It does seem ironic that people have rightly complained about infotainment and constraints of the mainstream media from reporting the truth ... for at least a few years ... and now that Trump makes the same complaint, we jump to protect authentic journalism ... understandably, now that The Donald is stacking the deck with his own marked cards ... it's just does not seem like the new game will be more fair ... but, is it a new game?

Trump understands the difference between propaganda Fox fake news, the kind he promotes, verses the real news he wants to suppress....the kind that merely holds a mirror up to the truth of his fascist chaos.

When hasn't Trump pulled the 180 on truth like this? His best defense is always distraction with offense. You can rest assured that when he's pointing his finger about anything, he and his accomplices have already committed that very crime. A good example was his accusation of voter fraud, simply meant to distract attention away from the election fraud that put the Teapublicans in power to begin with.

Network news is at best brief with very little content of any value, but even that sheds too much light on the Trump/Teapublican lie unfolding before us.

The first comment I made the morning after the election was...the Teapublican Party will no longer be able to fly under the radar and hide its intent. That is unless the media is silenced as in third world overthrows....which is what we are seeing.

I guess the future all depends on how much citizens and our so called free press are willing to give up their first amendment rights. This also includes employees of the CIA and FBI. They can't all be right-wing extremists like Comey. Someone needs to be a true american patriot and do the right thing. The treason is no secret.....could it be more obvious?

What we are watching is the establishment of a fascist dictatorship. The Bannon administration is getting no pushback from the congress or senate; even the ones who were highly critical of Trump as a candidate started lining up to kiss his ass as soon as he became president. Bannon has announced as one of their priority projects the neutering of the Judiciary so that they don't question every decision the president makes. And, of course, the Supreme Court will soon be permanently populated with enough Trump "yes" people to insure that no interference is encountered from that front for the next several decades. So all they really need to do now is to squash the free press. That is a main priority on every dictator's to-do list. Look it up.

We will soon have a dictator of the temperament of a Nero or a Caligula with unchecked power running the US. People keep comparing Trump to Hitler. Trump hasn't a fifth the brain power of an Adolf Hitler (who wasn't himself exactly a genius). Trump by himself is an undifferentiated blob of sociopathic narcissism. He needs Bannon to lend him form and direction. Bannon serves as a nozzle to direct Trump’s high pressure juvenile vitriol in semi-coherent politically philosophical streams so that Trump doesn't’t always come across as a toddler throwing a hissy fit.

We don't have the will and the wherewithal (you need both) in any entity or institution to oppose the Trump regime. Half of the country thinks what's happening is just great and they're the ones with their hands on the controls.

It may not be fashionable but Trumps's assertion of fake news is correct based upon what I observe on CBS, ABC and NBC evening news shows. I watch them rarely but when I do the lead stories from the three major networks are almost always the same and it is about Trump, Trump, and more Trump. The House or the Senate is rarely discussed unless it is about Russia. And when was the last time there was an in depth interview done by broadcaster questioning a liberal or conservative or moderate senator, congressperson about Social Security, automation in the workplace, climate change, etc, real wage regression, The FED, etc.?So yes, it is fake news but they aren't lying per se. They just are providing pablum for the masses or magician tricks so the audience watches the shiny object while the real news isn't reported or worst distorted so we have the feel good story at the end of the program.

CNN, MSNBC, Fox, are not any better. Each has their own agenda. If I must watch TV News I'll watch PBS or BBC. I prefer to get my news from multiple sources so I am not in the echo chamber. I also prefer to read the news instead of someone reading to me as if I were a child.

Actually, this is the second step, but I agree with your statement. The first step was 'telling' the news media what to say & what NOT to say. Simply not reporting important information and stories wasn't enough, so now this.

The day after the election I said "These next four years will come to be known as the rape of America." Trump and his plunder monkeys will take all they want, well, all they can get. With all the 9/11 inspired unconstitutional laws already on the books (and more to come, I'm sure), the militarization of the police, the huge new capacity to retain large numbers of people that now exists and Trump's apparent distain for the Constitution, the already occuring disappearences are sure to worsen dramatically.

Write to your Senators and Congress person for a Special Prosecutor to investigate Trumps taxes, campaign and business for ties to Russia and Conflicts of Interest. We have a POTUS that was not vetted in any way. If he will not release his taxes, to the public, a Special Prosecutor will be able to look at them and decide for us.

And so it begins...the first step to a dictatorship has been taken - obstructing "unfavorable" news reporters and their employers. Next will be outright censorship; then 'disappearances'.

Well, it depends on who is suing who for what and why.

The knife cuts both ways.

For instance, Mike Papantonio sued the tobacco industry in the infamous landmark case that forced them to quit lying, acknowledge the science, place warnings on their products, and cease advertising to children, etc. That action has saved thousands if not millions of lives and greatly reduced the burden on the healthcare system.

He, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and other ethical lawyers have also sued medical equipment providers and pharmaceutical firms for deliberately selling products that top management knew were lethal to large percentages of patients or caused life-long illnesses. These murderous bastards put profits over people and increased the patient load by leaps and bounds.

Exxon Mobile knowingly lied for decades even after their own scientists proved beyond a doubt that burning fossil fuels causes global warning, terrible cancers, and poisons the air, land, and water everywhere. Think how all those negative effects ring up the cash registers in the doctors' offices and hospitals. That company screams out to be sued, and its den of thieves and killers need to have their asses dragged into court, found guilty, and thrown into the deepest, darkest dungeons.

Instead, their former CEO was crowned Secretary of State.

The biggest abusers of our judicial system are not little people at the bottom initiating frivolous lawsuits -- those idiots are usually weeded out pretty fast; it's the millionaires and billionaires milking their mega-corporate cash cows, assholes who sue anyone at the drop of a hat and clog up the courts with mergers and acquisitions, bankruptcies and restructuring -- all on the taxpayers' dime!

For instance, His Majesty, Trump the Faker, declared bankruptcy six times, screwing over lenders, investors, city governments, the IRS (He never paid any personal income taxes for almost a decade and called it "genius."), contractors, and workers, all the while living the life of a spoiled playboy and grabbing pussy. To date, he has been involved in at least 4,000 lawsuits, and counting, either as a defendant or as a plaintiff -- mostly because he was cheating people out of money.

And yet, on January 20, 2017 -- a day that will live in infamy -- he was crowned as the king ...of the swamp.

Deepspace don't forget what separates Americans from the rest of the world, your stupid lawsuits. It cost the end user a fortune. There needs to be a lot more talk about it.

Deepspace, of course as a Canadian I would prefer our system over the US one. The US system appears to be broken. If you have wealth it is the best system in the world if you don't it is the worst. You should take Tommy's advice and create a state by state system it is much easier to implement. To me all of our problems implementing healthcare are because no one will talk about the true cost of healthcare. To have the single payer system you want be prepared to see your personal taxes increase at least 20 %. Be prepared to see your standard of living to drop drastically. Be prepared to have a massive "sin" tax, alcohol, cigs, hotels, flights, etc costs will triple. My same CC whiskey is $68 in Canada and $16 in AZ. Of course I would rather pay more for whiskey to give everyone good healthcare. But be honest to everyone who is going to pick up the tab. That is your average everyday middle class worker. That Ia why Obamacare is failing. The middle class person struggling to get by wasn't prepared for their massive increases to subsidize those who are less fortunate. If conservatives and liberals could just quit attacking each other for a second and find a solution in the middle that everyone could agree on we all win. This all or nothing approach will never work. Sorry about your loss. I lost my mom to cancer as well. Wonder if they are up there arguing like us.

As Thom has so often suggested, there is always the option of becoming an expat.

Hi Randolph. Haha, I'm not sure if you were addressing Kend or me. Either way, you made good points.

The history of the ACA, of course, has many subtleties, which are too involved to expound upon in a blog post. Suffice it to say that my limited understanding of the subject is derived only from memory and an acute interest in witnessing this pivotal event as it happened, since Max Baucus was my Senator at the time and the committee chairman.

In spite of being a corporate Democrat, he accomplished many good things for the people in his long career; however, in this particular battle, he sold us out with a nod from Obama. To keep the insurance companies (Baucus' principle donors) on board, and in the naive hope to garner more support from the Republicans on the committee for the final vote, Baucus and Obama compromised too much by opposing the public option, which was the principal issue for progressive Democrats, who protested mightily.

Establishment Democrats were fools for their misplaced trust and the Republicans were back-stabbers for reneging on their already meager support. The Cons abused the process by holding out a carrot while suckering the Dems into accepting every poison pill and time bomb they could possibly sneak into the final bill. They were committed from the very beginning to make Obama fail at absolutely every initiative he would ever attempt, especially "Obamacare." (Read, "When the Tea Party Came to Town" by Robert Draper.)

Since the ACA has many bastardized parts adopted from the conflicted ideas of both parties, the history is very complicated. Some of the key components, for sure, were primarily Republican, hatched in the Heritage Foundation, such as the individual mandate and ensuring profits for the private sector through a combination of employer and individual premiums, along with vouchers and certain other indirect government subsidies. Nixon tried his own version but was stymied by Ed Kennedy who was holding out for his version of single-player, which never succeeded either.

Republican efforts at so-called "reform" eventually petered out for lack of support from their own members. Romney, however, succeeded in Massachusetts by incorporating certain Heritage Foundation concepts. Single-payer efforts by Democrats go all the way back to the Truman Administration and are equally complex.