Appears to me that Susan Rice did her JOB and did it well…
I hope Susan Rice was keeping tabs on Trump’s Russia ties.
The right-wing media is really excited about the new scoop from Eli Lake, national security columnist for Bloomberg View. As connoisseurs of President Trump’s Twitter feed know, in the alternative reality inhabited by the president and his admirers, the central scandal rocking Washington is not about Trump’s possible connections to Russia and what it means for its meddling in our election. Rather, it’s about the potential “unmasking” of Trump campaign figures that may have been caught up in incidental surveillance of foreign targets. “Such amazing reporting on unmasking and the crooked scheme against us by @foxandfriends,” Trump tweeted on Monday morning. “ ‘Spied on before nomination.’ The real story.” Thus it was a big deal when Lake reported that Susan Rice, President Obama’s former national security adviser, had sought to identify Trump associates inadvertently recorded in American surveillance operations. Suddenly, Trump’s “real story” had a villainess. Soon #SusanRice was trending on Twitter.
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Trump…. Close your mouth You’ll catch flies… Your President catching flies…
Koch cronies populate the rapidly filling swamp in the Trump White House
The release of financial disclosures for staff in the Donald Trump administration revealed this week that many of the new White House staff were previously funded by Charles and David Koch.
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RAW STORY
A broken process gets worse: Democrats may filibuster Neil Gorsuch — but Mitch McConnell broke the Senate when he ignored Merrick Alice Garland
Democrats will filibuster and Mitch McConnell will ram Gorsuch through anyway — this game ends badly
About two years ago, I wrote a piece for Salon in which I warned that Donald Trump’s erratic behavior and unstable temperament could rapidly destabilize our politics, if not the functioning of government at various levels. It was clear to anyone who’d paid attention to Trump’s behavior, dating back to his 2011 treasure hunt in Hawaii for President Barack Obama’s birth certificate, that he had little regard for facts, decorum and especially the traditions that tenuously bind our system together.
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As U.S. Jobs Flee the Country, One of Trump’s Biggest Campaign Promises Is Already Going Down in Flames
Despite the president’s ludicrous boasts, American companies have not slowed in exporting jobs.
Again and again on the campaign trail, Donald Trump made promises he couldn’t keep, playing on the ignorance of his base and revealing his own glaring misunderstanding of policy. The GOP candidate repeatedly vowed to strongarm companies into keeping jobs at home instead of sending them to Mexico, renegotiate NAFTA and impose stiff import taxes on foreign goods. It was a message that appealed widely to Trump supporters, blending the illusion of economic hope with the rubric of “America First” nationalism.
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Did Susan Rice Do Anything Wrong By Asking to ‘Unmask’ Trump Officials?
As Lake notes, nothing he—or anyone else—has uncovered lends credence to President Trump’s outlandish and unsupported claim that Obama ordered surveillance of him at Trump Tower prior to the election. Nor does the new story suggest any illegal behavior on Rice’s part. As with each step in the story, this one offers only a small sliver of information. Many experts seem to think the Bloomberg View story does not imply anything improper or unusual. Others withheld judgment, saying there’s simply not enough information to judge.
Assuming Lake’s story is accurate, why would Rice have wanted to have names unmasked?
One possibility is that Rice was acting in connection with a joint investigation into Russian meddling in the election. The government had already concluded, based on the assessments of multiple intelligence agencies, that Russia was meddling in the election. There were also ongoing investigations into potentially illegal behavior by Trump staffers. Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, was reportedly already being examined for his contacts with Russia, as were other Trump aides, current and former.
Here's A Thing... 