvement of lobbyists in the presidential transition efforts.

Robert Kelley, a former chief counsel to the House National Security Subcommittee and current general counsel and principal at the Flynn Intel Group, filed a lobbying disclosure report with Congress on September 15.

According to the official document, Kelley was working on behalf of Inovo BV, a Dutch firm owned by Turkish businessman, Kamil Ekim Alptekin.
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December 14, 2016

When it comes to his businesses, Trump is trying to sucker you yet again

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/12/13/when-it-comes-to-his-businesses-trump-is-trying-to-sucker-you-yet-again/?utm_term=.62ae1692a615


Donald Trump was supposed to reveal this week exactly how he’d be separating himself from the Trump Organization, but those of us who have been following this issue weren’t expecting much. He’d already made clear that he’ll just be turning the management of the organization to his children, which means that he’ll still be the owner. And that in turn means that he’ll be the one making the money. But now he won’t even be answering questions about that:

In a pair of tweets sent after 11 p.m., Trump wrote: “Even though I am not mandated by law to do so, I will be leaving my businesses before January 20th so that I can focus full time on the Presidency. Two of my children, Don and Eric, plus executives, will manage them. No new deals will be done during my term(s) in office.”

Trump was earlier scheduled to hold a press conference on Thursday — his first since winning the election Nov. 8 — to announce his plans for his businesses, but his transition team announced Monday that the press conference will be rescheduled for next month.


Trump’s tweets gave no indication that he will give up his ownership stake in his global real estate and licensing empire, which experts have advocated as the only way to ensure Trump could not profit from the impact of his own policies.

Actually, Trump hasn’t held a press conference since July, and the only interviews he does these days are with Fox. And here’s a prediction: That press conference he says he’ll give some time in January to detail and answer questions about how he’s separating himself from his business? Not gonna happen.

President-elect Donald Trump tweeted on Dec. 12, that he plans to hand over control of his businesses to his sons before the inauguration, and pushed back a scheduled news conference on how he will handle his business conflicts. (Video: Reuters / Photo: AP)
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Member since: Wed Mar 3, 2010, 05:25 PM
Number of posts: 6,436

About Bill USA

Quotes I like: "Prediction is very difficult, especially concerning the future." "There are some things so serious that you have to laugh at them.” __ Niels Bohr Given his contribution to the establishment of quantum mechanics, I guess it's not surprising he had such a quirky of sense of humor. ......................."Deliberate misinterpretation and misrepresentation of another's position is a basic technique of (dis)information processing" __ I said that
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