[4cal]

Clearly, the book is striking several nerves in the administration…..

All the President and his deranged followers can do is call the book lies while not being able to offer counterfactuals which would actually destroy the book.

But the real takeaway may well be that when faced with bullying tactics by POTUS (Pervert of the US), they didn’t back down, they actually advanced the release date and Trump tucked his tail over his man-gina.

[ThirdTerm]

An “all-encompassing” war with China was one of the earliest objectives of President Donald Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, according to Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, a controversial, behind-the-scenes-account of the US leader’s first year in office.

“The real enemy, said an on-point Bannon, careful not to defend Trump too much or to diss him at all, was China,” author Michael Wolff wrote in an account of a strategy session two weeks ahead of Trump’s inauguration.

“China was the first front in a new cold war,” Wolff wrote, summarising Bannon’s message to former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes at the meeting.

“China is where Nazi Germany was in 1929 to 1930,” Wolff quoted Bannon as saying. “The Chinese, like the Germans, are the most rational people in the world, until they’re not. And they’re gonna flip like Germany in the ‘thirties. You’re going to have a hypernationalist state, and once that happens, you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.”

Bannon is a disgruntled former employee who runs a major fake news site and he is very adept at making explosive allegations and making things up. Bannon has a personal agenda to go after the Trump family. Any juicy quotes from the mouth of the propaganda minister appearing in the new book cannot be trusted.

Ivanka’s presidential ambitions
“Balancing risk against reward, both Jared and Ivanka decided to accept roles in the West Wing over the advice of almost everyone they knew. It was a joint decision by the couple, and, in some sense, a joint job. Between themselves, the two had made an earnest deal: If sometime in the future the opportunity arose, she’d be the one to run for president. The first woman president, Ivanka entertained, would not be Hillary Clinton; it would be Ivanka Trump.”

Her brothers’ presidential nicknames
“His sons, Don Jr. and Eric — behind their backs known to Trump insiders as Uday and Qusay, after the sons of Saddam Hussein.”

And the comb-over: explained by Ivanka
“She often described the mechanics behind it to friends: an absolutely clean pate — a contained island after scalp-reduction surgery — surrounded by a furry circle of hair around the sides and front, from which all ends are drawn up to meet in the centre and then swept back and secured by a stiffening spray. The colour, she would point out to comical effect, was from a product called Just for Men — the longer it was left on, the darker it got. Impatience resulted in Trump’s orange-blond hair colour.”

http://www.thehindu.com/news/internatio ... 382486.ece

I managed to read through the first half of the book this morning. I have found that the Muslim ban was Bannon's idea as I had rightly guessed when it was issued.

If Bannon was going to pursue as first signature White House statement travel ban, then Kushner was going to pursue as his first leadership mark a meeting with the Mexican president (p. 85).

On page 177, Steve Bannon confesses that he hated being on the campaign and in the White House.

[Bulaba Khan Jones]

Her brothers’ presidential nicknames
“His sons, Don Jr. and Eric — behind their backs known to Trump insiders as Uday and Qusay, after the sons of Saddam Hussein.”

I hadn't thought of them that way, but that's such an apt analogy.

I have not read the book, but people's description of the contents track pretty well with what Tony Schwartz, the author of Art of the Deal, said in a great piece last year: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016 ... -tells-all

[Red_Army]

Fake news appears to be a shifting distinction dependent only on Trump's indication. Its either take his word for gospel or you're a liar. This would at least make sense if he was charismatic

[Bulaba Khan Jones]

He's as charismatic as a cross between a corpulent anthropomorphic frog and Jabba the Hutt with a hair piece. I get that Melania married him for money and jewelry, but it's pretty disgusting nonetheless. He's as ugly as he is uncharismatic.

[Suntzu]

But the boy as balls, something Obama lacked.

[Rich]

Donald Trump's as truthful as Hilary. OK, OK I admit it, I'm one of those Nazis who thinks that Hilary changed her position on gay marriage.

[4cal]

But the boy as balls, something Obama lacked.

He does? How so…by calling people names? Seems he is the definition of lack of stones.

[The Immortal Goon]

Color me surprised that rightwingers came in here with nothing to add except whining about now politically irrelevant whataboutisms.

[colliric]

"literally an invention", "complete fabrication".....

Why take anything else the book says as serious?

Something else that's already been debunked:
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3677 ... rump-for-a

[4cal]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/video-1602810/Tony-Blair-calls-MI6-leak-story-complete-fabrication.html

"literally an invention", "complete fabrication".....

Why take anything else the book says as serious?

Something else that's already been debunked:
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3677 ... rump-for-a

Because the administration cannot refute much of what is in the book, the President lies nearly every time he opens his mouth, and seems completely disengaged from reality.

[4cal]

Color me surprised that rightwingers came in here with nothing to add except whining about now politically irrelevant whataboutisms.

The "balls" comment is particularly hilarious. Still waiting for an example of how macho this loser is.

[The Sabbaticus]

For anyone interested in acquiring a free copy of the book. Wikileaks decided to leak the PDF version of the entire book on their twitter account. Not sure what their agenda is. Perhaps to damage everyone involved: spread the word on Trump and deprive Wolff of income.

[foxdemon]

This book will have little impact on how people view Trump. Those that hate him will get some kicks but still hate him. Those that admire him will still admire him.

The one thing it does change is to distance Bannon from the Trump camp. That, I suspect, is its real purpose.

[colliric]

He's gone from Breitbart:
http://www.news.com.au/world/north-amer ... 918833f9e0

Forced out.

[Rancid]

Bannon is a disgruntled former employee who runs a major fake news site and he is very adept at making explosive allegations and making things up. Bannon has a personal agenda to go after the Trump family. Any juicy quotes from the mouth of the propaganda minister appearing in the new book cannot be trusted.

OOOohhhh so now it's fake news!?

[ThirdTerm]

If Bannon was going to pursue as first signature White House statement the travel ban, then Kushner was going to pursue as his first leadership mark a meeting with the Mexican president (p. 85).

The quote above from the book was slightly inaccurate in my previous post and I fixed it. Breitbart News Network is widely known as a fake news website. The site has published a number of falsehoods and conspiracy theories, as well as intentionally misleading stories. Especially, it's keen on disseminating Muslim gang rape stories and no-go zones in Sweden and other EU countries, which are partially based on true news stories taken from the mainstream media but provocatively modified for the far-right audience. On page 88, Bannon explains how he saw the power couple in the White House and he didn't get along with them whom Bannon dubbed "Jarvanka", which is also the name of a chapter of the book.

[skinster]

Your #Resistance Is Bullshit
Michael Wolff’s alleged exploration of the Trump administration, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, is now a best-seller. The most explosive claims documented by Wolff center around the dysfunctional personality of Donald Trump and a band of political characters that seem to treat him with kid gloves. They tell him what he wants to hear to his face to hold onto their paychecks while jeering behind closed doors, making him out to be a deadheaded emperor with no clothes.

Donald Trump, who is often found tweeting at the break of dawn after clearly having watched a stream of Fox News clips, is currently being assessed by the public, or—more specifically—his mental health is being assessed and has been called into question on numerous occasions. This accusation has incensed him to such a degree that it has driven him into describing himself as “a very stable genius”. So not only is Trump a national embarrassment, but he’s become senile and incapable of doing his job.

But that isn’t the story here.

This is all absurd theater, a frivolity that serves no purpose and creates no substantive answer to what must be done not only about Donald Trump. Moreover, it creates no substantive answer about what must be done to stop the whole ideological and political process that has created and fostered him, his class, and those who hang on his every word.

—

The story is about the fashioning of a self-described resistance movement out of the shadows of an astonishing political loss, and how those still reeling from this loss have chosen not to become an opposition but instead a submissive and formulaically “bipartisan” stunt group without so much as a doctrine by which they abide by. Their political platforms are either non-existent, or so loosely defended that they may as well be.

Look no further than to how George W. Bush has been lionized, his memory called upon for comfort, in a post-Trump hellscape. The Bush administration rained chemical munitions, including white phosphorus, across Iraqi cities that indiscriminately killed untold civilians, many of whom were denied the chance to escape the bloodletting. Moreover, white phosphorus (or ‘willy pete’ in the euphemistic jargon of the military) causes cancer and birth defects and might be in part responsible for the spike in those maladies in Fallujah after 2004. Worse, the United States is still using white phosphorus in Iraq as late as last year.

There’s the Bush administration’s use of torture against the people of Iraq at places like Abu Ghraib that has been rewritten or ignored as an example to be followed for the treatment of Muslims based entirely on a short speech delivered by George W. Bush soon after September 11. Decades of military occupations carried out by past and present administrations have wrought purgatories, and mass graves that litter the earth, and yet the culprits are indulged and feted by self-styled “resisters.” If the heaping reverence of George W. Bush weren’t so common, the inanity would be too much to believe.

There is something rotten in your politics (and rotten to the bones) if the existence of Donald Trump has moved you not towards defending the most vulnerable but glorifying the source of their ongoing torment. The communities that have been left to pick up the pieces after political wins and losses, who have been promised the minimum and given even less, are being tokenized, their struggles weaponized, and then despite all that they relinquish they’re then extorted into lining up at the voting booth to give a spiritless politician another chance. It’s like it’s 2006 all over again.

—

The threat that Trump’s administration poses immigrant and undocumented peoples has been one of the leading points of concern for the resistance brand. And yet past Democratic support of the Secure Fence Act reminds us that not only have Democrats yielded to Republican demands on immigration, but that many of them have done so while fully aware of the consequences of such measures. The Secure Fence Act, signed by George W. Bush in 2006, is a part and parcel of the depraved American immigration system, and has brought untold death to the borders. In trash bags, disposed of like garbage, the remains of unidentified immigrants were discovered along the US-Mexico border by forensic anthropologists. According to archaeologists and a team of researchers, over one hundred of those recently found were likely buried in the last 10 years.

The accountability being demanded of their Republican colleagues is even absent from their own camp. The common argument being advanced is that they must they split a number of the proverbial babies and to do otherwise would be mindless and unstrategic, promises be damned. Doug Jones, who beat out, by the narrowest of margins, a man accused of sexually abusing young girls, and who has previously said that Americans should move on from allegations of sexual abuse directed at Donald Trump, used his first Senate vote to affirm Trump nominee John C. Rood, a senior executive at military weapons giant Lockheed Martin, for Secretary of Defense for Policy. This won’t be the last of the capitulations from Jones, and his legacy will follow that of other Democrats who so often choose the cheap game of reaching across the aisle instead of standing on principle.

In many cases, people like him just end up pulling out a chair for their Republican colleagues.

—



Even now, in the shadows of these realities, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senator Richard Blumenthal, and Senator Mark Warner, among other Democrats, are trying to save Jeff Sessions from resigning from his position as Attorney General. “I voted against Jeff Sessions and said he never should be there in the first place, given his record on civil rights, on immigration, on so many other issues,” Schumer told CNN. “My view now is very simple: nothing, nothing should ever interfere with the Mueller investigation.”

This is taking place while the Department of Justice under Jeff Sessions has sought to recriminalize marijuana in states that have legalized it, provided cover to murderous and murdering police departments, and cracked down on dissent in the wake of Trump’s election. How you can sit back and defend keeping a man who shares a name with and a fair quantity of the politics of the first president of the Confederacy and still be considered any kind of defender of marginalized people is a question that remains unanswered.

All marketing and campaign embroidery out of the way, the Democratic Party is ineffectual as an opposition, but authoritarian as a Republican accompaniment. They have long been the gravy to the conservative mashed potatoes, fleeting outbursts aside. If Jeff Sessions, a man once described as being, “more dangerous than Donald Trump,” is salvageable for the sake of a dead-end investigation, then I think it’s time we ask what exactly is being resisted here, and why the struggles of marginalized communities are nothing more than sideline concerns to be trotted out when the campaign repository of pigeon hearted representatives need filling.
https://thesouthlawn.org/2018/01/09/you ... -bullshit/

[Albert]

Wow, so Steve Bannon is destroyed.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/bannon-steps-down-breitbart-1.4479811

Steve Bannon steps down from Breitbart News

Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon is stepping down as chairman of Breitbart News Network after a public break with U.S. President Donald Trump.

Breitbart announced Tuesday that Bannon would step down as executive chairman of the Washington-based, right-wing news site, less than a week after Bannon's explosive criticisms of Trump and his family were published in a new book.

A report on the Breitbart website quotes Bannon saying, "I'm proud of what the Breitbart team has accomplished in so short a period of time in building out a world-class news platform."

Trump lashed out at Bannon for comments made in Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, which questions the president's fitness for office.

[4cal]

This book will have little impact on how people view Trump. Those that hate him will get some kicks but still hate him. Those that admire him will still admire him.
The one thing it does change is to distance Bannon from the Trump camp. That, I suspect, is its real purpose.

It gives context to what is going to be seen and what has been seen; he and his wife's almost icy public personas, Ivanka rampant stupidity, and why the turnover for this administration has almost reached the level of fast-food restaurants.