“This is your body on greedy and stupid. Any questions?”
No, not sarcasm. I genuinely haven’t heard this before.
Right. Just plain evil instead of insane and massively evil.
Or…another way of looking at it is that we are essentially getting the worst of both worlds: Pence is basically running the show on the nitty gritty policy stuff, like destroying Obamacare, destroying the EPA, placating the plutocracy with tax cuts, etc. And, then we have the Trump+Bannon economic faux-populism and fascism thrown in.
The plutocrat or the theocrat. Tough choice.
Der Trihs (whose name I just got) quoted:
"Then we had a long talk about his approach to politics. He never called himself a “populist” or an “American nationalist,” as so many think of him today.
“I’m a Leninist,” Bannon proudly proclaimed.
Shocked, I asked him what he meant.
“Lenin,” he answered, “wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” Bannon was employing Lenin’s strategy for Tea Party populist goals. He included in that group the Republican and Democratic Parties, as well as the traditional conservative press. "
That’s kind of the thing that always cracked me up about the right’s demonization of Saul Alinsky. Alinsky may have been a man of the left, but first and foremost he was a tactician, and his tactics are just as adaptable to the right as the left.
I’m sorry, but you guys are completely fucked.
Stephen Fucking Bannon. Will now oversee sensitive security issues that the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs will not see.
Let that sink in.
You’re fucked.
Yeah, I was definitely worried and mortified up to this point, but this move has kinda freaked me out. I struggle to find an example of a topic that would come before the NSC that would not require the DNI or JCS but would require Steve Bannon. Are we headed toward the national security apparatus being used entirely for political aims? That…doesn’t sound good…
Of course the Reichsminister für Volksaufklärung has to be involved. What are you thinking?
How does one use an apparatus without its commanders?
Seriously, is there a way?
I share your loathing of Trump and his movement (interesting that it’s indistinguishable from the bowel variety)- but comparing his government to the National Socialists is giving him way too much credit.
Donald was ass-fucking an Elephant and it took off down the path. He thinks he’s in the driver’s seat, but in reality the Elephant is in a panic, totally out of control, and Donald can’t get off.
I actually don’t fear Donald anymore. It’s Bannon. It’s always been Bannon. *That *dude is running the chaos right now, and loving every minute. He’s no different than a suicide bomber.
Here’s a genuine question: if Trump or his puppeteers really want to consolidate power, how much more do they have to do to earn the allies they really need?
Do they really have Congress in general in their corner? For a lot of things, sure, and many prominent members do seem to be falling in line, but how many, truly? Is it enough?
In the press, sure they have Breitbart and Fox News and InfoWars, but do they reach enough people, even with followers spamming social media?
As for the military and intelligence communities, how inclined exactly are they to follow what he wants? Does the recent snub to them both with the installation of Bannon have any impact?
It seems to me all of these are actual obstacles of varying heights - whether it’s “enough” is up to debate, but they do seem real. I’d like to get a sense of what they are right now.
[snip]
A Freudian slip of sorts? I think deep inside Bannon does know “the rest of the history”* that Lenin actually gained power thanks to a foreign power, that did send him in secret back to his country, Russia, and right after arriving Lenin secretly got money and even weapons also to start a revolution to undermine Russia so as to make Russia stop being at war against that foreign power.
The enemies of Russia, the Germans and the Kaiser, succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. (Until WWII that is) I wonder if Putin has speeches of the Kaiser next to his bed.
- Said like classic radio broadcaster Paul Harvey.
The Onion wrote an article headlined “Sean Spicer’s role in the Trump administration will be to provide the American public with robust and clearly articulated misinformation”. He retweeted it, thinking it was praising him.
That is beautiful.
I strongly suspect Bannon is lying. There is no infrastructure program. There are no taxes. Bannon is a wealthy investment banker in his own right; but he is backed by zillionaire high-frequency trader Bob Mercer–who previously backed state-smashing Ted Cruz, radical TEA Partier and enemy of the civil service & of the USA['s good faith].
Bannon just showed a lack of good faith to military interpreters and resident aliens. He’s trying to destroy the USA’s good name in a different way than Cruz, but he’s anti-USA all the same.
Mercer, Cruz, Bannon. Anti-USA. There’s your rally chant.
These guys aren’t Andrew Jackson. They’re Aaron Burr.
I’m actually having trouble believing Spicer is actually that stupid. Are you sure he wasn’t just trying to show that he has a sense of humor?
I don’t. I don’t believe he has a sense of humor. Though the “My Little Pony” defense was pretty funny.
Don’t forget that this is the same guy who twice tweeted out his Twitter password last week, thinking he was logging in.
Jesus. An administration of incompetents.