June 26, 27 and 28, 2017


News and Views


TRUMP BACKS OFF DUE TO INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trumps-lawyers-fail-follow-threats-comey-165240367.html?soc_trk=gcm&soc_src=dbb2094c-7d9a-37c0-96b9-7f844af62e78&.tsrc=notification-brknews
Trump’s lawyers fail to follow through on threats to Comey
Michael Isikoff Yahoo News
June 28, 2017

Photograph -- Former FBI Director James Comey testifies before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on “Russian Federation Efforts to Interfere in the 2016 U.S. Elections” on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. June 8, 2017. (Photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

President Trump’s lawyers, after rethinking their legal strategy, have shelved plans for now to file complaints accusing former FBI director James Comey of leaking confidential information about his conversations with the president, according to two sources familiar with the lawyers’ plans.

The decision to back away from repeated public threats to launch an all out legal assault on Comey reflects a significant tactical retreat for Trump’s legal team. It was prompted by concerns that such a move might antagonize special counsel Robert Mueller as he gears up for his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible ties to Trump’s presidential campaign, the sources said.

The public attacks on Comey began after the ex-FBI director’s testimony on June 8 that he authorized a friend to share with reporters portions of a memo with his account of a White House meeting at which President Trump allegedly asked him to go easy on former national security advisor Michael Flynn. The next day, Marc E. Kasowitz, the president’s chief lawyer, accused the former FBI Director of “unilaterally and surreptitiously” making “unauthorized disclosures to the press of privileged communications with the president.”

“We will leave it to the appropriate authorities to determine whether these leaks should be investigated along with all the others being investigated,” Kasowitz said in a statement he read to the news media at the National Press Club.

After his press appearance, sources close to Kasowitz repeatedly promised that the president’s lawyers would file within days formal complaints with the Justice Department inspector general and the Senate Judiciary Committee seeking an investigation of Comey. One such story, published by CNN on June 9, said the lawyers planed to file the complaints “early next week.” Another story, on Fox News the same day, said the filings by “super attorney” Kasowitz would be part of a “three pronged legal attack” on Comey that “will likely be filed next week.”

But nearly three weeks later, no such filings have been made and it now appears they won’t be any time soon. The reason, sources said, is that Kastowitz—and his co-counsels Jay Sekulow and John Dowd—are concerned that such filings might antagonize Mueller and potentially backfire on the president.

The complaints have been put off “out of deference to Mueller to let him do his job,” said a source close to Trump’s legal team, who asked not to be identified by name. But, the source insisted, “it will be filed at some point.”

President Donald Trump's personal attorney, Marc Kasowitz, speaks to the news media after the congressional testimony of former FBI Director James Comey, at the National Press Club in Washington, U.S. June 8, 2017. (Photos: Yuri Gripas/Reuters)View photos

Still, the tactical retreat seems likely to reinforce the impression that Trump and Kasowitz, his longtime personal lawyer, have a penchant for making intimidating legal threats that often don’t materialize.

During the campaign, Trump, at various points threatened to sue the Washington Post, the New York Times, Sen. Ted Cruz and multiple women who accused him of sexual misconduct—none of which he actually did. “Your article is reckless, defamatory and constitutes libel per se,” Kasowitz wrote Times executive editor Dean Baquet on Oct. 12, 2016, demanding that a story accusing Trump of inappropriately touching two women be retracted and removed from the paper’s website. “Failure to do will leave my client with no option but to pursue all available actions and remedies.”

The paper never retracted the story and it is still accessible on the Times website. Kasowitz has yet to take any action against the Times.

“This is consistent with Donald Trump’s style- making blustery attacks with no follow through and idle threats to intimidate with no substance,” said Mark Zaid, a veteran national security lawyer in Washington who often represents government officials facing investigations in security investigations.

One likely reason for he delay, according to Zaid and other national security lawyers, is that it is far from clear whether the Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz would even consider a request given that Comey is no longer a Justice Department employee. “Techncially, he doesn’t have any jurisdiction,” said Michael Bromwich, a former Justice Department inspector general.

There is no evidence that any of the information Comey asked his friend to leak was classified. The only obvious legal issue would be whether Comey used a government computer to type up his contemporaneous account of his conversations with Trump (he testified he wrote one of them in his car immediately after meeting with the president) and, if so, did they constitute a government document that had been improperly removed from government records, according to Bromwich. Given that Horowitz already has an ongoing investigation into Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, and the question of his use of the laptop raises issues of policy, Bromwich said it is likely Horowitz may ask him about the matter when he next interviews him as part of the probe. “I predict there will be a footnote in his report” about the issue, Bromwich said.

Read more from Yahoo News:
Alaska eyes Obamacare replacements with skepticism
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Can Democratic pediatrician Mai-Khanh Tran unseat one of the most powerful House Republicans in 2018?
Reporter who exploded at Sarah Huckabee Sanders during White House briefing: ‘We can’t take the bullying anymore
Photos: Protesters across the country oppose GOP’s health care plan



A WOMAN, AN ASIAN, A DEMOCRAT, A MEDICAL DOCTOR AND A CANDIDATE FOR CONGRESS – INTERESTING. THIS CONGRESSMAN WHOM SHE IS OPPOSING HAS HAD 12 TERMS ALREADY. THAT’S AT LEAST TEN TOO MANY IN MY VIEW. I HOPE WHEN THE MYTHICAL REPUBLICAN-LED CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION IS HELD, WE WILL SHORTEN ALL TERM LENGTHS TO A MAXIMUM OF TWO FOR ALL POLITICAL OFFICES. FOR THE SUPREME COURT, A MAXIMUM OF TEN YEARS.

ONE OF THE REASONS THAT OUR PARTIES (BOTH OF THEM) HAVE BECOME NOTICEABLY CORRUPTED IS BECAUSE THERE ARE TOO MANY PEOPLE THERE WHO DON’T HAVE TO COMPETE FOR THEIR SEAT, WHO GET RELIABLE AND REPETITIVE GIFTS FROM DONORS FOR WHOM THEY DO FAVORS IN THEIR LEGISLATION, WHO CAN BUY JUDGES, ETC. WE NEED FRESH FACES AND NEW BLOOD, WITH MORE GENDER/SEXUAL ORIENTATION AND ETHNICITY VARIETY SO THAT THEY CAN BETTER REPRESENT THE ETHNICALLY VARYING POPULATION AND ECONOMIC BALANCES OF THIS COUNTRY.

THE MEAN OLD WHITE MEN DO NOT REFLECT THE CITIZENRY, AND HAVE NO DESIRE TO DO THE THINGS THAT THE REST OF US NEED TO HAVE DONE. THEY ONLY DESIRE TO MAKE ANOTHER BUCK, BECAUSE THE MILLIONAIRES IN THE LEGISLATURE JUST DON’T HAVE ENOUGH MONEY. I HOPE THIS LADY DOC WILL WIN. BLESS HER FOR RUNNING, AS SANDERS AND OTHERS HAVE SUGGESTED, TO PUT MORE PROGRESSIVES INTO THE DEMOCRATIC POLITICAL SCENE, SO THOSE OF US WHO YEARN TO BE IN THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY RANKS AGAIN CAN, IN GOOD CONSCIENCE, REJOIN. WHAT I WOULD PREFER TO SEE, THOUGH, IS A NEW SPLINTER PARTY OF PROGRESSIVES WHO HAVE LARGE ENOUGH NUMBERS TO BEAT THE REPUBLICANS AND DEMS BOTH. (I’M NOT HOLDING MY BREATH.) THAT IS BECAUSE SUCH CANDIDATES WOULD MAKE THE GRIP BY THE KOCH BROTHERS LOOSER, AND GIVE ME MORE REASONABLE CANDIDATES FROM WHOM TO CHOOSE.

BY THE WAY, THIS ARTICLE’S PUBLISHER “READERSUPPORTEDNEWS.ORG” WAS NEW TO ME, SO I GOOGLED IT. IN YET ANOTHER SITE, “REALORSATIRE.ORG,” IT SAYS THAT RSN IS – ACCORDING TO SNOPES -- IS “NEITHER REAL NOR SATIRE.” READING THAT SHORT ARTICLE, IT SAYS THAT THEIR OFFERINGS ARE “... A NEW SERVICE BY THE CREATOR OF TRUTHOUT, MARC ASH.” FROM THERE I GOOGLED SNOPES AND FOUND THE FOLLOWING INTERESTING DISCLAIMER: “A SNOPES PIECE OVER ON NETWORKWORLD.COM WROTE IT BEST:

[…T]HE MIKKELSONS [OF SNOPES] MAKE NO CLAIM TO INFALLIBILITY AND INSIST THAT THEIR HIGHEST OBJECTIVE IS TO HELP CONVINCE PEOPLE TO THINK CRITICALLY ABOUT WHAT THEY HEAR AND READ … AND TO DO THEIR OWN FACT CHECKING.

IN THE END, THAT’S WHAT SITES LIKE SNOPES (AND ULTIMATELY REAL OR SATIRE) WANT READERS TO DO: THINK!” WELL, I HAVE THOUGHT, AND RESEARCHED AND I FOUND TWO THINGS. THE MAINSTREAM NEWS, SURE ENOUGH, DID NOT YET PUBLISH ANYTHING ABOUT HER AT ALL, MUCH LESS A RUN FOR OFFICE. THIS COULD BE BECAUSE: NOBODY ORDERED THEM TO RUN A STORY, NOR “PAID THEM UNDER THE TABLE.” THIS IS IN SPITE OF THE FACT THAT HER MEDICAL, EDUCATIONAL AND WORK CAREER MAKE HER ONE OF THE BETTER QUALIFIED APPLICANTS FOR CONGRESS. SHE’S NOT A LAWYER, BUT SEVERAL MEMBERS IN CONGRESS OR THE SENATE ARE MEDICAL DOCTORS RATHER THAN LAWYERS. SHE GRADUATED IN SCIENCE AT HARVARD AND IN MEDICINE AT DARTMOUTH AND TOOK HER RESIDENCY AT UCLA. WHAT SHE DOESN’T KNOW ABOUT CONGRESS SHE CAN READ WELL ENOUGH TO LEARN.

FROM THE COMMENTS OF TRAN: “AND WHEN YOU HAVE THE RIGHT REASONS — IF WHAT YOU’RE DOING IS NEEDED, ON BEHALF OF OTHERS — YOU WILL DO IT UNTIL YOU SUCCEED. I TRULY BELIEVE THAT.”

SO, UPON CONTINUING MY OWN RESEARCH ON HER, I CAME TO THE FOLLOWING SEVERAL ARTICLES – FEW IN NUMBER, BUT ALL RAVES. THERE IS NOTHING NEGATIVE AGAINST HER, BUT SHE HASN’T BEEN ON THE SCENE LONG ENOUGH FOR THE BIG CORPORATE MEDIA TO WRITE ABOUT HER, WITH THE EXCEPTION OF THE ATLANTIC AND THE LATIMES. SHE’S LIKE A YOUNG HOLLYWOOD ACTRESS WHO MAKES HER LIVING WAITING TABLES. SHE HASN’T BEEN “DISCOVERED” YET. SEE BELOW :


http://www.latimes.com/politics/essential/la-pol-ca-essential-politics-updates-orange-county-pediatrician-to-challenge-1496683864-htmlstory.html
JUNE 5, 2017, 11:36 A.M.
REPORTING FROM WASHINGTON
Orange County pediatrician to challenge Rep. Ed Royce in 2018
Sarah D. Wire

Pediatrician Mai Khanh Tran is entering the race to unseat Rep. Ed Royce (R-Fullerton) in California’s 39th Congressional District.

Tran, 51, of Fountain Valley, said she was inspired to run by Royce's support for Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

“I am absolutely incensed over what’s been happening,” she said by phone. “He was very callous and he did not vote for the needs of his constituents.”

Royce and the other 13 Republicans in California’s congressional delegation voted for the House Republican healthcare plan to replace Obamacare, and Democrats are expected to use the vote as an issue throughout the 2018 campaign.

Born in Vietnam, Tran and her three siblings came to the U.S. as refugees in 1975. Her parents fled the country after the fall of Saigon and they were reunited in Oregon, where the family spent summers picking strawberries with other immigrant laborers, Tran said.

Tran said she studied psychology and social relations at Harvard University, working her way through school in part by doing janitorial work. She then graduated from the Brown-Dartmouth medical program. She is a part of a private practice in Orange County.

Tran’s Fountain Valley home is in Rep. Dana Rohrabacher’s district, where several Democrats have already announced plans to run. Members of Congress don’t have to live in the district they represent and at least a half dozen California members do not.

Still, the National Republican Congressional Committee jumped on the fact quickly.

“While Tran was district-shopping around Orange County, finally settling on one she doesn’t even live in, Ed Royce has been doing what he’s always done — working hard to keep Southern California families safe,” NRCC spokesman Jack Pandol said in an email.

Tran said 25 years of practicing medicine in Orange County means she’s familiar with the district.

“I don’t see this as a real issue,” she said. “I truly think Ed Royce needs to be challenged. I am the best person to take this fight to Ed Royce.”

Tran joins Democrat Phil Janowicz, a former chemistry professor at Cal State Fullerton who now runs an education consulting firm, in the uphill race to unseat Royce, who has represented the area since 1992. Independent Julio Castaneda is also running.

Democrats are targeting the district — which includes voters in northern Orange County, Diamond Bar and Chino Hills — in part because Hillary Clinton earned 51.5% of the vote there in the 2016 presidential race, compared with President Trump's 42.9%.

But Royce was easily reelected with 57% of the vote, and he starts off with $2.8 million tucked away for his next campaign.

“I’ve overcome pretty incredible odds, so I feel that I have the heart and the steel to make this happen,” Tran said.



https://foundasian.org/2017/06/05/pediatrician-mai-khanh-tran-announces-campaign-for-congress-against-ed-royce/
BLOG
Pediatrician Mai Khanh Tran Announces Campaign for Congress Against Ed Royce

doctran2018Mai Khanh Tran, MD kicked off her historic campaign for Congress (DocTran2018.com) on June 5 against twenty-four year incumbent Ed Royce, calling his vote for Trumpcare a giveaway to insurance companies and the wealthy, that will increase deductibles and co-pays even for those able to keep their insurance, and end guaranteed coverage for those with pre-existing conditions.

“As a physician who has been treating under-served families for the past twenty-five years here in Orange County, I am saddened by Ed Royce’s callousness, and as a citizen I am angry. Americans deserve better and I want to do something about it,” said Mai Khanh Tran.

Congressman Ed Royce has failed the families of California’s 39th Congressional District on a whole range of critical issues. Ed Royce votes with Donald Trump ninety-six percent of the time, consistently receives A ratings from the NRA, and opposes women’s health rights and human rights.

He has taken millions of dollars from big corporate interests, while earning failing grades for protecting the environment and fighting climate change. Ed Royce also earns failing grades for his lack of support for our public schools, colleges and universities.

“In Ed Royce’s America, if you are not wealthy and can’t afford powerful lobbyists, your voice doesn’t count. I’m running for Congress because everyday working families deserve a voice and deserve better. Even though I’ve been an underdog throughout my life, I was given great opportunities to succeed in this country. America never once turned her back on me,” said Mai Khanh Tran.

When she was nine years old, Mai Khanh and her three siblings came to United States as refugees from Vietnam. Without speaking a word of English, the Tran siblings became farmworkers picking strawberries, working for years alongside other migrant families in rural Oregon.

After the fall of Saigon, her parents also escaped Vietnam. The Tran family continued as farmworkers, cramming into a small living room and renting their only bedroom to a stranger to help pay the rent.

With help of Pell Grants and scholarships, Mai Khanh worked her way through Harvard as a janitor cleaning bathrooms on campus. After graduating from Harvard, she spent nearly a year working as a healthcare analyst on Wall St., before attending Dartmouth\Brown Medical School and completing her residency in Pediatrics at UCLA.

“I overcame some pretty long odds in my life – including surviving breast cancer twice – and I feel privileged for the opportunity to give back and serve my community as a Physician. In Congress, I will fight to strengthen our healthcare laws and for every family to have the same opportunities I had to achieve the American Dream,” said Mai Khanh Tran.

Tran added, “The voices of working and middle class men and woman across California’s 39th Congressional District have been missing in Washington for too long. Our campaign will be about them.”

Visit DocTran2018.com to learn more.


https://edingermedicalgroup.com/project/tran/
MAI-KHANH TRAN, M.D.
Pediatrics

Education

Bachelor of Science, Summa Cum Laude, Harvard University
Medical Degree, Dartmouth University/Brown University Program in Medicine

Dr. Tran graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard University. Following a brief stint as a financial analyst on Wall Street, she enrolled and received her medical degree from the Dartmouth University/Brown University Program in Medicine. She returned to the west coast where she completed her pediatrics residency training at UCLA. She is Board Certified in Pediatrics.

Dr Tran is the best. Would not trust anyone with my daughter. I am a physician and know all about beside manner and repoire [sic]. Knowledgeable, takes her time, [and is] always ready to answer questions. Highly recommend.

Michael N.
-Yelp


http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/44380-can-democratic-pediatrician-mai-khanh-tran-unseat-one-of-the-most-powerful-house-republicans-in-2018
Can Democratic Pediatrician Mai-Khanh Tran Unseat One of the Most Powerful House Republicans in 2018?
By Andrew Romano, Yahoo News
28 June 17 (June 28, 2017)

Dr. Mai-Khanh Tran currently works as a pediatrician in Orange County, California. (photo: Facebook)

In many ways, Dr. Mai-Khanh Tran isn’t all that different from millions of other Democrats who have been dismayed or depressed or indignant since Donald Trump was elected president.

On election night, Tran watched in shock as the returns rolled in. The next morning, she wept at work — Tran is a pediatrician — with her colleagues. Later, she joined the protesters shouting slogans and waving signs outside the Orange County offices of several Republican congressmen.

But Tran didn’t stop there. Last month, she actually decided to enter elected politics herself, launching a long-shot campaign to unseat 12-term Republican Rep. Ed Royce, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

While defeating Royce may seem like a tall order for a political novice, Tran, 51, has already spent her entire life overcoming impossible odds.

In 1975, Tran arrived in America as a 9-year-old refugee from war-torn Vietnam — without her parents. She spent her summers picking strawberries in rural Oregon, eventually working her way through college at Harvard as a janitor. And she survived two bouts of breast cancer and endured eight rounds of in vitro fertilization before finally getting pregnant at age 46.

“I think you’ve got to have total commitment to everything you do in life,” Tran said on a recent Thursday afternoon as she sipped from a bowl of bone-in kalbi soup on the patio of a new pan-Asian restaurant in Orange County’s Little Saigon. “You’ve got to do things for the right reasons. And when you have the right reasons — if what you’re doing is needed, on behalf of others — you will do it until you succeed. I truly believe that.”

Whether Tran can succeed her in [sic] mission to topple Royce remains to be seen. But if any place encapsulates the challenges facing Republicans in 2018, Orange County is it. And if any Democratic hopeful embodies the political crosscurrents that will likely define the coming midterms, Tran may be the one.

Topping the list of those forces? Health care.

The first patient Tran saw the morning after the election was a child with a brain tumor. The girl’s mother, a local nail salon worker, couldn’t get health insurance for her children until Congress passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010. Realizing that her coverage might change under Republican rule — that “this was going to affect her daughter’s life soon” — the two women cried together in Tran’s examination room.

A few months later, the mother called Tran. The House had just passed the American Health Care Act — the GOP’s Obamacare repeal bill — and she was, according to Tran, “petrified.”

“It was the speed of that vote, the secret way it was done, that just pushed me,” Tran told Yahoo News, noting that she had spent the previous three months appearing on local Vietnamese-language TV to explain what was at stake. “I thought, ‘We can do all the prep work, all the work to inform the public, but when it comes down to it, their voice just isn’t there where it matters. On the floor. In the caucuses. All of the meetings.’ It just made me so angry. And I said, ‘You know what? We need to have people who really understand health care in Washington. We need to be in the game.’”

As the Republican Senate struggles to pass its own version of a bill to repeal Obamacare, health care is shaping up to be the central issue in 2018.

In part, that’s because 217 GOP House members — including all four Orange County Republicans — voted for the AHCA, a deeply unpopular measure that even President Trump has called “mean.” Democrats plan to spend millions of dollars between now and next November reminding voters of this fact.

The so-called resistance to Trump — and, more specifically, the resistance to his party’s Obamacare repeal push — has inspired newcomers like Tran, many of whom are also doctors or scientists or women, to get off the sidelines and run for office themselves.

The result is a rookie class of grassroots candidates rallying around a potent message. The question is whether fresh faces and passionate resistance will be enough to flip the 24 seats Democrats need to regain control of the House.

Opportunity in Orange County

Despite its conservative past — Orange County voted for the GOP candidate in every presidential election from 1936 to 2012 — the O.C. now overlaps with the districts of four of the 25 most vulnerable Republicans in Congress: Darrell Issa, Dana Rohrabacher, Mimi Walters and Ed Royce. Hillary Clinton captured all four of their districts in the 2016 presidential race — a first for a Democrat — and won the county as a whole by 9 percentage points. A growing minority population, a concentration of college-educated whites and a declining GOP registration advantage are making the area more and more treacherous for Republicans, especially with Trump in the White House. Democrats have taken notice, fielding several promising candidates, including multimillionaire stem-cell pioneer Hans Keirstead; real estate entrepreneur Harley Rouda; environmental activist Mike Levin; and retired U.S. Marine Col. Doug Applegate.

“It’s districts like these that will decide whether the Democrats can make a serious run at control of the House,” the New York Times’ Nate Cohn recently wrote.

Political novice

In person, Tran doesn’t seem like a politician. Petite, with a few gray hairs peeking through an otherwise black bob, she trembles slightly when she starts to answer a question, her soft voice starting and stopping and wavering as she struggles for the right words to express her views, none of which have yet been scripted for her by some cadre of consultants. She apologized for “not being good at this,” and teared up four times over the course of a two-hour conversation. At one point, she unleashes a few choice words about Donald Trump, then said, “This is off the record,” which prompts her sole campaign adviser to laugh and explain that “you have to say you’re off the record before you say something, Mai-Khanh.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Tran said.

But Tran’s outward gentleness masks a fierce inner strength that has been fostered by decades of unimaginable hardship and improbable success.

Of her childhood in Vietnam, the things Tran remembers most are the near-constant explosions. “Every night, every other night, there would be bombs going off,” she said. “We’d all go into a little space under staircase. We’d hear the bomb go by — zoom! — and we’d run in there.”

One day in early 1975, Tran’s father, a prominent Saigon judge, took her and her three siblings, the youngest of whom was still wearing diapers, to a local Catholic orphanage, leaving them behind without any explanation. Tran recalls that her father was wearing sunglasses, but only later did she realize that he must have been crying.

“It was an act of total desperation on my dad’s part,” Tran said. “A lot of people were giving up their children so they could get them out. This was their last resort.”

The U.S. military airlifted Tran and her siblings to San Francisco, where “big Marines” carried each of them off the plane. “I tell you, even today, if I see a guy in uniform, I really do get so emotional,” Tran said. “I still am so grateful and humble.”

Eventually, the children ended up at a convent in Salem, Ore. Six months later, their parents, who escaped Vietnam during the fall of Saigon, joined them. In America, Tran’s father could no longer work as a judge; the closest he came was a gig cleaning the local courthouse. To make ends meet, the Trans rented out their apartment’s single bedroom to a college student while the six of them slept together in the living room.

“My first Fourth of July celebration was in 1976 — the bicentennial,” Tran said. “The fireworks were huge. And I was cowering in fear. It was so loud, like bombs. Even to this day, I don’t like fireworks.”

Inspired by her grandfather, a traditional medicine man, Tran decided early on that she wanted to be a doctor. Every moment she wasn’t working was spent reading. After four years at an inner-city high school in Portland — she and her friends were bused in from the Vietnamese “ghetto” — Tran graduated first in her class and was accepted by Harvard.

“Maybe because I am an immigrant, I feel like I need to know more,” Tran said. “I need to know more and do more.”

Tran loved her college experience, but it wasn’t exactly easy. Without money for a hotel, her father was forced to request Freshman Weekend accommodations from random Vietnamese locals, and Tran paid her way through school with three simultaneous jobs — janitor, security guard and reader for the blind.

“I cleaned the jocks’ dorm,” she said. “The rich kids’ dorm. And, you know, they throw out a lot of things. I remember picking up things that we could use. I don’t think I ever felt like I belonged there.”

A stint as a health care analyst on Wall Street followed, then medical school at Brown-Dartmouth. After her residency at UCLA, Tran started her own practice in Fountain Valley, where she has spent the last 25 years treating working-class immigrants, educating the community and leading thrice-yearly medical missions to hot spots around the world — leper colonies in the Vietnamese jungle, typhoon-ravaged villages in the Philippines, impoverished neighborhoods in Tijuana.

That experience, she says, is what has convinced her she’s ready for Congress.

“We have to figure out how we’re going to feed these people,” Tran explained. “We help them with job training. We set up farms for them. We set up revolving loans for them. We do clean water. We make sure their kids get the education they need. As a congresswoman, I plan to bring that sort of comprehensive approach to my community and my constituents.”

Tran’s successful battles with breast cancer and infertility have convinced those around her that she can succeed in the political arena as well.

“She’s like Wonder Woman,” said adviser Courtni Pugh, whose other clients include Kevin de Leon, California Senate president pro tempore. “Everything Mai-Khanh has overcome in her life? We need to create, like, a meme. We’ll put her in a red cape.”

Uphill climb

Wonder Woman or not, Tran is still a serious underdog in the race against Royce. If she wins the Democratic primary — her opponent is former chemistry professor Phil Janowicz — she’ll be facing off against a politician who’s been winning elections for as long as she’s been a pediatrician.

Incumbency isn’t Royce’s only advantage either. Even though Clinton won CA-39, Royce was easily reelected with 57 percent of the vote, and he’s the most popular of the four vulnerable Orange County Republicans. He’s also a prodigious fundraiser, with $2.8 million already stockpiled for 2018.

Tran believes the same demographic shifts that boosted Clinton to victory throughout Orange County could work in her favor. CA-39, for example, is more than 60 percent Asian and Hispanic — and only 34 percent white. Many of these whites are exactly the sort of college-educated suburbanites Trump lost in November, and while older Vietnamese-Americans have voted Republican for decades — like older Cuban-Americans, they tend to be staunch anti-Communists — their children have been registering as Democrats or independents.

For now, Tran is focused on getting her fledging campaign up and running. She’s talking to potential hires. She’s sounding out local politicos. And she’s spending hours every afternoon in her garage, dialing for dollars.

The work can be grueling. Devastated after one particularly fruitless fundraising session, Tran looked up to see her aging mother leaning over her. “Do you need me to give you my last gold nugget?” her mother said, referring to the small bars that she and other refugees had brought with them to America more than four decades ago, just in case. “You know, to help your campaign?”

Tran had to remind herself that the road ahead would be long — and that she was running for the right reasons.

“It was my mom who, throughout the years, said, ‘You’ve got to help people, you’ve got to speak for people,” Tran explained. “So if there’s an opportunity here, it is for a Democrat who resonates and listens. And so I go back to what makes me a good candidate: I’m a good listener. As a physician, that’s all I do. I listen to my patients. I listen to their pain, their suffering, their concerns. That’s what I’m good at. Then hopefully I’ll try to find a solution that might alleviate their pain, their suffering, their concerns.

“I don’t think that’s what people are doing in the political sphere right now,” Tran continued. “They have agendas. They have ideas they’re trying to push. But they’re not listening to their constituents. More and more, their constituents in these districts have changed so much; their needs have changed so much. And it’s just not connecting with the people who are currently representing them.”


WHITE HOUSE PRESS CORPS TALKS BACK TO POWER

https://www.yahoo.com/news/reporter-exploded-sarah-huckabee-sanders-white-house-briefing-cant-take-bullying-anymore-152127560.html
Reporter who exploded at Sarah Huckabee Sanders during White House briefing: ‘We can’t take the bullying anymore’
Dylan Stableford Yahoo News June 28, 2017

The reporter who unloaded on White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders during Tuesday’s briefing says that he’s “had enough” of being “bullied” by President Trump’s administration.

“We can’t take the bullying anymore,” Brian Karem, a reporter for the Sentinel Newspapers, said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday. “We’ve been called the enemy of the people from that White House. We’ve been told that we’re fake news. We are bullied and browbeaten every day.”

Karem, who has worked for the Washington, D.C.-based news organization since 2004, said he’s been alarmed by the administration’s treatment of the press.

“For the government to sit there and undermine what is essentially checks and balances in the system, it’s disheartening,” he said. “It’s unnerving. I can’t take it anymore. It’s nuts.”

During Tuesday’s briefing, Sanders scolded reporters over the use of unnamed sources and complained about “the constant barrage of fake news” aimed at the administration.

“If we make the slightest mistake, if the slightest word is off, it’s just an absolute tirade from a lot of people in this room,” she said. “But news outlets get to go on day after day and cite unnamed sources.”

The comments set off Karem, who was standing near the back of the briefing room.

“Come on — this administration has done this as well,” he told Sanders. “If any one of us doesn’t get it right, the audience has the opportunity to turn the channel or not read us. You have been elected to serve four years at least — there’s no option other than that.”

Related: Reporter unloads on deputy press secretary at White House briefing

“We’re in here asking you questions,” Karem continued. “You’re here to provide the answers and what you just did is inflammatory to people all over the country who look at it and say, ‘See, once again, the president’s right, and everybody else out here is fake media.’ And everybody in this room is trying to do their job.”

“I disagree completely,” Sanders shot back. “I think if anything’s been inflamed, it’s often the dishonesty that takes in the news media. And I think it’s outrageous for you to accuse me of inflaming a story when I was simply trying to respond to [a] question.”
On Tuesday night, Karem wrote a blog post for Playboy magazine explaining his decision to lash out.

“The president has never admitted one mistake,” he wrote. “The current administration sells half-truths and lies like they’re day-old cookies at a bake sale.

“The fact is: I like Sarah Sanders. I like Sean Spicer. I like most of the people I’ve met who work in this administration. They’re personable and, as far as I can tell — with a few notable exceptions — decent people,” he added. “But I don’t like bullies and I don’t like the entire institution of the press and free speech being castigated for no other reason than we either get stories wrong — which happens, and it should be then responsibly corrected — or because we report news the president doesn’t like — which seems to happen even more often.”

Read more from Yahoo News:

Trump attacks ‘failing’ New York Times on Twitter
Trump fumes after NYT report on health care meeting
Trump promotes faulty White House math on health care
Trump’s lawyer: ‘I don’t tell him what to write’
White House adviser Ivanka Trump: ‘I try to stay out of politics’
Eric Trump on father’s critics: ‘To me, they’re not even people’


NOTE: “RUSSIA IS NOT AN ALLY.” THAT MAKES ME THINK, AGAIN, THAT IF ANY TRUMP CAMPAIGN MEMBERS WERE TO BE LINKED TO THE HACKS ON HILLARY AND THE VOTING DATA IN SOME VOTING DISTRICTS, THE PROPER NATURE OF THAT CRIME WOULD, INDEED, BE TREASON.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/sen-joe-manchin-russia-is-not-our-ally-not-our-friend/
By EMILY TILLETT CBS NEWS June 25, 2017, 12:44 PM
Sen. Joe Manchin: Russia is not our ally, not our friend

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, said that as the investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election continue, it's important to note that Russia is not an ally.

"Russia is not our friend. And to treat Putin as an ally and a friend is wrong. I don't look at him as a friend. I don't look at Russia. And I am very skeptical of what they're doing, their intentions. There are a lot of good people in Russia that don't have any say whatsoever," Manchin said on "Face the Nation" on Sunday.

Manchin's comments come in the wake of a Washington Post report that detailed the Obama administration's approach to punishing the Russian government for its hacking and influence campaign intended to politically damage Hillary Clinton and swing the election in Donald Trump's favor.

President Trump addressed those reports on Twitter, appearing to acknowledge that Russia did indeed meddle in the election, but placing blame on the Obama administration for not doing enough to counter Russia's impact.

Did the Obama Administration respond forcefully enough to Russian meddling efforts?
Play VIDEO
Did the Obama Administration respond forcefully enough to Russian meddling efforts?

In a tweet Friday night, Mr. Trump wrote that Mr. Obama "knew far in advance of November 8th about election meddling by Russia" and "did nothing about it."

The tweets came after Mr. Trump expressed similar criticism of his predecessor in an interview with Fox News.

"I just heard today for the first time that Obama knew about Russia a long time before the election, and he did nothing about it," Mr. Trump said in the interview broadcast Sunday. "But nobody wants to talk about that."

Senator Joe Manchin says "Russia is not our friend"
Play VIDEO
Senator Joe Manchin says "Russia is not our friend"

"What was known back in August and once it was verified and cross-checked should have been made public. It should have been made public, OK? That wasn't done. I can't second-guess that. But I know that when-- at that time President Obama and his administration took action," said Manchin.

He added, "They took action basically on December the 29th and closed down two compounds, threw out 35 diplomats. We knew there was a serious problem. And it was verified."

Manchin applauded the work by the Senate in passing a bipartisan measure to impose further sanctions against the Russians, saying "we've got to make sure that we put the hurt on the oligarchs, all the money, the way the money flows through Russia, and the people that benefit by it."

Senator Joe Manchin on Senate health care bill
Play VIDEO
Senator Joe Manchin on Senate health care bill

Manchin, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, says he continues to feel confident in the U.S. intelligence community.

"When they come and tell me something, whether it's the CIA., FBI., NSA., I take it as gospel truth because they're doing their job. And they have cross-checked it before they give it to us. I have never detected one ounce of politicism," said Manchin.

He added, "I don't know why there's so much skepticism, not believing what the intelligence community is telling you. I do, and I have found it to be extremely beneficial to me to make decisions with."


PRO-ISIS HACKS ON MULTIPLE US GOVERNMENT SITES

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/pro-isis-rant-government-ohio-new-york-maryland/
AP June 25, 2017, 9:01 PM
U.S. government websites hacked with pro-ISIS rant, officials say

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Government websites, many of them in Ohio, were hacked Sunday with a message that purports to be supportive of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

A message posted on the website of Republican Ohio Gov. John Kasich said, "You will be held accountable Trump, you and all your people for every drop of blood flowing in Muslim countries."

The message, left by "Team System Dz," also ended, "I love the Islamic state."

The same message also infiltrated government websites in the town of Brookhaven, New York, according to news reports in that state, as well as the website for Howard County, Maryland. In the past, the group also claimed responsibility for similar hacks in the past in Richland County, Wisconsin, and in places such as Aberdeen, Scotland, and Sweden.

FBI probes ISIS messages in CENTCOM social media hack
Play VIDEO
FBI probes ISIS messages in CENTCOM social media hack

Several other government websites were hacked in Ohio, including that of first lady Karen Kasich, Medicaid, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction and the Casino Control Commission.

Tom Hoyt, chief communications officer for Ohio's Department of Administrative Services, was among Ohio officials who confirmed the hack.

"All affected servers have been taken offline and we are investigating how these hackers were able to deface these websites," he said. "We also are working with law enforcement to better understand what happened."

He said the hacking in Ohio happened at about 11 a.m. EDT. He hoped the websites would be up and running sometime Monday.

The websites in Brookhaven and Howard County also remained down on Sunday. When asked about the outage on the Brookhaven site, a spokeswoman who answered the phone at the New York town's police department simply offered a "no comment."

The hack is part of ongoing cyberterrorism that has impacted governments and corporations across the globe.

Some see these types of hacks -- sometimes called "defacement" -- as simply a nuisance, though in some instances, they have been disruptive to work and government life.

View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter
Follow
Josh Mandel ✔ @JoshMandelOhio
OH Dept of Corrections website right now, this is what you see. Wake up freedom-loving Americans. Radical Islam infiltrating the heartland.
12:18 PM - 25 Jun 2017
29 29 Retweets 23 23 likes

Twitter Ads info and privacy
But others see cause for alarm. "Wake up freedom-loving Americans. Radical Islam infiltrating the heartland," Josh Mandel, the Ohio treasurer and a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, said in a tweet Sunday.

Authors of the website "Cryptosphere," which tracks hackers worldwide, have detailed dozens, if not hundreds, of similar hacks in recent years by the so-called Team System DZ, which they called a "pro-ISIS hacker crew" and claim are based in Algeria.

Impacted websites, they said, have included those for a synagogue in Florida, the student union at the University of New Brunswick in Canada, for U.K. Rugby and a number of websites on Wordpress.



WHAT’S SO DARNED GOOD ABOUT THE REPUBLICAN SENATE HEALTH PLAN? TOO BAD THEY HAD TO SHELVE IT, FOR AWHILE ANYWAY, DUE TO LACK OF POPULARITY AMONG REPUBLICANS. I FEEL SURE THAT’S BECAUSE MORE THAN A FEW HAVE BEEN GETTING COMMENTS FROM THE PUBLIC. IF THEY THINK THIS IS BAD, THEY SHOULD SEE WHAT IT WILL BE LIKE IF MEDICARE IS CUT, OR SOCIAL SECURITY.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/26/the-real-reason-republicans-to-pass-this-health-care-bill-so-much-has-little-to-do-with-health-care/?utm_term=.8a84c9154e7e
Wonkblog Perspective
The real reason Republicans want to pass this Obamacare bill so much
By Matt O'Brien June 26 at 11:01 AM

Photograph -- Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell crafted the Senate Republicans' health-care bill. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

The Senate health-care plan isn't a health-care plan. It's a tax cut.

That's clear enough from how little thought it puts into actually stabilizing insurance markets versus how much it does into showering the rich with as much money as possible. Indeed, it would go so far as to retroactively cut the capital gains tax — something, remember, that's supposed to be about incentivizing future investment — in an apparent bid to get people to create jobs six months ago. The way it would slash Medicaid to pay for this tax-cutting largesse, though, is even more important. It would be more than just a transfer of wealth from the poor and sick to the rich and healthy. It would be a transfer of financial risk from the government to individuals.

This isn't about keeping taxes low for our time. This is about keeping taxes low for all time.

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The easiest way to think about all this is that Republicans are trying to solve two problems. The first is that they want to be able to say they did something to get rid of Obamacare, and the second is that they want to keep health-care spending from growing the government down the road. Viewed from this perspective, the Senate bill checks both boxes.

Video -- What's in the Senate health-care bill?

Video -- Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) unveiled the legislation that would reshape a big piece of the U.S. health-care system on Thursday, June 22. Here's what we know about the bill. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)

It isn't hard to tell, though, which one they care about more. Not when their plan for replacing Obamacare is about as desultory as it gets. It would keep the same basic structure in place — income-based subsidies that go up as the cost of plans do — but tweak it in such a way as to make it more stingy and less sturdy. How is that? Well, it would tie its subsidies to much skimpier plans than Obamacare does, so that people would get about 15 percent less money than they do now. That, in turn, would push a lot of them into low-cost, high-deductible plans that they couldn't afford to use, especially poorer people who under the Senate bill would also be losing so-called cost-sharing subsidies that had given them a little extra help. In the case of someone making up to $18,090 (150 percent of the federal poverty level), the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that their average deductible would go from $255 under Obamacare to $6,105 under the Senate plan.

This probably wouldn't bring premiums down either. If anything, the opposite. The problem is that the Senate bill would keep Obamacare's protections for people with preexisting conditions — at least, as we'll get to in a minute, in name — but not its penalties for people who don't buy insurance. This could very well lead to what's known as a death spiral: Premiums would shoot up because not enough healthy people had signed up, the healthy people who had signed up would drop their coverage because premiums had shot up so much, and this would repeat until eventually the insurance pool was entirely made up of sick people. This might be averted if, as is expected, Republicans add a six-month waiting period — the idea being that healthy people would be less likely to go uninsured if they knew they couldn't get a plan right away — for anyone who hasn't maintained continuous coverage. But, as the Brookings Institution's Matt Fiedler points out, it's not clear that that would be enough. In fact, it might even make things worse by adding a lot of red tape that healthy people might not have as much patience for.

But even if insurance markets didn't collapse, the markets for certain types of insurance might. In particular, for the kind of care that people with preexisting conditions need. That's because the Senate bill would make it easy for states to opt out of the rules requiring that every plan cover “essential health benefits” like mental health, maternity care and prescription drugs. This would probably create a two-tiered system that would quickly devolve into one. At first, healthy people who decided to get covered would probably go for bare-bones plans, and sick people who needed to get covered would be the ones getting more comprehensive care. But a plan that mostly sick people want is a plan that will become mostly unaffordable, until it might as well not be offered at all. A lot of sick people, then, would only be able to buy insurance that's no use if you are sick.

So if you think the problem with Obamacare is that deductibles aren't high enough, markets aren't wobbly enough, and sick people aren't on their own enough, well, the Senate bill is for you. That might be a small constituency, but a much bigger one is everyone who thinks that the problem with Obamacare is that a Democrat did it. That's who the Senate bill is really for. It lets Republicans say that they overturned Obamacare, which is all they actually seem to care about. Otherwise, they wouldn't be rushing to vote on a health-care plan that would make people pay more to get less. Campaign slogans — repeal and replace! — matter more than policy details.

Well, except when it comes to tax cuts. That's when Republicans get serious. They aren't content to just get rid of Obamacare's 3.8 percent surtax on investment income for couples making $250,000 or more — that's what the Senate bill is really about — but they also want to get rid of it yesterday, and stay rid of it tomorrow.

That last part, though, would take some doing. After all, there's a reason that Republicans talk about our fiscal future in quasi-apocalyptic terms. It's that it doesn't look conducive to tax-cutting. “A major debt crisis is inevitable,” now-Speaker of the House Paul D. Ryan wrote back in 2012, “if the U.S. government remains on its current unsustainable path” with “the ongoing sovereign debt crises in Greece and other highly-indebted European countries” providing “a cautionary tale for America.”

Now, this was never true — markets are still happy to lend to us for 30 years at a piddling 2.72 percent — but what was true was that health-care spending looked like it was going to make the GOP's brand of small-government conservatism untenable. The combination of the government having to pay for more people's care as the baby boomers hit retirement and that care costing a lot more as prices for it rise faster than almost anything else mean that the government is automatically set to grow over the next few decades — at which point taxes would have to go up.

Unless, of course, we cut Medicare and Medicaid. Ryan, for his part, prefers to do that by turning them from programs that guarantee people coverage into ones that merely contribute to it — which, when it comes to Medicaid, is exactly what both the House and Senate bills would do. Specifically, they would transform Medicaid from an open-ended program that grows as needed to one that's capped on a per-person basis and only grows according to inflation. The single difference between the two is that, starting in 2025, the Senate plan would pick a much lower rate of inflation for Medicaid to grow by. According to the Urban Institute, this would translate into cuts that are more than twice as big as the House's over the course of a decade — cuts that would not only preclude future tax increases but also make room for future tax cuts.

This isn't your father's social contract. It's your grandfather's. It would take us back to a time when the government didn't promise to take care of the sick and the needy, but only to help take care of them. There's a trillion-dollar difference between the two. A trillion-dollar difference that Republicans would plow into tax cuts for the rich. Now, normally they like to say that this would make the economy grow so much faster that everyone else would be better off, too, but they're not even bothering with that pretense today. Instead, they're just trying to give wealthy investors the biggest tax cut possible by having it apply to last year as well. Perhaps the idea is that that will incentivize people to invent time machines so they can create more jobs in the past.

It's an inspiring piece of legislation for everyone who thought Robin Hood was picking on the wrong people.


COMMENTARY ON TRUMP’S ATTACK BOTS AND PROPAGANDA SOURCES – FROM CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, THE HILL, AND THE WEEK

WHAT ARE TWITTER EGG ACCOUNTS? WHY DOES TRUMP HAVE SO MANY, AND WHAT THEHILL.COM SAYS ABOUT IT.

https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2017/0403/Twitter-drops-egg-avatar-hoping-to-make-life-more-uncomfortable-for-internet-trolls-video
Technology
Twitter drops egg avatar, hoping to make life more uncomfortable for internet trolls (+video)

The popular social media platform will change its default profile figure from a photo of an egg to a generic human head and torso, hoping to distance themselves from internet trolls who hide behind the egg avatar to harass fellow users. But will it be enough?


EGGS ARE BABY BIRDS (WHO "TWEET.") DON'T YOU EVER WONDER HOW THEY COME UP WITH THESE NEW "WORDS?" SEE BELOW.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/335861-nearly-half-of-trumps-twitter-followers-are-fake-report
5/31/2017

Clinton questions Trump's 'fake' Twitter followers
Hillary Clinton resurrected debunked reports of President Trump's flood of "fake" followers on Twitter on Wednesday.

“Who is behind driving up Trump’s Twitter followers by the millions? We know they’re bots. Why? I assume there’s a reason for everything. Is it to make him look more popular than he is? Is it to try to influence others on Twitter about what the messaging is?” Clinton asked at a Recode event.

Clinton appeared to tie Trump's followers to investigations into Russia's possible ties to the Trump administration, saying the bot creators could be “sitting in Moscow or Macedonia or the White House."

Reports emerged earlier this week that millions of fake accounts followed Trump over the weekend, but Twitter disputed those claims, noting that the accounts that tweeted out the information were not verified and the user provided no evidence for the claim, Business Insider reported.

An account with a high percentage of fake followers does not necessarily mean the account owner bought those followers. Spam and fake accounts are a known issue on Twitter and better-known accounts are more likely to attract fake followers.

Nearly half of the followers of Trump's personal Twitter account are fake, according to a Newsweek report.

Newsweek plugged Trump's account, @realDonaldTrump, into Twitter Audit — a service that determines the authenticity of accounts — and found that 51 percent of Trump's followers are real.

Comparatively, about 79 percent of former President Barack Obama's Twitter followers are real, according to Newsweek. But Obama's personal account also has 89.3 million followers, compared with Trump's 31.1 million. Obama actually has more fake followers overall than the current president even though his percentage is lower.

Social Rank, a social media service, found that more than 900,000 "egg accounts," or accounts without profile pictures, followed Trump in May alone. They also found that there was a dramatic increase in those accounts since February, with an 8 percent increase in "egg followers."



IS ANOTHER OF TRUMP’S LITTLE ELVES HELPING HIM AGAIN? SO FAR, NO NAME HAS BEEN ASSIGNED, BUT ANALYSTS FROM THREE COMPANIES ARE SAYING THAT TRUMP’S “ARMY OF BOTS” IS “AMASSING” AS IT DID BEFORE THE ELECTION, AND HILLARY CLINTON HAS CALLED PUBLIC ATTENTION TO IT. IT COINCIDED WITH SOME OF THE “FAKE NEWS” STORIES AS WELL RIGHT BEFORE THE ELECTION. SO, WHAT ARE THEY UP TO?

http://theweek.com/speedreads/702682/something-strange-going-trumps-twitter-followers
Something strange is going on with Trump's Twitter followers
June 1, 2017

On Wednesday, Hillary Clinton told a tech conference that President Trump's victory over her in November came with a little help from an army of automated bots on Twitter, and alluded to reports that bots are once again amassing at Trump's Twitter fortress. "Who is behind driving up Trump's Twitter followers by the millions? We know they're bots," she said. "Is it to make him look more popular than he is? Is it to try to influence others on Twitter about what the messaging is so that people get caught up in it and lose sight of what they're trying to say?"

BuzzFeed News rated that assertion false, because Twitter had told BuzzFeed that Trump did not recently gain 5 million followers in three days, but researchers say there really is something fishy going on with Trump's Twitter numbers — which grew by 2.4 million in May, from 28.6 million to 31 million followers, or about one new follower a second. "In my expert opinion, something strange is going on," Samuel C. Woolley, research director for the Computational Propaganda project at Oxford University, tells The Washington Post. "It's consistent with other strange things that have gone on before with this politician's Twitter feed."

The numbers themselves aren't that shocking — he is president, and uses Twitter a lot — but there's "a strangely large percentage of Trump's followers — and especially his newest followers — that have only the most rudimentary account information, with no profile picture, few followers, and little sign that they have ever tweeted." These so-called "egg followers" are often, but not always, automated bots. According to analytics firm SocialRank, Trump has 9.1 million egg followers, up from 5 million in February. "The quality of the new followers is pretty bad," says Jonathan Albright at Columbia.

Some of Trump's new followers have just joined and haven't yet completed their profiles, experts say, but there's also evidence of a bot buildup. "It's probably a combination of both," SocialRank CEO Alexander Taub told the Post, "but there's something fishy." The reason people are paying attention is that Trump's bots outperformed Clinton's 5-to-1 in the days before the election, according to a study by Wooly and his Oxford colleagues. You can read more about what may be afoot at The Washington Post. Peter Weber


US.BLASTINGNEWS.COM IS ANOTHER VERY “FISHY” SOUNDING WEBSITE. THAT AND ANOTHER OF THEIR ARTICLES MAKES ME QUESTION WHETHER THIS IS ONE OF TRUMP’S OWN PROPAGANDA ARTICLES, OR RUSSIA’S. WASHINGTON POST DID DO A STORY ON IT, THOUGH, -- AND I FOUND VERIFICATION FOR THE “WALKING NEWBORN” PHENOMENON ITSELF. IT’S CALLED A “PRIMITIVE REFLEX,” AND WIKIPEDIA LISTS AROUND A DOZEN OF THOSE. THIS IS THE KIND OF THING WHICH SEEMS TO ME TO “PROVE” THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. GENETIC MATERIAL FROM THOUSANDS TO MILLIONS OF YEARS OLD CAN BE INHERITED. THE HUMAN EMBRYO AT AN EARLY POINT OF DEVELOPMENT HAS “GILL SLITS,” AND SOME HUMAN BABIES HAVE A SMALL TAIL WHEN BORN. SHOCKING! THE DOCTORS CLIP IT OFF. ON THIS WALKING NEWBORN STORY, SEE BELOW.

THE ARTICLE THAT IS BLATANTLY A LIE IS THE FOLLOWING – OR SO I THOUGHT....

Baby walks minutes after birth video - 74 million viewed viral video in 3 ...
us.blastingnews.com › Curiosities › 2017 › 05

May 29, 2017 - A baby is born, it cries and wants to cuddle, but this baby wanted to go for a walk minus the stroller, leaving jaws dropped around the delivery ...

http://metro.co.uk/2017/05/30/newborn-baby-starts-walking-just-minutes-after-leaving-the-womb-6671306/
Newborn baby starts walking just minutes after leaving the womb
Richard Hartley-ParkinsonRichard Hartley-Parkinson for Metro.co.ukTuesday 30 May 2017 7:31 am

Photographs -- The baby did not like being in the bath

A baby in Brazil has been compared to Stewie from Family Guy after she appeared to start walking minutes after she was born.

Doctors were trying to bathe her, but she had other ideas and started to wriggle around to walk on her own.

Normally, babies don’t start walking until they are about 12 months old. One of the nurses said in Portuguese: ‘Oh my gosh, the girl is walking. Good gracious.’
Another colleague shouts ‘Ju, Ju, come and see this’.

A midwife said: ‘Merciful father. I was trying to wash her here and she keeps getting up to walk. She has walked from here to here.’

Brazilian baby starts walking minutes after birth
Play Video
Current Time 0:00/Duration Time 0:40

It is believed the footage was shot at Santa Cruz Hospital in Rio Grande do Sul, southern Brazil.

One of the people in the hospital said: ‘Wow, she is so cute it’s amazing. If she’s like this now, I can just imagine how precocious she is going to be as she grows up.’

To which the midwife holding the baby girl says: ‘Heavens above. If you told people what has just happened no one would believe it unless they saw it with their own eyes.’

For the midwife, it is particularly surprising to hear this as it is not that uncommon in newborn babies – it’s actually something they often show naturally.

Known as the walking or stepping reflex, ‘if you hold the baby under the arms (being careful to support her head, as well) and let her soles touch a flat surface, she’ll place one foot in front of the other and “walk”,’ Healthy Children writes.

‘This reflex will disappear after two months, then recur as the learned voluntary behavior of walking toward the end of the first year.’

The walking reflex is part of what are known as ‘primitive reflexes’. It’s an infant’s nervous system kicking in before the mind or the body has grown to understand or cope with what is going on around them.



THE WALKING REFLEX—ONE OF THE MORE WELL-KNOWN PRIMITIVE REFLEXES IS THE FIERCE GRIP A VERY YOUNG BABY WILL PUT ON A FINGER, THE BLANKET, YOUR HAIR, YOUR NOSE, ETC. SEE THE LIST OF OTHERS IN THE ARTICLE UNDER “CONTENTS” BELOW.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_reflexes

Primitive reflexes
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Primitive reflexes are reflex actions originating in the central nervous system that are exhibited by normal infants, but not neurologically intact adults, in response to particular stimuli. These reflexes are absent due to the development of the frontal lobes as a child transitions normally into child development.[1] These primitive reflexes are also called infantile, infant or newborn reflexes.

Older children and adults with atypical neurology (e.g., people with cerebral palsy) may retain these reflexes and primitive reflexes may reappear in adults. Reappearance may be attributed to certain neurological conditions including dementia (especially in a rare set of diseases called frontotemporal degenerations), traumatic lesions, and strokes.[2][3] An individual with cerebral palsy and typical intelligence can learn to suppress these reflexes, but the reflex might resurface under certain conditions (i.e., during extreme startle reaction). Reflexes may also be limited to those areas affected by the atypical neurology, (i.e., individuals with cerebral palsy that only affects their legs retaining the Babinski reflex but having normal speech); for those individuals with hemiplegia, the reflex may be seen in the foot on the affected side only.

Primitive reflexes are primarily tested with suspected brain injury or some dementias such as Parkinson's disease for the purpose of assessing frontal lobe functioning. If they are not being suppressed properly they are called frontal release signs. Atypical primitive reflexes are also being researched as potential early warning signs of autistic spectrum disorders.[4]

Primitive reflexes are mediated by extrapyramidal functions, many of which are already present at birth. They are lost as the pyramidal tracts gain functionality with progressive myelination. They may reappear in adults or children with loss of function of the pyramidal system due to a variety of reasons. However with the advent of Amiel Tison method of neurological assessment, the importance of assessment of such reflexes in paediatric population has come down.[5][6][7]

Contents [hide]
1 Adaptive value of reflexes
2 Moro reflex
3 Walking/stepping reflex
4 Rooting reflex
5 Sucking reflex
6 Asymmetrical tonic neck reflex
7 Symmetrical tonic neck reflex
8 Palmar grasp reflex
9 Plantar reflex
10 Galant reflex
11 Swimming reflex
12 Babkin reflex
13 Parachute reflex
14 Other primitive reflexes tested in adults
15 Primitive reflexes in high-risk newborns
16 References
17 External links



SO WHO’S BEEN BOOSTING TRUMP’S TWITTER DATA THIS TIME? THE RUSSIANS, PROBABLY, OR MAYBE TRUMP HIMSELF. HE'S AWFULLY ANXIOUS TO HAVE HIGH STATS. THE BOTS HAVE ALSO BEEN TROLLING PEOPLE, THOUGH, SO THEY'RE AREN'T JUST PRAISING TRUMP'S NAME. THEY'RE WORKING FOR HIM.

http://us.blastingnews.com/news/2017/05/trumps-twitter-has-something-fishy-happening-claims-researchers-001740515.html
Trump's Twitter has something 'fishy' happening claims researchers He's one popular guy, but something about the latest numbers Trump's accumulating have raised a red flag for a group of researchers.roz zurkoroz zurko FOLLOW Curated byTiffany BaileyUpdated on 2 June 2017, 10:16 Something 'fishy' going on with Trump's Twitter? Photo: Blasting News Library Something 'fishy' going on with Trump's Twitter? Photo: Blasting News Library

By all means, #trump has more #Twitter followers than most people in this world and that's to be expected with his Twitter account being a kind of hot-line to the president of this nation. When Trump was in the running for the president and then won the election, his Twitter followers were growing in leaps and bounds every day, but a sudden surge in followers have researchers puzzled.

Is odd stuff going on?

A surge in Twitter followers is deemed a rather mysterious event and it has researchers who study social media perking up and taking notice. According to The Washington Post, the reports cite Trump seeing a gain of 5 million Twitter followers happening in less than a week.

This same report also suggests that something "fishy" is going on with these new followers.

'Fishy'
This something "fishy" may be due to bot followers. According to the Washington Post, the term "bot" is used to describe automated accounts, not real people, just technology acting like real people. These automated accounts are what many of the websites are trying to keep out by having you write those cryptic looking words in a box before you hit "enter," "send," or "continue," when creating an account of some type online.

Is something off?

Twitter Counter, which is a tracking site, puts Trump's Twitter account as getting about 2.4 million new followers in May alone, when you break it down into time, this indicates that every second of the day throughout the month of May, a Twitter follower signed up to Trump's account.

Samuel C. Wooley is a research director out of Oxford University, who has seen the numbers of new followers. He offers up his opinion on this surge of followers on Trump's Twitter account.

An expert weighs in

Wooley is considered an expert in this field and he indicates that from what he is seeing, it seems rather odd. Unlike the others who are concerned with a large number of followers, the number of new people following Trump is not as concerning to Wooley as another trend that he is seeing.

Trump does have more people following him on Twitter than most people do in the world. Considering how Trump uses Twitter as a news channel for the scoop coming out of the White House, people flock to his Twitter for the first-hand news. This seems to be especially true after all the fake news coming from the mainstream media. Couple the news with the entertainment factor that Trump seems to provide with his tweets, people are going to want to follow this Twitter account. So what does Wooley find strange?

Twitter users without tweets

What Wooley does find strange is that there's a large number of Trump's new followers who carry very little information in their profile section.

Many don't have a profile picture and they also don't show a history of tweeting. It is almost as if these people were so generic they could be a bot account.

These are called "egg-followers." This name comes that egg image that shows up where the profile picture would normally go when there is no profile picture offered. Wooley is not alone with his thoughts. Jonathan Albright, who is the research director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, also sees the new followers on Trump's Twitter page as not having much quality to them.

The Washington Posts reports that while Twitter has stopped using that "egg" as a fill-in for a Twitter user's profile picture when there isn't one offered up by the Twitter user, the term "egg followers" is still used.

Growing, growing and growing

SocialRank, another analytics company that works with big businesses, reported on Trump's numbers this week. They note that Trump's followers went from 24.1 million in February to 31 million in May. Trump's "egg followers" also grew during this same time period. They went from 5 million to 9.1 million.

The SocialRank people also reported on Tuesday that "927,000 of Trump’s egg followers are new accounts from May." The lack of a profile picture doesn't deem the account fake in the eyes of the researchers, but a large number of them in a short period of time does make it a bit "fishy" looking.

Odd-looking followers

After all the debate over bot followers versus real folks signing up on Trump's Twitter account is said and done, the consensus coming from Alexander Taub, who is the chief executive of SocialRank, says it all. Taub said how Trump can still be drawing in a large number of real followers, while egg-followers could also be part of the surge in numbers seen. Apparently, Taub doesn't believe that the number surge would necessarily have to be one or the other, but it is more likely the numbers are coming from a combination of both. #Twitter Bots

Chosen For You On the same day, Eric Trump and father Donald hit the Democrats. Photo via @Erictrump, Twitter.Trump's go into Democrat attack modeVittorio HernandezDear Sean Hannity: Don't Blame Megyn Kelly, Blame Yourself - thelibertarianrepublic.com Sean Hannity loses it in wild tweetstorm, accuses Obama of colluding with Russia [VIDEO]Robert SobelPresident Donald Trump: Image credit: President Donald Trump Live Speech & News 2017 | YoutubeTrump says Obama did not investigate the Russia election interference properly [VIDEO]Obomski



THE SEVERAL WASHINGTON POST STORIES ON THE RUSSIAN HACKING ARE HERE. THIS IS MANY PAGES LONG, BUT AN EXCELLENT ARTICLE. I HAVEN’T READ IT ALL, BUT I’M WORKING ON IT PROGRESSIVELY. ACCORDING TO RACHEL MADDOW SEVERAL DOZEN US GOVERNMENT WORKERS GAVE THE POST INFORMATION FOR THIS. IT IS SET UP WITH CLICKABLE LINKS, SO GO TO THE SITE AND CLICK AS YOU WISH.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/national-security/russia-hacking-timeline/?utm_term=.65d069577d71
The Post’s new findings in Russia’s bold campaign to influence the U.S. election
EXCLUSIVE – HACKING DEMOCRACY
By Julie Vitkovskaya, Samuel Granados and John Muyskens
June 23, 2017



THIS IS, I GATHERED FROM A GLANCE, A FAKE FAKE NEWS LIST. TAKE A LOOK AT IT. IT’S FUNNY.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ZIMFFF
Wikipedia:Zimdars' fake news list
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia