whembly wrote:

Spoiler:

 Peregrine wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 whembly wrote:
I get it looks weird... but this is small potatoes.

I see this is the "drain the swamp" attitude at work. How quickly it becomes "corruption and conflicts of interest by My Team are ok, as long as I can dismiss them as 'small potatoes'".

Otherwise, you'd be advocating Trump to move out of his home.

Uh, what? That doesn't even make any sense. Trump could simply avoid the conflict of interest by not charging rent for the space the government needs to use.

 Peregrine wrote:

 whembly wrote:

Spoiler:

Well, at least you're not leaving any doubts about this whole My Team vs. The Other Team worldview you have...

 whembly wrote:
Looks like you're interpreting "drain the swamp" to fit your needs...

But, it really isn't a dismissal... it's more of a call to 'pick your battle wisely'... know what I mean?

It's one thing to forego the President's Salary or any profits derived from foreign leaders staying on his properties... but, I do think it's a bit much to 'give away' rental space, when that's exactly how his business makes its money. Who knows, maybe they'll charge the military for 'at cost' for renting would be a better PR move.

Dude... I've made my opinions quite clear over Obamacare... have I not?

 Peregrine wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Looks like you're interpreting "drain the swamp" to fit your needs...

No, I'm interpreting it in the straightforward way: get rid of corruption, conflicts of interest, pay to play, etc. I don't know how you can manage to rationalize it into "get rid of the bad things the democrats do to make room for the republicans to start doing the same" just because it's Your Team doing it.

But, it really isn't a dismissal... it's more of a call to 'pick your battle wisely'... know what I mean?

IOW, "don't call out Trump's hypocrisy, let him get away with anything I consider small". No thanks.

It's one thing to forego the President's Salary or any profits derived from foreign leaders staying on his properties... but, I do think it's a bit much to 'give away' rental space, when that's exactly how his business makes its money. Who knows, maybe they'll charge the military for 'at cost' for renting would be a better PR move.

I thought Trump was so wealthy that the ~1.5 million rent would be no big deal? Or is the reason that he won't release his tax returns that he's actually broke and desperately needs the rent? Never mind this idea that a president who campaigns on "drain the swamp" might be expected to be even more careful than is strictly necessary about avoiding conflicts of interest. But I guess "drain the swamp" means "take every opportunity to make a profit from being president", like the job is just another business deal.

Dude... I've made my opinions quite clear over Obamacare... have I not?

And now you've made your My Team Is Awesome cheerleading clear by posting zero-content memes instead of any kind of analysis of the news.

 Ustrello wrote:
Oh yeah cause that low level rental is the same as spending 30 million a month to protect trumps [MODE EDIT - RULE #1 - Alpharius] wife and son.

 whembly wrote:
Sure. You do you.

So... the complaint here is how much the rent would cost?

I mean, Biden directly benefited when the Secret Service rented out his guest house...

 whembly wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 whembly wrote:
It's no difference when government services buy land near Bush's ranch / renting Biden's guest home / I think they bough a neighboring house near Obama in S. Chicago.

No, there's a rather significant difference in that the other cases didn't involve the president collecting the rent like Trump is.

I get it looks weird... but this is small potatoes.

Otherwise, you'd be advocating Trump to move out of his home.

 whembly wrote:

 Ustrello wrote:
Oh yeah cause that low level rental is the same as spending 30 million a month to protect trumps [MODE EDIT - RULE #1 - Alpharius] wife and son.

Where are you getting the 30 million a month figure?

And what I've highlighted above...

 Ustrello wrote:
Oh yeah cause that low level rental is the same as spending 30 million a month to protect trumps wife and son.

 d-usa wrote:

 Ustrello wrote:
Oh yeah cause that low level rental is the same as spending 30 million a month to protect trumps [MODE EDIT - RULE #1 - Alpharius] wife and son.

The amount of rent really shouldn't matter. If it's wrong, then it's wrong. And if it's okay to collect $100 a month then it's okay to collect $1,000,000 a month.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Remember when people were bitching that it costs the secret service money every time Obama did anything?

 d-usa wrote:

 Ustrello wrote:
Oh yeah cause that low level rental is the same as spending 30 million a month to protect trumps wife and son.

The amount of rent really shouldn't matter. If it's wrong, then it's wrong. And if it's okay to collect $100 a month then it's okay to collect $1,000,000 a month.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Remember when people were bitching that it costs the secret service money every time Obama did anything?

 Ustrello wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 Ustrello wrote:
Oh yeah cause that low level rental is the same as spending 30 million a month to protect trumps [MODE EDIT - RULE #1 - Alpharius] wife and son.

Where are you getting the 30 million a month figure?

And what I've highlighted above...

Oh boy that widely circulated fact was hard to find

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/nyregion/new-york-reimburse-trump-security-costs.html?_r=0

Also calling double standards is royal irony from you

 kronk wrote:
I don't recall the Secret Service paying Obama money to do their jobs.

 whembly wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

 Ustrello wrote:
Oh yeah cause that low level rental is the same as spending 30 million a month to protect trumps wife and son.

The amount of rent really shouldn't matter. If it's wrong, then it's wrong. And if it's okay to collect $100 a month then it's okay to collect $1,000,000 a month.

Yup. You got it.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Remember when people were bitching that it costs the secret service money every time Obama did anything?

I know... it was really tiring. I keep telling those peeps that we'd WANT Obama to go golfing and vacationing... keeps him from doing WhiteHouse stuff.

Same with Trump... I hope he goes apeshit on his golf courses and vacay around the world.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ustrello wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 Ustrello wrote:
Oh yeah cause that low level rental is the same as spending 30 million a month to protect trumps [MODE EDIT - RULE #1 - Alpharius] wife and son.

Where are you getting the 30 million a month figure?

And what I've highlighted above...

Oh boy that widely circulated fact was hard to find

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/nyregion/new-york-reimburse-trump-security-costs.html?_r=0

Dunno about that figure, but NYC is expensive so it's not outrageous for the city to ask for federal assistance to foot some of the cost.

Also calling double standards is royal irony from you

Right... if I called Michele Obama a hooker, you'd handwave that away... right?

 Just Tony wrote:
I gave up on France with the drama of banning the Down Syndrome advertisement, I can't imagine their government is heading anywhere back from that. Progress moves forward even if a bad step is made.

 Easy E wrote:
I'm calling a Le Pen victory in France now. it is on the record.

 whembly wrote:
I get it looks weird... but this is small potatoes.

Before he emerged on the political scene, an obscure Silicon Valley computer programmer with ties to Trump backer and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel was explaining his behavior. Curtis Yarvin, the self-proclaimed “neoreactionary” who blogs under the name “Mencius Moldbug,” attracted a following in 2008 when he published a wordy treatise asserting, among other things, that “nonsense is a more effective organizing tool than the truth.” When the organizer of a computer science conference canceled Yarvin’s appearance following an outcry over his blogging under his nom de web, Bannon took note: Breitbart News decried the act of censorship in an article about the programmer-blogger’s dismissal.

Moldbug’s dense, discursive musings on history—“What’s so bad about the Nazis?” he asks in one 2008 post that condemns the Holocaust but questions the moral superiority of the Allies—include a belief in the utility of spreading misinformation that now looks like a template for Trump’s approach to truth. “To believe in nonsense is an unforgeable [sic] demonstration of loyalty. It serves as a political uniform. And if you have a uniform, you have an army,” he writes in a May 2008 post.

In one January 2008 post, titled “How I stopped believing in democracy,” he decries the “Georgetownist worldview” of elites like the late diplomat George Kennan. Moldbug’s writings, coming amid the failure of the U.S. state-building project in Iraq, are hard to parse clearly and are open to multiple interpretations, but the author seems aware that his views are provocative. “It's been a while since I posted anything really controversial and offensive here,” he begins in a July 25, 2007, post explaining why he associates democracy with “war, tyranny, destruction and poverty.”

Moldbug, who does not do interviews and could not be reached for this story, has reportedly opened up a line to the White House, communicating with Bannon and his aides through an intermediary, according to a source. Yarvin said he has never spoken with Bannon. During the transition, he made clear his deep skepticism that the Russians were behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee, the source said—a message that Trump himself reiterated several times.

***

If Taleb and Yarvin laid some of the theoretical groundwork for Trumpism, the most muscular and controversial case for electing him president—and the most unrelenting attack on Trump’s conservative critics—came from Michael Anton, a onetime conservative intellectual writing under the pseudonym Publius Decius Mus.

Thanks to an entree from Thiel, Anton now sits on the National Security Council staff. Initial reports indicated he would serve as a spokesman, but Anton is set to take on a policy role, according to a source with knowledge of the situation. A former speechwriter for Rudy Giuliani and George W. Bush’s National Security Council, Anton most recently worked as a managing director for BlackRock, the Wall Street investment firm.

Hiring Anton puts one of the key intellectual forces behind Trump in the West Wing. In his blockbuster article “The Flight 93 Election,” a 4,300-plus-word tract published in September 2016 under his pseudonym, Anton strikes many of the same notes as Taleb and Yarvin. “America and the West are on a trajectory toward something very bad,” he writes. He blasts conservatives as “keepers of the status quo” for refusing to take account of the need for “truly fundamental” change—especially a crackdown on immigration that he argues is promoting “ethnic separatism” and risks entrenching a permanent Democratic majority.

Anton is no blind Trump supporter—the analogy in his essay’s title suggests that electing the Manhattan mogul was merely an alternative to the certain civilizational death of choosing another member of the “bipartisan junta” that he says is driving America “off a cliff.”

“2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die,” he writes. “You may die anyway. You—or the leader of your party—may make it into the cockpit and not know how to fly or land the plane. There are no guarantees.”

Will Trumpism work, Anton asks? He’s not sure—but he argues that it’s worth trying, given the alternative: “[T]he ceaseless importation of Third World foreigners with no tradition of, taste for, or experience in liberty means that the electorate grows more left, more Democratic, less Republican, less republican, and less traditionally American with every cycle.”

Anton’s real target is his fellow conservative intellectuals, who by opposing Trump are “objectively pro-Hillary”—a choice he warns will lead to “Caesarism, secession/crack-up, collapse, or managerial Davoisie liberalism as far as the eye can see.”

If that sounds like a highbrow expression of Trumpism—his inaugural address ripping the “establishment” in both parties for allegedly selling out the American people to foreign interests—it’s because it is. Hiring Anton speaks to Bannon’s ambition to displace traditional American conservatism with the sort of populist nationalism that Trump rode to office, and that his allies say is merely a return to the country’s original ideals.

“To me, part of the attraction and the appeal of Trump was that actually, if you take a look at what Trump’s saying and what he’s trying to do, [it] is actually more in keeping with the founding principles than the rest of the Republicans,” said the White House aide.

 WrentheFaceless wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
And it will probably form the beginnings of a joint agency manned mission to Mars.

Again, why? What purpose is there in a manned mission to Mars, other than nationalistic flag-planting?

Not all discovery is for purpose or for monetary gain.

Prestor Jon wrote:
From Politico, Steve Bannon's reading list:

Starts with some more or less conventional ones - Sun Tzu's Art of War, Taleb's Black Swan, but then there's this:

Before he emerged on the political scene, an obscure Silicon Valley computer programmer with ties to Trump backer and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel was explaining his behavior. Curtis Yarvin, the self-proclaimed “neoreactionary” who blogs under the name “Mencius Moldbug,” attracted a following in 2008 when he published a wordy treatise asserting, among other things, that “nonsense is a more effective organizing tool than the truth.” When the organizer of a computer science conference canceled Yarvin’s appearance following an outcry over his blogging under his nom de web, Bannon took note: Breitbart News decried the act of censorship in an article about the programmer-blogger’s dismissal.

Moldbug’s dense, discursive musings on history—“What’s so bad about the Nazis?” he asks in one 2008 post that condemns the Holocaust but questions the moral superiority of the Allies—include a belief in the utility of spreading misinformation that now looks like a template for Trump’s approach to truth. “To believe in nonsense is an unforgeable [sic] demonstration of loyalty. It serves as a political uniform. And if you have a uniform, you have an army,” he writes in a May 2008 post.

In one January 2008 post, titled “How I stopped believing in democracy,” he decries the “Georgetownist worldview” of elites like the late diplomat George Kennan. Moldbug’s writings, coming amid the failure of the U.S. state-building project in Iraq, are hard to parse clearly and are open to multiple interpretations, but the author seems aware that his views are provocative. “It's been a while since I posted anything really controversial and offensive here,” he begins in a July 25, 2007, post explaining why he associates democracy with “war, tyranny, destruction and poverty.”

Moldbug, who does not do interviews and could not be reached for this story, has reportedly opened up a line to the White House, communicating with Bannon and his aides through an intermediary, according to a source. Yarvin said he has never spoken with Bannon. During the transition, he made clear his deep skepticism that the Russians were behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee, the source said—a message that Trump himself reiterated several times.

***

If Taleb and Yarvin laid some of the theoretical groundwork for Trumpism, the most muscular and controversial case for electing him president—and the most unrelenting attack on Trump’s conservative critics—came from Michael Anton, a onetime conservative intellectual writing under the pseudonym Publius Decius Mus.

Thanks to an entree from Thiel, Anton now sits on the National Security Council staff. Initial reports indicated he would serve as a spokesman, but Anton is set to take on a policy role, according to a source with knowledge of the situation. A former speechwriter for Rudy Giuliani and George W. Bush’s National Security Council, Anton most recently worked as a managing director for BlackRock, the Wall Street investment firm.

Hiring Anton puts one of the key intellectual forces behind Trump in the West Wing. In his blockbuster article “The Flight 93 Election,” a 4,300-plus-word tract published in September 2016 under his pseudonym, Anton strikes many of the same notes as Taleb and Yarvin. “America and the West are on a trajectory toward something very bad,” he writes. He blasts conservatives as “keepers of the status quo” for refusing to take account of the need for “truly fundamental” change—especially a crackdown on immigration that he argues is promoting “ethnic separatism” and risks entrenching a permanent Democratic majority.

Anton is no blind Trump supporter—the analogy in his essay’s title suggests that electing the Manhattan mogul was merely an alternative to the certain civilizational death of choosing another member of the “bipartisan junta” that he says is driving America “off a cliff.”

“2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die,” he writes. “You may die anyway. You—or the leader of your party—may make it into the cockpit and not know how to fly or land the plane. There are no guarantees.”

Will Trumpism work, Anton asks? He’s not sure—but he argues that it’s worth trying, given the alternative: “[T]he ceaseless importation of Third World foreigners with no tradition of, taste for, or experience in liberty means that the electorate grows more left, more Democratic, less Republican, less republican, and less traditionally American with every cycle.”

Anton’s real target is his fellow conservative intellectuals, who by opposing Trump are “objectively pro-Hillary”—a choice he warns will lead to “Caesarism, secession/crack-up, collapse, or managerial Davoisie liberalism as far as the eye can see.”

If that sounds like a highbrow expression of Trumpism—his inaugural address ripping the “establishment” in both parties for allegedly selling out the American people to foreign interests—it’s because it is. Hiring Anton speaks to Bannon’s ambition to displace traditional American conservatism with the sort of populist nationalism that Trump rode to office, and that his allies say is merely a return to the country’s original ideals.

“To me, part of the attraction and the appeal of Trump was that actually, if you take a look at what Trump’s saying and what he’s trying to do, [it] is actually more in keeping with the founding principles than the rest of the Republicans,” said the White House aide.

Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
I'm calling a Le Pen victory in France now. it is on the record.

I'm not, it's on the record too. Contrarily to Trump, Le Pen is hardly new in French politics, remember.

 Peregrine wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
And it will probably form the beginnings of a joint agency manned mission to Mars.

Again, why? What purpose is there in a manned mission to Mars, other than nationalistic flag-planting?