There’s a great article by Bill Scher explaining why Bannon lost out to the “globalists”, i.e. why Trump’s agenda will now be exactly like every other elected Republicans’ agenda, only with most racism and incompetence. I was struck by this from Bannon:
“The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia … If we deliver … we’ll get 60 percent of the white vote, and 40 percent of the black and Hispanic vote and we’ll govern for 50 years … Like [Andrew] Jackson’s populism, we’re going to build an entirely new political movement. It’s everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. I’m the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan … It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution — conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement.”
[….]Where did Bannon go wrong? His first order of business had nothing to with jobs, let alone bridging racial divisions. He played a singular role in engineering the travel ban targeting Muslim-majority countries, cutting Cabinet agencies out of the loop and purposefully dropping it without warning on a Friday to stoke maximum weekend street protest from the left. Courts balked, and Republican members of Congress complained about the shoddy process. It was Trump’s first political defeat as president, a humiliating own-goal that sowed early doubts about the administration’s basic competence.
In other words, Bannon prioritized xenophobic, hippie-baiting bullshit over popular proposals. Why? Because he gets off on being an asshole.
The article goes to compare Bannon with Karl Rove:
Rove got further than Bannon did. He actually prioritized what he set out to prioritize. He met with Democrats immediately after the bitter conclusion of the 2000 election to talk education, and the No Child Left Behind Act passed with a big bipartisan vote in the spring of 2001. And he worked with Democrats again in 2003 to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare.
It was only the second term when Rove took on too much and saw his dreams of Republican realignment vaporize.
Rove also got off on being an asshole. I doubt he needed all that anti-gay bullshit to win in 2004, I think he did it because he, like many conservatives, likes all the prince of darkness type bullshit. He poisoned the well with that crap (and also with Swiftboating etc.), and gave the Democrats enough spine to resist his agenda.
What’s saved the country the last 20 years is that Republicans are too busy being petty assholes to destroy the country as thoroughly as they want to.
Update. To be clear, what I’m saying is that Bannon hates people of color more than he loves economic populism. (I also tend to think his brand of economic populism would be popular but probably catastrophic economically because it’s poorly thought out, so I’m glad he didn’t make much progress on it.)
schrodingers_cat
Please go and take a look at Brietbart archives, you can see what motivates Bannon the most and its not economic justice.
Matt McIrvin
More specifically–because Bannon is a fascist, and he sees racial conflict, or something as similar to it as makes no difference, as central to any populist agenda. He wanted infrastructure improvements coupled with protectionism not because it was an economically sensible course of action, but because non-white civilizations were taking our cookies, and that was the most important part. Only he was slightly too smart to phrase it that way, unlike, say, David Duke.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
I’ve always considered Bill Scher one of POLITICO’s better regular contributors, and the site as a whole has really improved under Grunwald’s stewardship. (And Al Franken would[‘ve] make/made a fine VP.)
Doug!
@schrodingers_cat:
Yes, that’s my point.
Jeffro
Cheap labor makes the Kochs and Mercers of the world very, very happy…and they can only distract middle-class and poor white folks from their stagnant wages by pointing at brown folks for just so long…
Kay
It was never going to happen anyway, though, even if he wasn’t an asshole because he needs money to do it and Republicans will never, ever raise taxes on rich people.
That is just not going to happen. They don’t NOT do infrastructure because they hate infrastructure. They don’t do infrastructure because they don’t want to pay for it.
Ruckus
@Doug!:
Are you saying that he talks out of one side of his mouth and acts out of his ass?
Because that’s what I see and how I took your post.
Doug!
@Ruckus:
I think he hates people of color more than he loves economic populism.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
ETA: did a little further reading in the thread and it does look like a spoof somebody put up on craig’s list or something.
speaking of trump and minorities, this is so on-the-nose it sets off my hoax alarm. Anybody in in AZ seen this local? and I think the pardon is still speculation, reasonable speculation, but still speculation.
$10/hr to be outside in Phoenix in August? I’d want at least 50
Ruckus
@Kay:
Well you know, taxes are the devils wages.
As opposed to say, making 500-600 times the average wage at a company, all the while making strategic decisions that just about destroy said company. That’s just good business!
Kay
I’m probably a “populist” Democrat if we are sorting into categories and I just find these people so repellent I will probably be a “globalist” by the time Trump leaves office. They’re horrible for populism. They are EXACTLY what people warn about with populism- that it will turn into vicious racism and xenophobia and also be phony and corrupt.
This has to be some kind of record for “populist” morphing into “racist”- they couldn’t even retain the illusion for ONE YEAR.
Ruckus
@Doug!:
That’s what I said!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: people using “populist” to describe Newt Gingrich’s angry white male appeal (remember the mid-90s?) used to drive Molly Ivins nuts.
Booger
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: $50 an hour in Phoenix? THOSE ARE LETTUCE PICKIN’ WAGES, MY FRIEND!
Jonny Scrum-half
It really is remarkable how far one can go if you’re willing to be an aggressive-sounding asshole who openly doesn’t care about anyone else’s interests/feelings. Now that I think about it, really this appears to be a successful strategy only if you’re a white male.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I know. The word is ruined. Pitch it on the “words conservatives ruined” pile.
Is there a better word to describe the economic approach? I need one.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
More?
rikyrah
The Daily 202: The elites strike back — getting under Trump’s skin
By James Hohmann
August 21 at 7:07 AM
……………………..
Seven months into President Trump’s reign, the elites are striking back. From Wall Street to West Palm Beach and West Hollywood, the past week has been a turning point, perhaps even a tipping point. Since Trump abdicated his moral leadership after Charlottesville, the well-connected have used their leverage — like checkbooks and celebrity — to send a message about what truly makes America great.
The growing number of groups canceling galas, stars boycotting ceremonies and chief executives resigning from advisory boards is further isolating Trump.
People in his orbit say the president has been in a sour mood about all of this. He stormed the barricades, but now he’s the one under siege. Unlike most of the criticism he’s engendered since taking office, the past week has actually impacted his bottom line. The value of the Trump “brand,” which he once said is worth billions, has taken a bath since he declared that some “fine people” were protesting alongside the neo-Nazis and white supremacists at the University of Virginia.
………………………………………………
— The White House announced on Saturday that neither the president nor first lady Melania Trump will attend the annual Kennedy Center Honors in December. For the first time since the award was created in 1978, they also will not invite the honorees over for a reception beforehand.
That came after three of the five honorees — television producer Norman Lear, singer Lionel Richie and dancer Carmen de Lavallade — said they would or may boycott the traditional reception. “As for the other two, rapper LL Cool J had not said whether he would attend, and Cuban American singer Gloria Estefan said she would go to try to influence the president on immigration issues,” per David Nakamura, Amy B Wang and Peter Marks.
…………………………
As an alpha male, Trump seems to take special satisfaction when people who are richer, cooler and better looking than him kowtow. It seems silly to have to write this, but it’s true: Having his ring kissed seems to be one of Trump’s favorite parts of the job. But there’s not been very much ring-kissing lately.
Doug!
@Ruckus:
Yes, I was clarifying what I meant.
rikyrah
The Secret Service confronts unique challenges in the Trump era
08/21/17 11:22 AM
By Steve Benen
A couple of years ago, the U.S. Secret Service struggled with a series of damaging controversies, including some important security breakdowns, prompting a congressional investigation and a bipartisan report about an “agency in crisis.” Among other things, lawmakers identified budget cuts one of the “primary causes” of the agency’s difficulties.
And while the Secret Service has tried to turn things around since the release of that report, the agency is now facing another daunting challenge: Donald Trump’s presidency.
The relationship between the Secret Service and the Republican president’s team has already faced some difficulties. A leading Trump attorney, for example, tried to blame the agency for last year’s infamous meeting in Trump Tower with a Kremlin-linked attorney, prompting the Secret Service to make a rare entry into a political debate in order to defend the agents’ actions. That was soon followed by a leasing dispute between the agency and the New York building the president still owns.
But USA Today goes a step further this morning, highlighting a different kind of problem.
SatanicPanic
Man these people are delusional.
Doug!
@Kay:
Policy-wise, globalist versus populist is a false choice anyway. Trade isn’t the biggest driver of economic inequality anyway. You could argue off-shoring profits to avoid taxes plays a big role (I’m not sure it actually does but maybe), but I never heard any serious proposals to address that anyway.
The real issues are tax rates and government services.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Kay:
Bannon, somewhere in his mind, thought that Trump was going to use the bully pulpit to make the Republicans get on board the nationalist populist Trump Train. Or something. Too bad for him and luckily for everyone else Trump turned out to be a blustering incompetent.
Mike in DC
“Globalists” has become alt right codespeak for “Jews”. Ditto for “cosmopolitan”, “elites”, etc.
A Ghost to Most
@Kay:
Including “Conservative”.
“Conservatism” now means bigotry, greed, spite, and treason.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Molly Ivins, from 1996
Tenar Arha
@rikyrah: I read that. The whole framing was bull. It drives me crazy that this is “the elites vs. populists” lie framing instead of what it really is “use your inside voice vs. shouting racism.” /sigh
Kay
@rikyrah:
They can’t do that forever, though, the Trumps. They can’t hide forever. He’s gonna have to attend an event at some point where half the people either don’t go or make a speech denouncing him. They can’t be seen with him and he’s the President of the United States. It’s unprecedented. This just isn’t sustainable.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@rikyrah:
Maybe the agents will slip up protecting Trump? Hope springs eternal
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Mike in DC:
Globalist was always an Nazi code word for Jews. Cosmopolitan was a Soviet term against intellectuals I think.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
As the Mouch said; Bannon sucks his own wedding tackle. How was Bannon dream of this wonderfully massive infrastructure program going to reconcile with the massive military build up he wanted AND cut taxes AND drown the government in a bathtub? Self pollution isn’t policy.
Kay
@Doug!:
I do think Democrats made a mistake by not valuing peoples’ work, though. They elevated some work over other work which would be okay to do except that something like 65% of people do the work they don’t value. They could have been really creative with it- they didn’t HAVE to go with the standard “flinging bales of hay into a pickup” theme or a hard-hatted white guy. Their voters work! They are working class people! They are not white male working class people but that’s not a detriment, it’s an opportunity. Who represents home health aides? They’re something like 70% non-white and they are female. That’s work! Pander TO THEM like we all pander to coal miners or auto assemblers.
Donald Trump rejected non-white and female working class people and there are a LOT of them. Be the Party that knows they exist. It drives me crazy because they’re sort of aimlessly searching rural Ohio – they’re not here! YOUR working classes voters are not here but they are elsewhere.
rikyrah
As Trump controversies intensify, Mar-a-Lago faces cancellations
08/21/17 10:40 AM—UPDATED 08/21/17 11:15 AM
By Steve Benen
In D.C., Donald Trump’s response to Charlottesville became so politically toxic, there was a sudden exodus from several White House advisory panels, with private-sector members deciding they no longer wanted to be associated with this president.
But about 1,000 miles to the south, Trump World faced a slightly different kind of problem stemming from the same controversy. The New York Times reported:
Exact tallies vary, but I believe that was the 10th cancellation of the 16 big-ticket events scheduled at Mar-a-Lago for the upcoming “social season.”
Amir Khalid
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
No they wouldn’t. They are better than that. But Trump, being Trump, probably doesn’t give a damn that he’s making them do more work than the Secret Service can pay for. He’s the boss, they’re the help, and it’s the boss’ right to screw over the help.
JPL
The local news just interviewed someone who is in No. Ga to watch the eclipse. Since the eclipse is all american, it will provide some unity. hmmm
Frankensteinbeck
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
Bear in mind, there are multiple conservative constituencies with different interpretations of code words. ‘Globalist’ for a lot of them means ‘Muslim’, in a very ignorant, generalized ‘brown people are going to take over with their own weird customs and marry your daughter and I heard there are cities in America and Europe now where Sharia Law is enforced’ way.
@Kay:
Hillary did. It was simultaneously not covered, while she got lectured for doing it too much. An incredible combination that underscores just how heavily this deck is stacked against us.
Kay
@rikyrah:
I’m glad but whey were they booking there anyway? The Cleveland Clinic was planning on going there? Why? To put money in the pocket of the guy who just tried to take away BILLIONS in healthcare funding especially in Ohio?
My daughter trained at the Cleveland Clinic (which is not one “clinic” but a whole system) and she was horrified that they had planned on going there.
gvg
On an earlier thread their was an article about Mar a Largo losses because of gala’s cancelling and loses to the value of the brand. I think it shows that Trump just isn’t very smart about what the Presidency really is. All presidents have some controversy and some unpopular decisions they have to make. Having a brand associated with a President is a bad marketing decision for anyone. If he had been a corporate CEO with a board and outside stockholders, they would have required him to resign before campaigning. It may take awhile for this to sink in but I think it will.
FlipYrWhig
@Mike in DC: It’s not only the right that uses those terms in that way. For the left it may not be “Jews” but it’s “establishment.” And the punch of the epithet “neoliberal” is that it’s a way to lump together all of the financial sector with everyone who believes in incremental, pragmatic, or institutional approaches, hence “elites.” I don’t even know what “populist” means anymore, but certainly most everyone who describes themselves that way lately is a raving douchebag.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@JPL: So if I only get 60% of an eclipse, am I 60% American? I haz confused.
FlipYrWhig
@Frankensteinbeck: IMHO Islam in this context works a bit differently: “globalist” means, in a lot of ways, “politically correct” and “cultural relativist,” hence not Muslim per se but soft on Muslims.
hilts
Secret Service out of money to pay agents because of Trump’s frequent travel, large family
h/t https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/08/21/secret-service-cant-pay-agents-because-trumps-frequent-travel-large-family/529075001
Amir Khalid
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
If it’s any comfort, you wouldn’t be the first three-fifths American.
Kay
@Frankensteinbeck:
Okay, point taken, but keep trying. There is no way to attack home health aides. They work incredibly hard, they are essential and they are an absolute god send to millions of people. God almighty if Democrat can’t make political hay out of that group of working class people they all need to quit because they are bad at this.
We should be holding galas, posing for photos, running commercials of them taking the train to work in pre-dawn hours.
I want to see fast food workers in ads. Elevate this group of workers like we romanticize and elevate coal miners.
Frankensteinbeck
@FlipYrWhig:
It means leading large swathes of an angry population through their anger. The actual size of the swathes and what those people are angry about exists in the imagination of the speaker, which is why it seems mysterious. People who like to use the word usually want to imagine populism is noble, and they define accordingly and delusionally.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: Am I the only one who thinks that a lot of these organizations may have already hated Trump and didn’t like doing business with him, but now they have the cover of this event and other people stepping up to separate from Trump, so they are less likely to be individually punished by Trump? Safety in numbers?
Or do we really think that the President and Charlottesville was an actual turning point?
schrodingers_cat
The so called economic populism was the fig leaf for the elite media and the soft racists and idiotic JS voters.
rikyrah
SUNDAY, AUG 13, 2017 06:30 PM CDT
Want to understand white privilege? Look at college golf teams like mine
It’s time we talked about how colleges let affluent white students be supported by African-American student labor
ANYA ALVAREZ
More and more discussion has become centered around what white privilege is. But very little dialogue has taken place around white privilege in college sports and the labor of African-American athletes on the football and basketball teams who make it possible for other sports to exist at universities.
……………………………………….
For a good 20 years of my life, I was a competitive golfer. I played on a full athletic scholarship and eventually turned pro, playing a short while on the LPGA and developmental tours.
While it is no secret golf is made up of a majority of white men, I never fully recognized the privilege I had to play on a golf scholarship, and this realization came to me after reading a Facebook post from another white woman who I used to play on tour with: “If college is free for everyone, then it will be equivalent to a high school degree,” she lamented.
My first reaction was, “But you went to school for free on an athletic scholarship . . . also, your parents are millionaires.”
Then I wondered, “How do golf programs exist at universities?”
In 2011, when Washington’s football program went 0-11 for the season, the football program made a profit of close to $15 million. The basketball program, which did very well that year, pocketed around $6 million.
…………………………………..
For a good 20 years of my life, I was a competitive golfer. I played on a full athletic scholarship and eventually turned pro, playing a short while on the LPGA and developmental tours.
While it is no secret golf is made up of a majority of white men, I never fully recognized the privilege I had to play on a golf scholarship, and this realization came to me after reading a Facebook post from another white woman who I used to play on tour with: “If college is free for everyone, then it will be equivalent to a high school degree,” she lamented.
My first reaction was, “But you went to school for free on an athletic scholarship . . . also, your parents are millionaires.”
Then I wondered, “How do golf programs exist at universities?”
In 2011, when Washington’s football program went 0-11 for the season, the football program made a profit of close to $15 million. The basketball program, which did very well that year, pocketed around $6 million.
…………….
The cost of playing on the women’s golf team included my equipment, travel to tournaments, physical therapy and insurance on me. In total, my time at the university cost the school around $424,000.
When I asked how the school could afford to have a golf program, without hesitation she responded, “Well, the football and basketball program, of course.”
Knowing this I quickly realized that in essence I was the freeloader that America loathes, the one we hear about so often in elections, one of those who takes advantage of a system set up to make people feel entitled.
In particular, other university sports like tennis, golf, swimming and gymnastics (mostly made up of white athletes) ride off the backs of mostly African-American athletes. According to a study conducted by University of Pennsylvania researcher Shaun R. Harper, black men only make up 2.5 percent of undergraduate students, but comprise 56 percent of college football teams and 61 percent of college basketball teams.
Yutsano
@ Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) : It’s even more interesting in that this also violates federal labour law. Federal employees are REQUIRED to get compensated. I don’t know if the Secret Service has a union, but even if not if the agents sued the government for their just due compensation they would win.
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: Great idea. And I kinda wish that “we” (for some values of “we”) hadn’t allowed public workers to get so stigmatized since the days of Reagan. Someone cleaning up a park or a swimming-pool locker room overnight is doing hard, necessary, mostly-thankless, virtuous work.
FlipYrWhig
@Frankensteinbeck: IMHO that’s demagoguery rather than populism but I realize there’s a gray area there.
clay
@Kay:
That, and they spout some bullshit about government jobs aren’t real jobs. It seems to be ideological at this point, that nothing the government does is as good as anything the private sector does, even putting people to work.
JPL
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Not as confused as I am.
Frankensteinbeck
@FlipYrWhig:
I think you are right. I was lumping them together, but the difference is correct. They do use ‘globalist’ and ‘multiculturalist’ for white people (because only white people have agency) who sell out the rest of their race to the Muslims. Our imagined motivation, by the way, is that we are ignorant, naive children with flowers in our hair who resent hard-working, tough, virtuous Christians and are prancing stupidly in to the gun sights of the murderous brown horde in the hopes we can all be friends.
@Kay:
I do agree. Everyone who works deserves respect for it. A shitty job means you deserve more respect for doing it, rather than less for not being able to escape it. Fast food employees work their ass off to survive, and should be honored accordingly – just as one example.
eclare
@gvg: I’m hoping when this POS leaves the presidency, in handcuffs, a straight jacket, whatever, his “brand” is destroyed. I read where the hotel in DC has done much better than expected so far, but that is because people stay there/spend there to impress him (why people do this is another question). I wonder what will happen once that is no longer the case?
hilts
More from USA Today story
“Alles said the Secret Service is grappling with an unprecedented number of White House protectees. Under Trump, 42 people have protection, a number that includes 18 members of his family. That’s up from 31 during the Obama administration”
While about 800 agents and uniformed officers were hired during the past year as part of an ongoing recruiting blitz to bolster the ranks, attrition limited the agency’s net staffing gain to 300, according to agency records. And last year, Congress had to approve a one-time fix to ensure that 1,400 agents would be compensated for thousands of hours of overtime earned above compensation limits. Last year’s compensation shortfall was first disclosed by USA TODAY.
“It is clear that the Secret Service’s demands will continue to be higher than ever throughout the Trump administration,” said Jennifer Werner, a spokesperson for Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings.”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/08/21/secret-service-cant-pay-agents-because-trumps-frequent-travel-large-family/529075001/
FUCK that goddamn motherfucking TRUMP!
eclare
@FlipYrWhig: I have no idea what “populist” or “progressive” means anymore. I’m a Democrat, more liberal than some, less than others, fini.
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
Absolutely! Why Democrats jumped on the “bash public workers” train is beyond me. Remember Clinton after Oklahoma City? He repented!
They have to stop doing that. They have to stop making “opportunity” sound like “you suck, loser, and you should have a better job, one we respect”. Have an array of workers. You don’t have to hate college professors if you value the guy who cleans the pool. You can just value the work that people do– their contribution.
A long time ago AL posted this piece written by a guy who set out to be popular. One of the things he found was that when someone told him what they did for work he would say “that sounds hard” – they would respond by talking, talking, talking. They want someone to recognize the work they do, not the work they aspire to do and all jobs ARE hard, for one reason or another.
FlipYrWhig
@clay: Yeah, that’s something that slays me: what does the average Republican think is THE MECHANISM by which their party or their president “creates jobs”? Because it sure is hell isn’t “hiring people to do stuff”; they don’t believe in that! And it’s not “paying companies to hire people to do stuff”; perish the thought, that’s “picking winners and losers!” like Solyndra. So how does it fucking happen? For Trump there was kind of an implicit mechanism that he was the literal (sort of) author of The Art of the Deal and so he’d be able to push businesses into hiring people somehow, with his first-rate bullying skills, I guess. I think they should have to explain this. Sometimes it’s “tax incentives” or a bank shot from “tax cuts,” because rich people with more money hire, like, butlers or something. But they never seem to have to explain the muddle of their supposed thinking.
Betty Cracker
Bannon originally targeted Jefferson Beauregard Sessions as the horse to ride to his “populist” revolution. He only settled on Trump later. That tells me racism and xenophobia were central to his plan all along.
SatanicPanic
@hilts: 11 more people! Clearly the man shouldn’t have had so many babies expecting the taxpayer to care for them.
schrodingers_cat
Bannon and T like Jackson not for his populism but for what he did to the Native Americans. They are replicating it in the removal of the undocumented population, a project started under saintly Kelly’s supervision.
different-church-lady
Is there any practical political difference between the two anymore?
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: Oooh, “that sounds hard” is good, really good. Easy and good.
BruceFromOhio
This … does not have the disarming or reassuring effect you may have been aiming for.
FlipYrWhig
@Frankensteinbeck: Yup, and that’s why “political correctness” looms so large in their litany of grievances. Fox bangs on about political correctness more than just about anything, especially on days when Trump is mired in scandal. And that’s how corporations are ending up in the big bag o’ enemies: because they want to sell things by being cool, they’ll print signage in Spanish and show interracial couples eating breakfast together, etc. That’s “politically correct” too. Sigh.
Kay
I know you could say it every day, 20 times a day, but it is still AMAZING how far standards have fallen, and how fast.
It seems “you have to hold a beer summit because you insulted that one cop, Mr. President” happened in an entirely different country. And Obama wasn’t lying! The cop WAS way out of line!
If Trump were held to the same standard as every other President in my lifetime he would spend the entire day switching between his insults and apologies for his insults. He had to endorse NAZIS before they called him out. Actual Nazis!
rikyrah
@WaterGirl:
I totally think that this is the case.
We won’t get into it how he shouldn’t have been getting any funds in the first place..that pesky emoluments clause.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@FlipYrWhig: my Starbucks cup has “Happy Holidays” printed on it, and “Feliz Navidad”.
Also Merry Christmas!, but I feel oppressed by my own four dollar latte
Gator90
@rikyrah: As a white person and a big fan of college football & basketball, I never thought of it that way. (At least I think I’m white. I’m very pale, but I was recently informed by a self-described white nationalist that no Jew is white, irrespective of his or her hue.) Athletes in the “revenue sports” really should get paid.
rikyrah
No lie told
Mike in DC
This idea that 40% of nonwhite voters would ignore all the racism and vote for the Trump economic nationalist agenda…now that’s some serious delusional thinking.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@hilts: Remember when Obummer’s trip to India cost something like a Billion dollars per day, good times.
A Ghost to Most
Very surprised that there is not an eclipse thread, about 40% to max here.
Btw, a piece of copy paper with a pinhole, and another on the ground, works great.
efgoldman
@Gator90:
But… but… but… “amateurism”
But… but… but… Free education
But… but… but… Love of the game and old alma mater
But… but… but… Rah, rah, sis boom bah
But… but… but… Get cut (and lose your scholarship) if the coach doesn’t like you
But… but… but… Not able to transfer even if the coach who recruited you leaves
But… but… but… Leaving after your eligibility is up, with no degree
But… but… but… Coming and leaving illiterate
But… but… but… Sustaining a life changing injury and losing your scholarship
But… but… but… No time to go to school even if you want to and are equipped for it
Yes, of course they should be paid. That’s the hill that the NCAA and the big football/hoops conferences will choose to die on.
hilts
@SatanicPanic: @?BillinGlendaleCA:
Donald Trump is an unprecedented scumbag in every conceivable way. This clown should keep his fat fucking ass in the White House and stop all these goddamn side trips to his properties which are bleeding the Secret Service dry. Also too, fuck his goddamn fucking children.
schrodingers_cat
@efgoldman: Check out how much the coaches get paid.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@A Ghost to Most: I’m taking pics with my solar filter.
efgoldman
@schrodingers_cat:
Oh I know. Plus some of them, in their states, are considered next to gawds, even if ::::cough Joe Paterno cough:::: they have feet of finest brick making clay.
Amir Khalid
@rikyrah:
Trump has frittered away so much of the Presidency’s prestige that he is now being shunned by decent people. He deserves that; but recovering the prestige of the office (and of America itself) will demand more of the next POTUS than their usual responsibilities already do. That POTUS will need to be at least Obama-grade, maybe even better.
clay
@FlipYrWhig:
Their answers seem to be ‘tax cuts’ and ‘deregulation’, which will magically make companies want to increase their workforce. After all, Trump deregulated the rule that said coal companies can’t dump their waste into streams, and look how many coal jobs have come roaring back! ///
Boatboy_srq
@Doug!: @? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: Yep. Calling out the Jews and Communists by other names. Presumably “populist” is coopted to mean “popular amongst Gut Patriotische Ahmurrrrcans”. Way for them to stay kkklassy.
Boatboy_srq
@clay: Someone really needs to tell them how the Jobless Recovery of 2002-3 worked out.
Mike in NC
Do we really still need the Secret Service to protect the occupant of the White House and his extended family? Surely there were “many fine people” like the ones who rioted in Charlottesville who’d be willing to do the job for free, and even provide their own semi-automatic rifles and tiki torches. If they got carried away now and then and shot innocent bystanders, that’s just part of ensuring America’s freedumb.
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
@Kay:
@Doug!:
About that whole “economic populism vs racism, what’s more important” thing;
Yes, the racism matters more to them, yes, they can’t be arsed to pay for things, but on top of that, don’t forget: fascists, by definition, are obsessed with strength and weakness. They worship the former and despise the latter. Therefore, if you give them an equation of “between blacks and immigrants that everybody knows are mostly dirt poor anyway, and rich and successful corporate bosses, who would you rather punch, and who would you rather be friends with?” the answer is always going to be punch the former and befriend the latter, and it would be even if race didn’t enter into it.
The original Nazis helped bosses to crush labor unions, allied with “establishment” conservative parties and got into street fights with the fringe far-left movements, and threw their own more “economic populist” elements under the bus to please their new constituencies in the middle and upper classes. All part of the same shtick of economics-as-social-darwinism – if you’re at the top of society, then clearly you are successful and Strong, and if you’re at the bottom, then clearly you are unworthy and Weak. Economic populist tendencies on the far right will always run afoul of that basic ideological premise.
Fascism is extremely compatible with and agreeable to Ayn Randian dog-eat-dog capitalism. This is something the mostly left-wing original antifascists understood very well. It’s gotten lost in sixty or seventy years of post-1945 mythmaking, much of which revolved around equating fascism with communism, and then fascism with all left-wing politics.
efgoldman
@Mike in NC:
Plus as far as we know he’s still got a private security detail – which no-one has ever said who’s paying for it.
joel hanes
Republicans in power always over-reach.
That’s the only thing that’s saved parts of the nation since 1970 or so.
clay
@efgoldman:
I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you, certainly I support the general principle, but let’s game this out:
Who gets paid? All athletes? Only the athletes in the ‘big money’ sports (i.e., football and basketball)? If a sport earns a minor profit (let’s say baseball, for sake of argument), do its athletes get paid? Or does a sport have to cross a threshold into profitability for them to earn a salary?
How much do they get paid? Do all athletes get the same amount? Is it based on playtime? Or seniority? Or performance? Are there bonuses? If someone is injured, do they earn the same amount? If they’re injured their freshman year such that they can’t play any more, do they get paid for all four years? (What if they take longer to graduate?)
If athletes get paid, is their scholarship reduced or eliminated? Is payment contingent on academic performance? Is it tied to discipline — if someone shoplifts or cheats on a test or has a DUI, their salary is docked or ended? Are their earning subject to state and federal tax?
I’m not saying that these are insurmountable issues, or even close to it. Certainly some sort of system can be established.
I’m just genuinely curious what people think the best such system should be.
Chris
@Kay:
I would add that the phoniness and corruption are inherent in the racism.
Traditional, clichéd Tammany Hall style corruption revolved around the notion that people would tolerate a certain amount of corruption at the top, as long as they were getting concrete benefits out of the machine too. But modern right-wingers have discovered that you can run on essentially the same social contract (at least in their parts of the country) and substitute empty tribalist posturing for the “concrete benefits” part (in fact, you can make things worse and worse for your constituents and they won’t even care). That kind of social contract, for the people at the top, is a license to go completely wild with the corruption, because why wouldn’t you? What’s restraining you?
The GOP in the age of Trump is a picture-perfect case in point.
Amir Khalid
@efgoldman:
Trump shouldn’t have had a private security team when there was already an agency with a legal duty to do that job. The Secret Service has likely had plenty of turf battles with this team already, to add to the stress it is facing.
TenguPhule
@Amir Khalid:
Might as well wish for a unicorn with a phoenix and the Loch Ness Monster attached.
TenguPhule
I want to quibble about your definition of saved.
ruemara
Economic populism. I’d love it if we stopped ascribing populism to his views. This is ethno-state welfare, not populism. It is invested heavily in a purely white class benefiting and crushing all those who aren’t them. Not populism at all. Calling it populist has given a lot of cover to alt-left (yes, they do exist) folks who keep promoting the idea that you can co-operate with the Bannon’s of the world to create an economically progressive agenda.
rikyrah
@eclare:
Bannon saying populist means WHITE SOCIALISM. Socialism for me..not thee…
rikyrah
in moderation..please help.
rikyrah
@Betty Cracker:
TRUTH.
rikyrah
@Kay:
The curve for unqualified White men is REAL.
rikyrah
@efgoldman:
THANK YOU.
WHO is paying for them…what fund?
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: Probably one of Trump’s charities, right?
Vhh
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: Rootless cosmopolite was the Soviet term. And it meant mainly Jews.
Jay C
From the minute I read Steve Bannon’s blatherings about “economic nationalism” vs. “identity politics”, my nose recoiled at the malodor of racism. To me his strategy was obvious: paint the Democrats as the party of Those People: and Republicans as the party of Decent Hard-working [i.e. White] Americans – for whom economic issues can be easily reduced to bashing “THEM DURTY BROWN FURRINERS WHUR TAKIN AR JERBS” (basically the whole of the “economic arguments” of Trump’s campaign). And since no one can do much about those DBFs “over there”; bashing Those People over here will have to do…
artem1s
Rove also turned to blaming the intelligence community when his plans to distract the union with perpetual wars went sour. Dolt45 was in trouble as soon as he refused to sit still for security updates. The deep state wasn’t going to sit idly by while the GOP screwed up national security and then tried to politicize the blaming of the IC. The only good thing about W’s screw ups is the IC was ready for just how awful Cult45 and Dolt45 were going to get.