We need to talk about Donald – the Nightmare continues

[JimC]

G-men gonna get ya!

[Animavore]

I'm sure the Trump supporters wilm be all over this given how concerned they are with corruption as was evident from their righteous anger towards Dem misdeeds.

They're a very moral and just lot.

[Brian Peacock]

I'm sure you're right. Ryan will be eager to lead chants of "LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP!" from the floor of the House to be sure.

[Tero]

Pence cardboard cutout is ready to take over Oval Office.

[Tero]

Senate Approves Russia Sanctions, Limiting Trump's Oversight
A new bipartisan deal prohibits the president from rolling back sanctions without Congress’s approval.

[Tero]

Washington, DC – Congressman Earl Blumenauer (OR-03) today will introduce legislation to ensure Donald Trump has a stake in the catastrophic consequences of ignoring climate science. The Prohibiting Aid for Recipients Ignoring Science (PARIS) Act will prevent properties owned by a president or his or her family from receiving federally subsidized flood insurance from the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP).

Introduction of the legislation follows Trump’s efforts to undermine environmental protections and reject the science of climate change – including his decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord. Most recently, media reports on Sunday indicate that Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt left a G7 two-day session on climate early. The United States today also refused to sign a G7 commitment on climate action.

[Brian Peacock]

Tillerson is spitting tacks.

[pErvinalia]

Conservative 'news' outlets didn't like Comey's testimony—so they created a fake version instead

The New York Times has a good look at how one particular conspiracy theory, a completely false notion that ex-FBI director James Comey said Trump did not ask he halt the Flynn investigation in his mid-May Senate testimony despite Comey in fact asserting no such thing, ricocheted around the usual conservative sites in a transparent hoax. It started with troll Jack Posobiec, who simply made it up. Breitbart and Alex Jones jumped on it and soon it made it to Rush Limbaugh and, of course, Fox News' Sean Hannity.

It was an absolute fraud, and one that could easily have been proven a fraud by anyone who bothered to check—and it's difficult to believe that the entire staff of Breitbart and Sean Hannity's show were so uninformed as to the explosive nature of Comey's testimony that they could have plausibly believed it in the first place. Comey's testimony about Trump pressuring him to drop the investigation was the top news story of the day; peddling a tweet from a known hoaxer that claims the exact opposite can't be described as "falling for" a hoax. It counts as being an accessory to it. Sean Hannity and his ilk were spreading the false version on purpose.

In an email, Mr. Posobiec described his work as “reality journalism — part investigative, part activist, part commentary.” A day before his tweet, the White House had allowed him into an Oval Office photo op with the president, and he tried to ask a question about Seth Rich, the murdered Democratic National Committee staff member.

The reason for peddling the hoaxes is simple: Many or most of their followers will believe them. They won't check. So it doesn't matter whether the news they present is entirely fabricated. They will get the desired effect—angry conservatives obligingly believing the conservative president has been vindicated—and suffer no consequences no matter how quickly their claims are proven false in other venues. It helps when you have an administration eager to help the effort. It helps more to have already pre-segregated news markets such that conservative fans aren’t likely to ever find out you’ve lied to them.

“The ability to mitigate such disinformation campaigns was far easier in the 1990s,” said Chris Lehane, who worked as an aide in the Clinton White House. Back then, he added, “for the most part the existing distribution channels were not as segmented across ideological lines that, in effect, create parallel realities that run along ideological grounds.”

It's a conservative propaganda effort. It's the dissemination of provably false information up and down the conservative "news" chain, from the lowest dregs to the Fox News cameras, facilitated by a conservative movement so contemptuous of mere objective reality that they don’t just tolerate, but demand they be given more pleasing versions.

The Times doesn't touch on just how frighteningly dangerous the embrace of such tactics is. It is the cornerstone of authoritarian, fundamentalist, and fascist governments. When the government and their compliant media figures simply alter the news to best benefit the party, that's the end of things. Democracy cannot exist in such places, and there is no informed consent of the governed if the governed are simply given whatever false information will render them most compliant.

[Brian Peacock]

Yeah, but Democrats ...

[pErvinalia]

Exactly. Imagine how much Hillary and MSNBC would have lied therefore Trump and conservative media lying is ok. Hey.. what's that over there?!! ----------->

[Animavore]

[Svartalf]

[Scot Dutchy]

Is anyone surprised FFS. It is obvious. Putin must send him a few photo's every day just to refresh that thing on his head he calls a brain.

[Sean Hayden]

Shit or get off the fucking pot already. -got evidence?

[tattuchu]