Russia

When the WaPo posted last Friday's story about a "secret" CIA assessment that Russian cyber attacks were aimed at helping Republican President-elect Donald Trump win the 2016 election, the readers of the Bezos-owned publication took it as gospel, despite, as we promptly noted, there being no evidence provided by the CIA, and as we learned today, the FBI openly resisting the CIA's assessment. It now appears that once again the WaPo may have been engaging in "partial fake news", as it did with its Nov. 24 story about "Russian propaganda fake media."

Via DaisyLuther.com,

Enough with “the Russians” already. This “Russian Disinformation” and “Russian Hacking” stuff is getting more ridiculous by the day.

After days of speculation and strawmen, and following Mitt Romney's statement earlier, AP is reporting that President-elect Donald Trump has selected Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson to lead the State Department, according to two people close to Trump's transition team.

The decision caps a lengthy process that often played out In public and exposed rifts within Trump's transition team. But Tillerson's close ties to Russia could still complicate his Senate confirmation hearings.

 

“In my view, the Trump election has made a large Chinese devaluation more likely. Mainland Chinese investors are desperately trying to get out of the Yuan, and the People’s Bank of China is trying to defend the value of the Yuan. They are doing this by selling treasuries.”

       - Russell Clark, Horseman Global

Since election day, Democrats have engaged in a panicked attempt to leverage their last couple of weeks in control of the executive branch to delegitimize the Trump presidency.  Obama has even gone so far as to order a "full report" on Russian tampering in the 2016 election cycle to be completed before he leaves office (see "A "Soft Coup" Attempt: Furious Trump Slams "Secret" CIA Report Russia Helped Him Win").  Of course, we should simply ignore the fact that a true investigation of such allegations would take much longer than the one month that Obama has left in office because any delay c