Steve, you're fired!

Steve Bannon, bless his chubby little racist heart, is no longer in the White House. He now joins a growing list of trump aides to get the "You're Fired" treatment from the former Apprentice host.

I actually saw people cheering, and liberals are ecstatic that the man they view as pure evil is leaving the halls of power.

My question to all the people who are cheering the demise of Bannon is, why? Why cheer Bannon's departure when trump is still the president?

It's not Bannon who told the country that Nazis are the same as peaceful protestors. It's not Bannon who encouraged right wing thugs to beat innocent people. It's not Bannon who declared that Mexicans are rapists and that the first African American president of this country was not born here. It's not Bannon who said that it's cool to assault women. It's not Bannon who told a lie on the former president of  the United States, and it's not Bannon who is constantly trying to delegitimize the news media by referring to everything that's true and doesn't fit into his sick world view as fake news.

Anyway, while the left is happy and rejoicing, Bannon's people are declaring war. To them this is trump giving in to multiculturalism and political correctness. This is not the America they envisioned when the put the bigot in chief in power. They thought that they could work hand in hand, but now, dare I say it, trump might be caving to pressure. 


*Pic from Time Magazine.

Hatred in the White House.

Because of the shooting today in Canada, where some Canadian Dylann Roof wannabe acted out his wicked and sick hatred towards members of another religion, the following article by Ben Norton should be required reading for all those who are interested in knowing what is going on in the trump White House.

"Steve Bannon, President Donald Trump’s right-hand man, made what was essentially a call for a Christian holy war in a speech in a international conference only a few years ago.

Bannon, chief strategist and senior counselor to Trump, is notorious for his extreme right-wing views. He previously served as the CEO for the far-right president’s campaign, and now sits on the National Security Council.

In remarks to a 2014 conference at the Vatican, Bannon warned his Christian audience, “We’re at the very beginning stages of a very brutal and bloody conflict.”

“We are in an outright war against jihadists, Islam, Islamic fascism,” Bannon continued. He likewise condemned “the immense secularization of the West” and the increasing secularism among millennials.

Bannon stressed that “the people in this room, and the people in the Church” must “bind together and really form what I feel is an aspect of the Church militant, to really be able to not just stand with our beliefs but to fight for our beliefs against this new barbarity that’s starting that will literally eradicate everything that we’ve been bequeathed over the last 2,000 and 2,500 years.”

In his speech, Bannon articulated a view of the world as a constant conflict between the capitalist “Judeo-Christian West,” which is a benevolent force of “enlightenment,” and the malevolent forces of socialism, atheism, and Islam.

Trump’s chief strategist, who will now play a crucial role in crafting U.S. foreign policy and sit in on meetings of the National Security Council Principals Committee, has been described even by hard-line conservatives as an extremist.

Ultra-right-wing pundit Glenn Beck compared Bannon to the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, a close ally of Adolf Hitler, and said the Trump campaign was “grooming Brownshirts,” in reference to Nazi paramilitaries. According to Beck, Bannon is “quite possibly the most dangerous guy in all of American politics.”

Republican strategist John Weaver, who worked on Republican John Kasich’s 2016 presidential campaign, likewise warned that, with Bannon as Trump’s chief strategist, “The racist, fascist extreme right is represented footsteps from the Oval Office.” (The Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi Party praised Trump for appointing Bannon to his top positions.)

Bannon made these holy war remarks in a speech — which has previously been reported on by BuzzFeed — at the 2014 International Conference on Human Dignity, the third annual meeting organized by the Rome-based Christian organization Dignitatis Humanae Institute.

The Dignitatis Humanae Institute is a religious group that advocates for “the active participation of the Christian faith in the public square.” It promotes what it calls “authentic human dignity” by, in its words, “supporting Christians in public life, assisting them in presenting effective and coherent responses to increasing efforts to silence the Christian voice in the public square.”

A glowing endorsement from Bannon is conspicuously featured at the top of the website, in which President Trump’s right-hand man calls the group’s founder Benjamin Harnwell “the smartest guy in Rome” and “a very tough guy.
”
The religious organization uploaded footage of Bannon’s speech at its 2014 conference to YouTube. The video had only a few thousand views at the time of the publication of this article.

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When he made his remarks, Bannon served as chairman of the far-right media company Breitbart, which is infamous for publishing racist and sexist material. Bannon has identified Breitbart as “the platform for the alt-right,” a popular euphemism for the growing white supremacist, neo-fascist movement in the U.S. and Europe.

In a guide Breitbart published on the alt-right, it noted that the movement was founded by neo-fascist leader Richard Spencer, who declared “Hail Trump! Hail our people! Hail victory!” at a white supremacist conference in November, referencing the Nazi slogan “Sieg heil.”
Bannon kicked off his 2014 speech warning that “the world, and particularly the Judeo-Christian West, is in a crisis.”

“It is really the organizing principle of how we built Breitbart News to really be a platform to bring news and information to people throughout the world — principally in the West, but we’re expanding internationally — to let people understand the depths of this crisis,” he explained.

Bannon noted that, exactly 100 years before his speech, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo, in a shot heard round the world that prefaced World War I. This war heralded in the bloodiest century of human history.

The 20th century, Bannon argued, constituted a kind of second Dark Age. He described its conflict as “the Judeo-Christian West versus atheism............Bannon spoke of the increasing secularism among young people in the West as a dangerous problem. “The overwhelming drive of popular culture is to absolutely secularize this rising generation,” he lamented.

The Breitbart head also alarmed his Christian audience about the wave of extremist Islamism. “We’re now I believe at the beginning stages of a global war against Islamic fascism,” he said. “And this war is I think metastasizing far quicker than governments can handle it.” [Source]

This man is the president's right hand man when it comes to our security.

Let that all sink in for a minute, and when it does, go to whatever church you choose to belong to and pray.

*Pic from nbcnews.com

Populism? Or "Revolutionary-era elitism drawn along racist lines"?

The first thing that struck me when I read the article that I am about to drop on you is this:

Looking at Steve Bannon, how could he even think that he is genetically superior to anybody? I mean just look at him. He is the before guy in a before and after gym membership commercial.

So now to the aforementioned article written by Laurel Raymond for Think Progress.

" Former Breitbart head Steve Bannon has been a national lightning rod ever since he was appointed CEO of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. At-issue: Bannon’s deep ties to the growing white nationalist movement, which provided some of Trump’s earliest and most fervent supporters.

On Sunday the New York Times published a profile on Bannon, casting him as a “combative populist.” Buried deep within the profile is an account of Bannon talking about his belief in the “genetic superiority” of certain people and his support for restricting voting rights to only property owners.

A former colleague of Bannon’s, Julia Jones, recounted her interactions with Bannon to reporter Scott Shane:

Ms. Jones, the film colleague, said that in their years working together, Mr. Bannon occasionally talked about the genetic superiority of some people and once mused about the desirability of limiting the vote to property owners.

“I said, ‘That would exclude a lot of African-Americans,’” Ms. Jones recalled. “He said, ‘Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.’ I said, ‘But what about Wendy?’” referring to Mr. Bannon’s executive assistant. “He said, ‘She’s different. She’s family.’”

Jones also previously described Bannon’s comments about voting to The Daily Beast.

Restricting voting to only property holders would take the country back centuries to its founding — when only white, male property holders could vote in most states. Today, such a restriction would disenfranchise huge swaths of people, including students, people of color, young Americans, many city dwellers, and low-income populations.

Far from populism, this is Revolutionary-era elitism drawn along racist lines. And for white nationalists, it’s a familiar goal.

Former KKK wizard David Duke, for example, has been proclaiming on Twitter that Trump’s election and cabinet picks are the first steps toward “taking America back” — that is, taking America “back” from anyone who isn’t descended from fair-skinned Europeans. In white nationalist ideology, only white Americans have a true right to the country — and the rights that go along with citizenship, like voting.

Bannon’s musings on voting restrictions are a dog-whistle to white nationalists. The same goes for his reference to “genetic superiority,” a view that Donald Trump also has said he shares.

Trump has repeatedly connected his success to his “good genes,” as ThinkProgress previously reported. He’s said that his children “don’t need adversity” to build character or skills, because they share his good genetics. In an interview once, he went so far as to compare himself to a “racehorse” and discussing his “breeding” at length.

The belief in the genetic predisposition of qualities like intelligence are a hallmark of white nationalism.

Bannon’s musings on white nationalists are a dog-whistle to white nationalists. The same goes for his reference to “genetic superiority,” a view that Donald Trump also has said he shares.

Trump has repeatedly connected his success to his “good genes,” as ThinkProgress previously reported. He’s said that his children “don’t need adversity” to build character or skills, because they share his good genetics. In an interview once, he went so far as to compare himself to a “racehorse” and discussing his “breeding” at length.

The belief in the genetic predisposition of qualities like intelligence are a hallmark of white nationalism." [More here]

Hmmm, "intelligence". I am looking at some of the picks for his administration, and all I can say is that Donald trump is giving intelligence a bad name.  

*Pic from Wonkette.com

Divided we stand.

   Is  this what it's going to be like in Donald trump's America?

"A U.S. Army veteran says the manager of a Cedar Hill, Texas, Chili's restaurant took away his free Veterans Day meal after a fellow customer questioned his status as a former soldier.

Ernest Walker took to Facebook on Friday to share a video along with a description of the incident, where it has since racked up nearly half a million views.

"I was approached by an old white guy, maybe in his 70s, with a Trump Shirt, at Chili's on Veteran's Day yesterday," he wrote. "He asked if I was in the 24th unit, and I said 'no the 25th.' TRICK QUESTION. He said he was in Germany, and that they did not let Blacks serve over there."

Walker, who was accompanied by his service dog Barack, said that the manager, Wesley Patrick, then approached him and told him that another guest said he "was not a real soldier because I had my hat on indoors."

"He asked for my military ID, I was calm, and provided it to him,"Walker wrote. "I also provided him with my DD214 which is my discharge paperwork."

Unfortunately, this did nothing to convince the manager that Walker was an actual veteran.
"Instead he followed up with 'the guest also said your dog is not a service dog,'" Walker wrote. "Barack had his Red Service Vest on, and his Certified Service Tags. I was sitting for 35 minutes prior with Barack beforehand. At this point I was grossly offended embarrassed dehumanized and started Recording...Mr. Wesley snatched my food away."

In response to the incident, Brinker International, which owns Chili's, said in a statement to KDFW: "Our goal is to make every guest feel special and, unfortunately, we fell short on 
ay where we serve free meals as a small token to honor our Veterans. We are taking this very seriously and the leaders in our company are actively involved with the goal of making it right." [Source]

Mr Walker, I thank you for your service, sir. Please do not let the forces of evil and hatred steal your joy and your chance to live free in a country that you helped to create.

Oh, and for the record, Donald trump who pretended to love Veterans when  he was on the campaign trail conning his minions,did not attend one Veterans Day celebration as our president elect. But I digress.

Anyway, I am sure that people like Ernest Walker did not serve their country so that the president elect would make a known racist and anti -Semite his most trusted adviser.

By elevating a scumbag like Steve Bannon to such a position, Donald trump has just made it clear to the American people that he does not want the country to be unified.

But I get it. If you are a man that thinks it's cool to assault and grope women, it's not so much of a stretch to say that you are going to bond with a man who was accused of attacking and choking his ex- wife.

So with all due respect to Crystal Wright (a woman who makes Aunt Jemima look like Angela Davis) picking Steve Bannon is not some kind of shrewd political payback, it was a tone deaf selection that misses the political reality and climate of hate and divisiveness in this country.

Maybe as a result of said divisiveness, another clueless sister claims that she has been abandoned by her black friends for supporting trump. Sadly, she says that it actually brought her to tears.

May I suggest to her, though, that if the man she chooses to support did not have such disdain for black folks, some of her black friends would probably still be around.

Sorry Omarosa, when you make a deal with the devil you have to live with the consequences.

“I was called every single racial slur in the book that you could direct towards an African-American by African-Americans,” Omarosa said. “I will never forget the people who turned their backs on me when all I was trying to do was help the Black community. It’s been so incredibly hard.”

I need a break!