Last Call For Trump Cards, Con't

Donald Trump continues to be petty and vindictive, using the presidency to settle scores...or at least the transition period to do so.

Twitter was told it was "bounced" from Wednesday's meeting between tech executives and President-elect Donald Trump in retribution for refusing during the campaign to allow an emoji version of the hashtag #CrookedHillary, according to a source close to the situation. 

Twitter is one of the few major U.S. tech companies not represented at Wednesday afternoon's Trump Tower meeting attended by, among others, Apple's Tim Cook, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg and Tesla's Elon Musk — an omission all the more striking because of Trump's heavy dependence on the Twitter platform. With some 17.3 million followers of his account, the president-elect has made Twitter into the de facto press channel of his transition operation.

Trump has had public beefs with other tech execs at the sit-down. He's criticized Cook over Apple's refusal to decrypt a cellphone whose owner was implicated in a terrorist incident, for example, and Bezos over his ownership of The Washington Post. But, it seems, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's role in what the Trump operation saw as the breaching of a deal was a step too far for those close to Trump. 

The incident at issue was detailed in a Medium post last month by Gary Coby, director of digital advertising and fundraising for the Trump campaign. According to Coby, Dorsey personally intervened to block the Trump operation from deploying — as part of a $5 million deal between the social media company and the campaign — an emoji showing, in various renderings, small bags of money being given away or stolen. That emoji would have been offered to users as a replacement for the hashtag #CrookedHillary, a preferred Trump insult for his Democratic opponent.

The message to tech companies is clear: do what Trump wants, or else the power of the government will be used against you. Twitter wouldn't take money as a social media platform to officially insult Trump's opponent, so now it will be locked out of White House access.

Actually, that message is to everyone on the planet.  Better play Trump's game, because it's the only game in town, losers.  You have no choice...

...or you could resist.

How To Steal An Election, Con't

I've talked about NC Republicans actively trying to steal the election of Democratic AG Roy Cooper to the Governor's seat several times, and when I thought current NC GOP Gov. Pat "Bathroom Bill" McCrory conceded ten days ago that Cooper would be able to take office and move the state towards the light again.

How absolutely wrong I was.

Expanding beyond the disaster recovery legislation the General Assembly approved Wednesday, Republican lawmakers quickly proposed sweeping changes to state government, including proposals that would diminish the governor’s authority to make appointments. 

Lawmakers want to hobble the incoming Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, before he takes office Jan. 1 by making his Cabinet appointments subject to approval by the state Senate and cutting his ability to appoint members to UNC schools’ boards of trustees and the state Board of Education. 

Another proposal in the mix would equally divide election boards between the two major political parties, ending control by the governor’s party. 

Yet another provision would cut the number of employees who serve at the governor’s pleasure from 1,500 to 300, reversing an expansion approved for Republican Gov. Pat McCrory at the start of his term. 

Of the two dozen bills filed by both Republicans and Democrats on Wednesday night, only a handful are likely to be voted on during this special session. Those that are likely to move forward represent a significant shakeup by the Republican-controlled legislature.

Rick Hasen reads the fine print and discovers that the GOP, having been thwarted in stealing the election, are now trying to steal the office of governor itself.

It is much, much worse than it looks now that the bill is posted. The Democratic party appointees to the election board would chair in odd numbered years, and the Republican party appointees would chair in even numbered years (see page 4 of the bill), meaning that they would chair in each of the years in which there are legislative, congressional, and presidential elections. 

The state supreme court would be limited in reviewing state constitutional and federal challenges, giving the power instead first to an en banc panel of intermediate appellate court judges (who of course are Republican majority) and limiting appeals as of right (see from pages 20 on in the bill). 

If the bill passes in this form, I could see potential Voting Rights Act and federal constitutional challenges here, in part because the legislature would potentially be diluting minority voting power and making minority voters worse off, just at the time that their candidate of choice (Gov. Cooper) is poised to assume power.

Guess how far such a challenge would go in Trump's Supreme Court or Justice Department voting rights or civil rights divisions?

Folks, NC Republicans are essentially transferring all the governor's power to the GOP controlled assembly in an attempt to completely neuter Democrats, for the sole reason that a Democrat dared to win the race.

This is how America works now.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article120832758.html#storylink=cpy

Russian To Judgment, Con't

With the Russian DNC hack exposing the party's secrets to both the Russians and the GOP, it's important to remember that Hillary Clinton wasn't the only victim that leaks were used against in the 2016 elections.  Several House Democrats were done in by Putin and friends as well.

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.

“It was like I was standing out there naked,” said Annette Taddeo, a Democrat who lost her primary race after secret campaign documents were made public. “I just can’t describe it any other way. Our entire internal strategy plan was made public, and suddenly all this material was out there and could be used against me.”

The impact of the information released by the hackers on candidates like Ms. Taddeo in Florida and others in nearly a dozen House races around the country was largely lost in the focus on what was done to the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. But this untold story underscores the effect the Russian operation had on the American electoral system.

“This is not a traditional tit-for-tat on a partisan political campaign, where one side hits the other and then you respond,” said Kelly Ward, executive director of the D.C.C.C. “This is an attack by a foreign actor that had the intent to disrupt our election, and we were the victims of it.”

Democrats in state races were also victims of WikiLeaks.

The intrusions in House races in states including Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Ohio, Illinois, New Mexico and North Carolina can be traced to tens of thousands of pages of documents taken from the D.C.C.C., which shares a Capitol Hill office building with the Democratic National Committee.

The document dump’s effectiveness was due in part to a de facto alliance that formed between the Russian hackers and political bloggers and newspapers across the United States. The hackers, working under the made-up name of Guccifer 2.0, used social media tools to invite individual reporters to request specific caches of documents, handing them out the way political operatives distribute scoops. It was an arrangement that proved irresistible to many news outlets — and amplified the consequences of the cyberattack.

“It’s time for new revelations now,” the Guccifer 2.0 website proclaimed, as it began to pass out the D.C.C.C. documents, trying to entice reporters to look at them on their own. “All of you may have heard about the D.C.C.C. hack. As you see I wasn’t wasting my time! It was even easier than in the case of the D.N.C. breach.”

Cybersecurity consultants believe the hacking of the D.C.C.C. took place around March or April of 2016 after a staffer clicked on a so-called phishing email. The D.C.C.C. shut down its computer system for a week — from the moment it learned of the attack in June. But it was already too late to close the door. The consequences started to become clear in August when the hackers released the home addresses, cellphone numbers and personal email addresses of Democratic House members.

Internal Democratic party documents, including strategies and research, were used against Democrats in multiple close House races.  Those races were won by Republicans in nearly every case.

The Russians didn't just "damage our democracy".  They went after Democrats to keep Republicans in power.  They did that for a reason. And guess who was behind it?

Why, ol' Vlad himself.

U.S. intelligence officials now believe with "a high level of confidence" that Russian President Vladimir Putin became personally involved in the covert Russian campaign to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, senior U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News.

Two senior officials with direct access to the information say new intelligence shows that Putin personally directed how hacked material from Democrats was leaked and otherwise used. The intelligence came from diplomatic sources and spies working for U.S. allies, the officials said.

Putin's objectives were multifaceted, a high-level intelligence source told NBC News. What began as a "vendetta" against Hillary Clinton morphed into an effort to show corruption in American politics and to "split off key American allies by creating the image that [other countries] couldn't depend on the U.S. to be a credible global leader anymore," the official said.

And of course, Trump knew.  So now we have a major, major problem.

What will President Obama's response be?

StupidiNews!

• Donald Trump will face a deposition in early January involving a contractual dispute with celebrity chef Jose Andres after an order from a federal judge to proceed with the case.
• The Obama administration has issued a final rule on Title X federal funds, preventing states from blocking their use for family planning organizations like Planned Parenthood.
• China says it will be punishing an "unnamed US automaker" for violating trade laws in a move that is widely seen as a loud message to the incoming Trump administration's China criticism.
• New York's LaGuardia International Airport has once again taken the dubious honor of America's worst large airport, Portland International Airport is the country's best.
• Yahoo is now admitting that up to one billion email accounts have been compromised since August 2013, the largest corporate hack to date.

Last Call For An Unholy Christ-Mess

Religious freedom to Republicans means the right to beat you over the head with Christianity to the point where you have the "religious freedom" to accept Christian beliefs or face the wrath of the law.

Texas Attorney Gen. Ken Paxton is not happy over a school district’s decision to remove a biblical verse from a Charlie Brown poster, TWC News reports. The line that was removed is recited by Linus and reads, “For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a savior.” 

Paxton released a statement about the matter, in which he noted that having the line removed is a violation of the state’s Merry Christmas Law, which was adopted in 2013. He noted that because of the law, schools cannot “silence a biblical reference to Christmas” and called the removal of the verse an “attack on religious liberty.” 

However, employees at the school argued that they were not allowed to impose their views on students. 

Part of the Merry Christmas Law notes, “A display relating to a traditional winter celebration may not include a message that encourages adherence to a particular religious belief,” according to CBS News. 

The school district decided that based on that section of the law, “it is clear that this display was not in keeping with the Merry Christmas Bill (House Bill 308), which requires that a display not encourage adherence to a particular religion.

The part where the school system was actually following the law?  That doesn't matter. It's how the law is interpreted by the state.  In this case, the law is interpreted that religious freedom only applies to Christians.  That's blatantly unconstitutional, but the power of the state to coerce the school into doing this will happen anyway.

Just wait until there's a national "Merry Christmas" law, citizen.

The Heartbeat (Bill) Of America, Con't

And Ohio GOP Gov. John Kasich sucker punches women of the Buckeye State again and again as he bravely vetoes the ridiculously unconstitutional "Heartbeat Bill" only to heroically get the additional abortion restrictions he's wanted since taking office in 2010.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich today vetoed the Heartbeat Bill forbidding abortions when a fetal heartbeat can be detected while signing into law a second bill banning abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. 

The second-term Republican previously had expressed concerns about the constitutionality of the Heartbeat Bill, which would have been the most restrictive abortion law in the nation. 

Federal courts struck down identical measures in two states in finding it was an undue state restriction on a woman's right to an abortion at a point when some women do not realize they are pregnant. 

“I agree with Ohio Right to Life and other leading, pro-life advocates that SB 127 is the best, most legally sound and sustainable approach to protecting the sanctity of human life," Kasich said in a statement. 

With the Heartbeat Bill folded into House Bill 493, Kasich used his line-item veto to single out and remove the abortion language since it was accompanied by a $100,000 appropriation to create the Joint Legislative Committee on Adoption Promotion. He signed the other portion of the bill, dealing with child-abuse reporting requirements, into law. 

Kasich approved banning abortions after 20 weeks by signing Senate Bill 127, an Ohio Right to Life-supported bill, that forbids termination of "a human pregnancy of a pain-capable unborn child."

So Ohio now joins 18 other states with 20 week bans, the point of which is to argue that a fetus could be viable at less than the current legal definition of legalized abortion, 24 weeks, thus overturning Roe v. Wade.

Often referred to as “20-week abortion bans,” these laws nominally seek to ban abortion after or around 20 weeks’ gestation, though bills in several states effectively ban abortion at 18 weeks. Legal experts believe these laws are unconstitutional on their face because they undermine a key provision of Roe v. Wade, which established the right to an abortion in the United States up until fetal viability, generally determined by doctors to be around 24 weeks’ gestation. Were the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold one of these bans, it would effectively dismantle the backbone of the court’s 1973 decision legalizing abortion in the United States. Anti-choice leaders have been open about their long-view strategy involving 20-week abortion bans—to persuade the high court to overturn the viability principle on which Roerests. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2009 roughly 1.3 percent of all abortions performed in the United States were after 20 weeks’ gestation. There are many reasons women need abortions at this stage. A number of fetal and genetic anomalies cannot be identified until later in pregnancy, and some women find themselves facing pregnancies gone terribly wrong. Health conditions that threaten the woman’s life or health can develop at any point during a pregnancy. And a large share of women seeking abortions late in the second trimester do so because they face dramatically changed life circumstances or were unable to obtain an earlier abortion—a situation that’s increasingly common in states where laws are making abortion more expensive, more time-consuming, and more geographically inaccessible.

This is the real reason behind banning so-called "late term abortions".  And now that pathway to overturning Roe rests with Donald Trump's selection to the Supreme Court, stolen wholesale from President Obama by the GOP.

Meanwhile, Kasich gets to burnish his moderate credentials, and the window for legal abortion procedures closes a bit more in the US.

Very soon I suspect it will be shut completely.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

The NY Times pieces together the story of the DNC hacks by Russia into the 21st century's newest weapon of mass distraction, a Watergate of our era where most likely the criminals will never be punished, the abettors rewarded, and the country cracked into pieces.

Like another famous American election scandal, it started with a break-in at the D.N.C. The first time, 44 years ago at the committee’s old offices in the Watergate complex, the burglars planted listening devices and jimmied a filing cabinet. This time, the burglary was conducted from afar, directed by the Kremlin, with spear-phishing emails and zeros and ones.

An examination by The Times of the Russian operation — based on interviews with dozens of players targeted in the attack, intelligence officials who investigated it and Obama administration officials who deliberated over the best response — reveals a series of missed signals, slow responses and a continuing underestimation of the seriousness of the cyberattack. 

The D.N.C.’s fumbling encounter with the F.B.I. meant the best chance to halt the Russian intrusion was lost. The failure to grasp the scope of the attacks undercut efforts to minimize their impact. And the White House’s reluctance to respond forcefully meant the Russians have not paid a heavy price for their actions, a decision that could prove critical in deterring future cyberattacks. 

The low-key approach of the F.B.I. meant that Russian hackers could roam freely through the committee’s network for nearly seven months before top D.N.C. officials were alerted to the attack and hired cyberexperts to protect their systems. In the meantime, the hackers moved on to targets outside the D.N.C., including Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman, John D. Podesta, whose private email account was hacked months later. 

Even Mr. Podesta, a savvy Washington insider who had written a 2014 report on cyberprivacy for President Obama, did not truly understand the gravity of the hacking.
By last summer, Democrats watched in helpless fury as their private emails and confidential documents appeared online day after day — procured by Russian intelligence agents, posted on WikiLeaks and other websites, then eagerly reported on by the American media, including The Times. Mr. Trump gleefully cited many of the purloined emails on the campaign trail. 

The fallout included the resignation of Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, the chairwoman of the D.N.C., and most of her top party aides. Leading Democrats were sidelined at the height of the campaign, silenced by revelations of embarrassing emails or consumed by the scramble to deal with the hacking. Though little-noticed by the public, confidential documents taken by the Russian hackers from the D.N.C.’s sister organization, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, turned up in congressional races in a dozen states, tainting some of them with accusations of scandal. 

In recent days, a skeptical president-elect, the nation’s intelligence agencies and the two major parties have become embroiled in an extraordinary public dispute over what evidence exists that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia moved beyond mere espionage to deliberately try to subvert American democracy and pick the winner of the presidential election. 

Many of Mrs. Clinton’s closest aides believe that the Russian assault had a profound impact on the election, while conceding that other factors — from Mrs. Clinton’s weaknesses as a candidate, to her private email server, to the public statements of the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, about her handling of classified information — were also important. 

While there’s no way to be certain of the ultimate impact of the hack, this much is clear: A low-cost, high-impact weapon that Russia had test-fired in elections from Ukraine to Europe was trained on the United States, with devastating effectiveness. For Russia, with an enfeebled economy and a nuclear arsenal it cannot use short of all-out war, cyberpower proved the perfect weapon: cheap, hard to see coming, hard to trace.

Clinton and Obama gave us the era of "smart power".  But Vladimir Putin perfected it, much to America's eternal dismay, as the coffers will be looted thoroughly by Trump and his team before they turn out the lights and set the building on fire with us inside.

Maybe they'll even watch it burn.

StupidiNews!

• A humanitarian ceasefire to evacuate civilians in the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo has been shattered, both rebel and Assad regime forces are blaming each other.
• Bill Cosby returns to a Philadelphia courtroom today for a hearing on the number of witnesses who can testify against him in the actor's trial on multiple sexual assault charges.
• President-elect Donald Trump has named Montana GOP Rep. Ryan Zinke to head the Interior Department, Zinke is against selling public land but does want to open it to drilling.
• IBM CEO Ginni Rometty says the company's global plans to hire 25,000 will focus on US employees ahead of Silicon Valley execs meeting with President-elect Trump today.
• The Department of Energy says it will hand over public information to the Trump transition team, but not a list of staffers who worked on climate change issues as requested.

Last Call For Giving Them The Business

Newsweek's Kurt Eichenwald unloads on Trump's crooked empire in this cover story on The Donald's business conflicts of interests and how they are already a threat to national security, and Russia is only the tip of this brown, smelly iceberg.

Donald Trump hasn’t been sworn in yet, but he is already making decisions and issuing statements to world leaders that radically depart from American foreign policy, all to the benefit of his family’s corporate empire. Because of this, the next president of the United States is already vulnerable to undue influence by other nations, including through bribery and even blackmail. 

Given the vast scope of the clashes between the Trumps’ extensive business dealings and the interests of America, the president-elect vowed during the campaign to eliminate potential conflicts by severing ties to his company—yet, with only weeks to go until he takes the oath of office, he hasn’t laid out a credible plan. Trump’s sole suggestion to date—a “blind trust” run by his children—would not eliminate the conflicts, given that the money generated would still go to his family. Moreover, such a trust would be anything but blind: If Trump Tower Moscow goes under construction, Trump will see it while in Russia and know that his kids are making millions of dollars from it. That is why foreign leaders hoping to curry favor will do everything they can to help Trump’s family erect more buildings, sell more jewelry and make money through any means possible. Even if the family steps away from its company while Trump is president, every nation on Earth will know that doing business with the Trump Organization will one day benefit the family. The only way to eliminate the conflicts—sell the company, divvy up the proceeds—has been rejected by Trump, whose transition team refused to respond to any questions from Newsweek for this article. 

Some of the most egregious conflicts that have emerged involve countries in Asia and its subregions, particularly the Philippines. Global policy on the Philippines has been fraught with tension since the election in May of Rodrigo Duterte as the country’s president. Duterte, who boasted to voters during the campaign that he had shot a fellow law school student for teasing him, has championed the killing of suspected criminals and street children by vigilante death squads. In 2015, he said that if he became president, up to 100,000 people suspected of links to illegal drugs could be killed. Just months after his election, Duterte said he was eager to lead a genocide of up to 3 million drug addicts. “I'd be happy to slaughter them,” he said. “At least if Germany had Hitler, the Philippines would have [me].” And in September, an admitted hit man testified to a Senate committee in the Philippines that Duterte presided over a killing campaign when he was mayor of Davao City.

Despite universal condemnation of the ongoing slaughter of Filipinos, Trump signaled his approval of Duterte’s policies during a phone call on December 2. According to Duterte—an account that has gone uncontested by Trump—the president-elect endorsed his tactics as “the right way.” Duterte added: “[Trump] was wishing me success in my campaign against the drug problem.” (He also said Trump invited him to the White House, a courtesy not yet extended to Theresa May, the prime minister of Britain, America’s most important strategic ally.)As president, Duterte rapidly showed he was little concerned with the legal protections afforded to Filipinos suspected of crimes. 

During his first three months in office, 850 Filipinos were killed by death squads, apparently on little more than the suspicion that they were drug users and dealers. Since then, the estimated death toll has climbed to 4,500. The carnage has been condemned throughout the Western world; the Parliament of the European Union and two United Nations human rights experts have urged Duterte to end the massacre. One of the experts even appeared to suggest that Duterte and his government could be held legally accountable for committing mass murder in violation of international law. “Claims to fight illicit drug trade do not absolve the government from its international legal obligations and do not shield state actors or others from responsibility for illegal killings,” said Agnes Callamard, the U.N. special rapporteur on summary executions. In response to the denunciations, Duterte lashed out at the United States, threatening to align his country more with China.

So we're already cozying up to strongmen like Putin, Duterte, and Assad.  Hell, we *are* the new Axis of Evil these days, and the whole game is to make Trump and his family rich beyond their filthiest dreams of avarice.

Of course the rest of us will have to pick up the check.  And it's going to have an awful lot of zeroes at the end when the bill comes due.

Dispatches From Bevinstan, Con't

Another "Why did Kentuckians vote to take Obamacare away from themselves?" piece, this time from Vox's health reporter Sarah Kliff, as she takes a look at Kathy Oller. Oller's job is to help sign people up for Kynect in Whitley County, where 82% of the people there voted for Donald Trump in November.

Including, it turns out,  Kathy Oller.

I spent last week in southeastern Kentucky talking to Obamacare enrollees, all of whom supported Trump in the election, trying to understand how the health care law factored into their decisions. 

Many expressed frustration that Obamacare plans cost way too much, that premiums and deductibles had spiraled out of control. And part of their anger was wrapped up in the idea that other people were getting even better, even cheaper benefits — and those other people did not deserve the help. 

There was a persistent belief that Trump would fix these problems and make Obamacare work better. I kept hearing informed voters, who had watched the election closely, say they did hear the promise of repeal but simply felt Trump couldn’t repeal a law that had done so much good for them. In fact, some of the people I talked to hope that one of the more divisive pieces of the law — Medicaid expansion — might become even more robust, offering more of the working poor a chance at the same coverage the very poor receive. 

The political reality in Washington, however, looks much different: Republicans are dead seton repealing the Affordable Care Act. The plans they have proposed so far would leave millions of people without insurance and make it harder for sicker, older Americans to access coverage. No version of a Republican plan would keep the Medicaid expansion as Obamacare envisions it. 

The question is not whether Republicans will end coverage for millions. It is when they will do it. Oller’s three years of work could very much be undone over the next three years. 

In southeastern Kentucky, that idea didn’t seem to penetrate at all — not to Oller, and not to the people she signed up for coverage. 

“We all need it,” Oller told me when I asked about the fact that Trump and congressional Republicans had promised Obamacare repeal. “You can’t get rid of it.”

And that's typical.  The noise machine spent six years convincing white America that Obamacare was doomed to fail with all those people on it, so they voted for Republicans who would tweak the program and cut off those people who didn't deserve benefits.  Not like hard-working Americans like the people of Whitley County, Kentucky.

As Sarah Kendzior said back in May, Donald Trump won because he was the candidate of anguish.

Unlike Hillary Clinton, who seeks to continue Barack Obama's legacy, or Bernie Sanders, who offers hope through sweeping change, Mr. Trump homes in on anguish. He assures Americans that their fate is not their fault. He pledges to end their pain. And he does so by promising the public persecution of the most vulnerable citizens: ethnic, religious and racial minorities. 

In Mr. Trump's campaign, long-time losers – the mostly white industrial workers whose jobs began to disappear in the Reagan era – are promised to become instant winners, through means he has yet to articulate. The rest will be fired: denounced, deported, devalued. Mr. Trump redefines America through the politics of exclusion. He is tearing the country apart, and he will likely win what is left of it in November.

They're finding out now that the bulk of people on Obamacare were always poor white folk from the hills anyway, and that they're going to be the first people with their heads on the block when the axe comes thundering down. But guess what?  I have little sympathy for people who thought they were gladly condemning others to lose their health care in order to benefit themselves.  They voted for Trump because he was going to "fire" those people and make white America great again. Trump sold them the dream and they bought the coming nightmare hook line and sinker.

"Trump will take Obamacare from those people who don't deserve it, but never from me and my family."

That'll be on the gravestone of the Affordable Care Act in 2017.

It should be on the gravestones of a lot of Kentuckians over the next four years too.

You Get My Trump TV Whether You Want It Or Not

Looks like the GOP is going to Trump his broadcast propaganda arm after all, and we'll get to pay taxpayer dollars for it. Because why should Vladimir Putin have all the fun with state-run news agencies?

FOR YEARS, members of Congress have fumed about what they regard as ineffective U.S. public diplomacy, including the failure of broadcasting operations such as the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty to match the reach and apparent influence of networks such as Russia’s RT and Qatar’s al Jazeera. A frequent and arguably fair focus of criticism has been the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the body created to supervise government-funded media outlets while serving as a firewall between them and the political administration of the day. 

A radical change to that system is now coming — and it looks like one that Vladi­mir Putin and Qatar’s emir might well admire. An amendment quietly inserted into the annual National Defense Authorization Act by Republican House leaders would abolish the broadcasting board and place VOA, RFE/RL and other international news and information operations under the direct control of a chief executive appointed by the president. The new executive would hire and fire senior media personnel and manage their budgets.

With a confirming vote by the GOP-controlled Senate, President-elect Donald Trump will be able to install the editor of Breitbart News or another propagandist of his choice to direct how the United States is presented to the world by VOA, or how Russia is covered by RL. If Congress’s intention was for U.S. broadcasting to rival the Kremlin’s, it may well get its wish. 

You'd better believe that days of oversight of Voice of America and Radio Liberty are done with. They are now straight propaganda arms of the White House: Trump's White House.

How long before these outlets have "exclusive access to the President"?

StupidiNews!

• As Syrian and Russian forces close in on the city of Aleppo, UN officials say more than 80 civilians have been killed in their homes by pro-Assad forces. 
• The recount in three states of November's results by Green Party candidate Jill Stein has ended with minimal changes to state vote totals in Wisconsin.
• Legislation for casinos in Japan looks all but assured as a bill authorizing expanded gambling moves to Japan's upper house, where it is expected to easily pass PM Shinzo Abe's coalition.
• The price of oil has hit its highest level since July 2015 on continued pledges from both OPEC and non-OPEC countries to limit oil production worldwide.
• Game streaming service Twitch has rolled out anti-harassment chat tools to help prevent increasing abuse on more popular channels.

Last Call For Gloves Off

The White House isn't splitting hairs on this CIA Trump/Russia revelations, outright saying that Donald Trump knew full well he was benefiting from Putin's propaganda machine.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest said there’s no denying Trump benefitted from Russian hacking of political organizations during the campaign season.

“You didn’t need a security clearance to figure out who benefited from malicious Russian cyber activity,” Earnest said during the daily press briefing.“The president-elect didn’t call it into question," he continued. "He certainly had a pretty good sense of whose side this activity was coming down on.”

Earnest rattled off a long list of reported ties between Trump’s team and Russia, suggesting that members of Congress and the public knew of those connections before the election.

The spokesman also threw the White House’s support behind a congressional effort to investigate the claims, which came to light last Friday in a Washington Post report.
President Obama last week directed the intelligence community to compile a report into Russian hacking tied to U.S. elections. Earnest said the results could aid congressional investigators.

He noted that the only information published from the hacks, which reportedly hit Democratic and Republican groups, pertained to Democrats.

“It’s all information that is, as far as I can tell, undisputed,” Earnest said. “One conclusion it does lead me to is the special responsibility that members of Congress have to take a close look at this. Particularly those members of Congress who endorsed Trump in the elections.”He said some Republican lawmakers backing Trump are “wringing their hands about this” effort.

“I think they should spare us the hand-wringing and fulfill their basic responsibility, since the bar has been raised, based on their political choices.”

This is some pretty explosive stuff from the White House here.  They're loaded for bear on this and absolutely signaling a fight here.  So are Senate Democrats led by the outgoing Harry Reid (for now.)

In an exit interview with the Huffington Post, Senate Minority Harry Reid (D-NV) said that he believes that the Trump campaign was "in on" efforts to damage Hillary Clinton's campaign by using WikiLeaks.

“Someone in the Trump campaign organization was in on the deal. I have no doubt. Now, whether they told [Trump] or not, I don’t know. I assume they did. But there is no question about that,” Reid told the Huffington Post in an interview. “So there is collusion there, clearly.”

If you were somehow under the impression that the White House was going to soft-pedal this and be polite?  Hell no.  And good for them.  I am definitely hoping some of this evidence gets declassified and given to reporters, the sooner the better.

But It's Just A Theory...A Game Theory

Author and corporate strategist Eric Garland gave an interesting and messy analysis of the current Russia/Trump long game on Twitter on Sunday, and it's been captured on Storify for people to read.

<THREAD> I’m now hearing this meme that says Obama, Clinton, et al. are doing nothing, just gave up.

Guys. It’s time for some game theory.

— Eric Garland (@ericgarland) December 11, 2016

This subversion can take many forms: driving wedges between US-Commonwealth-Euro intel cooperation, break up NATO, create chaos.

— Eric Garland (@ericgarland) December 11, 2016

Plus, the Russians f**king rule at covert shit. Always have. Ask a cold warrior. Mucho respect for our adversaries. They do clever work!

— Eric Garland (@ericgarland) December 11, 2016

Russians as *people* are civilized, artistic, enamored of brilliance and tragedy, and generally proud. And should be. They do not like this.

— Eric Garland (@ericgarland) December 11, 2016

While the West is frivolous and lazy and "Post-History," the clever take advantage. And here begins our present story.

— Eric Garland (@ericgarland) December 11, 2016

It's worth a read and does have some good content, but I caution you, it's pretty rambling at points and other people have done better jobs for a fraction of the credit Garland is getting for this, and that's a problem.  Still, it's another point of view worth looking at. And yeah, the Russians kicked us when we were down, just like we did to them in 1990.

I Don't Have The Energy Anymore To Care

Trump looks like he's going to name former Texas GOP Gov. Rick Perry to head the Department of Energy.  You know, the infamous third department Perry couldn't name in the GOP debates when asked which federal departments he wanted to get rid of.

Donald Trump has narrowed his search for energy secretary to four people, with former Texas Governor Rick Perry the leading candidate.

People familiar with the president-elect’s selection process said two Democratic senators from energy-producing states -- Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia -- are also in the mix, along with Ray Washburne, a Dallas investor and former chairman of the Republican National Committee.

If Trump picks any of the four he’ll break with recent tradition of putting scientists at the top of the Energy Department. Among other things, the agency is responsible for policies on the safe handling of nuclear material and on emerging energy technologies.

Trump met with Perry and Washburne while attending the Army-Navy football game in Baltimore on Saturday. It was at least the second time he’d spoken to the men for potential roles in the new administration. Trump interviewed Heitkamp at Trump Tower in New York on Dec. 2, and is scheduled to meet with Manchin on Monday.

Again, the Obama administration's Department of Energy, under Dr. Ernest Moniz, was vital in coming up with the president's clean energy plan. Under Perry, it will certainly become the Trump's climate change denial arm as America will get back into the natural gas and nuclear plant business. After all, we'll need to award plenty of government power plant projects to Trump's oil, gas, and coal donors, and we'll have to purge those pesky climate change scientists after all.

Meanwhile, Trump's friends in Saudi Arabia and Russia are happily looking at even more oil production cuts to send oil prices up worldwide.  I sure hope you didn't think the Trump era was going to continue with gas prices at $2.00 a gallon, did you?

Who did you think was going to end up paying for those hundreds of billions in oil profits?

Mexico?