And then there’s the Exxon CEO Trump nominated for Secretary of State.

The Exxon CEO potentially faces difficulties getting confirmed in the Republican-controlled Senate. Some lawmakers worry about his links to Moscow and opposition to U.S. sanctions on Russia, which awarded him a friendship medal in 2013.

But several Republican establishment figures, including former secretaries of state James Baker and Condoleezza Rice, and former Defense Secretary Robert Gates vouched for Tillerson, 64, who has spent more than 40 years at the oil company.

Rice and Gates, who have worked for Exxon as consultants, both issued statements of support on Tuesday.

Oh well then – if they’ve worked for Exxon obviously that shows that they’re completely neutral and unbiased observers … Read the rest

Another coyote named to oversee the rabbit house.

President-elect Donald Trump has picked Rick Perry to head the Energy Department, said two people familiar with the decision, seeking to put the former Texas governor in control of an agency whose name he forgot during a presidential debate even as he vowed to abolish it.

Perry, who ran for president in the past two election cycles, is likely to shift the department away from renewable energy and toward fossil fuels, whose production he championed while serving as governor for 14 years.

Let’s revert to putting more carbon into the atmosphere. Let’s do what we can to speed up global warming. Let’s really put the change in climate change.

[E]nvironmentalists take

Paul Krugman on what an illegitimate election this was.

The C.I.A., according to The Washington Post, has now determined that hackers working for the Russian government worked to tilt the 2016 election to Donald Trump. This has actually been obvious for months, but the agency was reluctant to state that conclusion before the election out of fear that it would be seen as taking a political role.

Meanwhile, the F.B.I. went public 10 days before the election, dominating headlines and TV coverage across the country with a letter strongly implying that it might be about to find damning new evidence against Hillary Clinton — when it turned out, literally, to have found nothing at all.

Did the combination of

This appeared on Facebook:

FIRED BY OBAMA TO PLEASE THE MUSLIMS

[Mad Dog Mattis]

HIRED BY TRUMP TO EXTERMINATE THEM

If you go to Allen West’s Facebook page to see it, as I did, you won’t find it. You’ll find nasty stuff, but not that. Instead you’ll find an explanation of why it’s gone:

Message to our followers: Hello everyone. This is Michele Hickford, Editor-in-Chief of allenbwest.com.

On Friday night, without Allen West’s knowledge or consent, a meme was posted to this Facebook page which was reprehensible in its message.

As editor in chief, I must take full responsibility for this, although I was not the one who posted it, and it was posted without my knowledge. I neither

What kind of person do you want running the Food and Drug Administration? A scientist who has a good understanding of food and drug safety and a commitment to ensure both for the citizenry.

Oops! Joke’s on you! Trump wants the other kind – the kind who thinks the citizenry should take care of itself and not expect some government bureaucrat to do it, god damn it.

President-elect Donald Trump is weighing naming as Food and Drug Administration commissioner a staunch libertarian who has called for eliminating the agency’s mandate to determine whether new medicines are effective before approving them for sale.

Sure. Just throw them out there and see what happens.

“Let people start using them, at their own

Patton Oswalt yesterday:

This fucking election. Fucking Trump.

These newest revelations, that Russia hacked the election. Piles of evidence, teetering up to the sky. That Russia ALSO hacked the RNC and are holding them over a barrel because of what they know. Which would be hilarious if it wasn’t so frightening.

And the boiling chaos that’s resulting from it. I’ve got conservative friends actually DEFENDING Russia on this. I’ve got progressive friends gloating that we’ve finally had done to us what we’ve done to other countries. That Hillary somehow deserves this. That WE somehow deserve this. That infuriating cliche about, “It’s actually GOOD ifTrump destroys everything it’ll start a revolution BLAH BLAH BLAH FUCKING BLAH…”

And in the

Furthermore, the relationship between Donnie from Queens and the intelligence professionals is tanking. That could be a problem.

The simmering distrust between Donald Trump and U.S. intelligence agencies escalated into open antagonism Saturday after the president-elect mocked a CIA report that Russian operatives had intervened in the U.S. presidential election to help him win.

The growing tensions set up a potential showdown between Trump and the nation’s top intelligence officials during what some of those officials describe as the most complex threat environment in decades.

…

Trump’s reaction will probably deepen an existing rift between Trump and the agencies and raised questions about how the government’s 16 spying agencies will function in his administration on matters such as counterterrorism