Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Memetrics
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktVital Statistics:
| Last | Change | |
| S&P Futures | 2165.0 | 5.0 |
| Eurostoxx Index | 338.3 | 0.1 |
| Oil (WTI) | 44.6 | 1.3 |
| US dollar index | 90.5 | 0.0 |
| 10 Year Govt Bond Yield | 2.22% | |
| Current Coupon Fannie Mae TBA | 103 | |
| Current Coupon Ginnie Mae TBA | 104 | |
| 30 Year Fixed Rate Mortgage | 3.89 |
Stocks are up modestly this morning on no real news. The bond bears are taking a break today, everywhere except Japan, where the JGB 10 year yield is now positive.
You can see just how dramatic the sell-off in the 10 year has become. Note the big drop in yields as the election was called for Donald Trump, and then the huge reversal. That is the mother of all head fakes. Carl Icahn was buying about a billion dollars worth of S&P 500 futures contracts during that head fake.
Retail Sales came in stronger than expected in October, rising 0.8%. Ex-autos and gas, they rose 0.6%. The October readings are in that sort of trough period between back to school and the holidays. BTS sales were on the weak side, FWIW so I am not sure what this necessarily means for holiday sales. Stocks seem to like it, with the S&P SPDR retailer ETF (XRT) up a couple of percent pre-open.
More stirrings of inflation? Import Prices rose 0.5% in October, higher than expected. The headline number is even more surprising given that the dollar rose during the month, however the increase was pretty much concentrated in the petroleum sector. Export prices fell.
The Empire State Manufacturing Survey increased modestly in November, climbing out of negative territory for the first time in 4 months. New York State remains in a bit of a funk compared to the rest of the US. The employment indices fell.
More good news for housing: The Despot reported better than expected earnings this morning as people spend more on home improvement.
Is the firing spree finally over in the financial sector? It could be. Since 2005, approximately 800,000 jobs have been shed in the sector. About the only demand came in compliance.
People have been saying for a while that auto loans are the new subprime. It looks like the next subprime is online consumer loans, which were supposed to disrupt the banking industry, but are taking way more credit losses than anticipated. Technology is all fine and good, but if you can’t analyze credit risk properly, you aren’t going to make it.
Head of the SEC Mary Jo White submitted her resignation, which clears the way for a more pro-free market head of the regulatory body.
The jump in rates has been bad news for many in the mortgage business, as it weighs down the refi shops. VA IRRRLs have been a gravy train for many shops and that party looks to be winding down between higher rates and new rules on securitization. Certainly this isn’t great news for the first time homebuyer, however if the employment market continues to improve, that should offset the increase in rates. It will almost certainly mean that further home price appreciation will be harder to come by, as the affordability gift of low rates goes away. Does that necessarily mean the refi market is dead? Cash-out refis where borrowers can refinance their credit card debt will still make a ton of sense, even if mortgage rates top 4%. We may see an increase in ARM demand as a way to lower payments, but with the Fed in a tightening cycle, that is a risky way to go.
Filed under: Economy, Morning Report |
All Things in Moderation 
Why is this a bad thing?
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It’s probably good for everybody involved. And whoever wants to can stay out and whoever wants to can accept the call . . . It’s not a bad thing. And why is it an “extremely important dynamic” and why is it “potentially developing”. This has been the dynamic since before the election: the Bush’s and most of their clique do not like Trump. And they see Trump’s Whitehouse as being a disaster that will kill the careers of anybody involved. And why is it an important dynamic? Trump will be able to find people to populate his cabinet without employing a single Bush-era appointee.
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@jnc4p: From your comment at Plumline:
“Yes he does. He knows exactly where his support comes from.
Defending Medicare and Social Security was one of his distinguishing traits in the primaries.”
The left generally tends to view those who disagree with them as incompetents and boobs and idiots and morons. And uses those words to describe them.
I just think that reveals how incapable some people are of grasping that there are other perspectives and other possibilities that the one’s presented to them by their own limited perceptions.
They can’t envision Trump:
1. Ever sticking to a commitment
2. Intentionally defending popular entitlements just for his own benefit as he, alone, fixes them
3. Doing anything on purpose that isn’t evil or meant to hurt minorities and women
I’m amazed at how vulnerable that makes them politically, and that they cannot get that. I know we have 4 years to go, but I’m already comfortable in predicting a Trump win 4 years from now, unless he decides not to run. Because right now, the Democratic support structure, the pundits, the media, the Facebook posters . . . they are all doing their best to alienate anyone who voted for Trump in perpetuity.
And as Scott Adams pointed out in his bit about Trump working to “break the illusion”, they are also setting themselves up for huge failure of Trump pulls it off.
But no. The answer is that there are too many racists in the country, they voted for Trump, so we need to try harder to shame them for being racists, and try to scare them about Trump by lying a lot or exaggerating or taking things out of context because, although we are smart enough to know Trump is scary enough in reality, the rubes are not, so we must execute a propaganda campaign that totally won’t backfire on us ever, for sure!
You’re dropping facts and data on them PLers like a thunderstorm of knowledge, and they just put up their umbrellas.
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And the meltdown enters it’s second week.
Watching them turn on Bernie & Obama for saying that Trump is actually going to be president is great.
I didn’t support Trump or vote for him, but the progressive meltdown is turning into the best consolation prize ever.
As I paraphrased from Pulp Fiction, it was almost worth electing him just to see the meltdown.
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That’s one word for it. It’s cognitively dissonant to read the same people who think they need to win by yelling at and shaming the only people’s whose votes can actually be switched then reflect on how blind Republican voters were if they can’t see Trump is going to fail them. Mote in your neighbor’s eye and all that.
Also, if Trump-as-President is such a clear moral evil, you think they would be obligated to do something other than protest and chant inanities while pretending it’s the 60s and they are protesting the Vietnam war. Something that, you know, might win them the election in the midterms.
They don’t understand that we live in a country where calling someone insulting names or even talking about grabbing a woman by her junk is not as alienating (at least to voters needed to swing elections) as the “sexist, racist, bigot, homophobe, Nazi” catechism. They need to prepare for the power of incumbency in 2020, and have something more impressive than an angry rant by Jon Oliver to all his fellow liberals as to how extra-racist and horrible Trump is.
Also need to prep for the midterms. They have a chance to capture a few seats in the house and making take back the senate. But the trend of midterm losses for the party in power tends to be strong for candidates swept in on a wave (i.e., landslide candidates, which is not Trump) but much less when the president wins by narrow margins. Then you have the Tea Party’s recent midterm record, and Trump’s likely ability to appeal to voters to get them out in the midterms, either to beat Democrats or primary Republicans . . .
Eh, what do I care if they want to keep losing to Republicans until demographics finally is destiny? By the time they start winning broad control again, and maybe running both the executive and legislative branches, I’m going to be 60. And only 30 years from retirement (thanks, Republicans who bailed on Bush’s SS reform!)
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Schadenfreude special:
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Donald Trump created racists!
And badmouthing
“This election is over! Trump cannot win!”
Hah!
“Hillary will have 320 electoral votes when it’s all said and done.” I like that confidence.
Like JNC, did not vote for or support Trump. But it’s almost worth it to watch the meltdown. The first day was kind of “nah, this isn’t worth it” . . . but as it goes on and on, it becomes kind of enjoyable.
“Don’t care about Kentucky, don’t care about Indiana. Don’t care!”
And that’s why she lost!
“It goes quiet in here the moment we started reporting these real results . . . ”
“G*dd*mnit, if we need Florida, are you kidding me?”
“I don’t see a landslide [for Hillary] here. I don’t see it all.” Really? You don’t?
“We thought John Kerry was going to win in 2004”
“Now 54%–no, 55% chance of a Donald Trump Win” — “Stop saying the number!”
I thought it was conservatives who were anti-science and didn’t like data. Don’t facts have a liberal bias? None of this makes sense!
“Brace for impact!” “All the f**king idiots in Washington and New York were all: ‘You’re worried about nothing!'”
“We’re going to pulverize the DNC! Yes, we are at war now!”
Blaming the DNC for Trump victory. Not wrong.
“Brought to you by the f**king morons at the DNC.”
“There are 10s of millions of of Americans who voted for the guy endorsed by the KKK. He worked for that vote, too!”
“Sexism is worse than racism in this country.”
“The one thing HRC was right about in this election was the ‘basket of deplorables'”
“For those Latino’s that voted for Trump . . . when he kicks out your family members . . . ”
“I have no respect for women who voted for Trump. I think so poorly of them. I don’t think you are a single issue voter. I just think you’re dumb. I think you’re f**king dumb. I’m just losing my mind tonight over how stupid a majority of the country is.”
Oh, no arrogance there. Can’t imagine why their side lost.
Era politeness is over. Progressives aren’t going to be polite anymore! Hallelujah.
“When it comes to poor white people . . . I’ve got why own problems. You’re on your own. They are the people that get what they deserve.”
Huh?
“Founders were slave owners who died when they were forty. So they weren’t such geniuses.”
OMG. Myopia.
“Not all Trump supporters are racists, but all racists are Trump supporters.”
Yeah, no.
“Affirmative action is not why you fail, white people. You failed because you f**king suck*. You’re losers!”
Way to go after that swing vote.
Good point about everyone trying to help Hillary. Republicans! Jay-Z! Beyonce! Everybody!
“Welcome to Idiocracy” . . . man, haven’t heard that before.
Dude who predicted a Hillary Clinton blow out at 320 electoral votes before the returns started coming in spends the end of the night trashing Hillary. “She had no message. No message. And her slogan? I’m with her? What does that even mean?”
Wow. He just noticed.
The woman who was excited about the inevitable Hillary victory now talking about how she “started playing mind games on herself, thinking maybe Hillary could win”. There wasn’t no maybe 12 hours ago.
Pence says: “It is my privilege to serve as your vice president of America.”
Young Turks say: “F**k this guy.”
I can almost taste the coming Democratic landslide.
And they keep on doing it.
“I can’t believe Melania is our first lady. I want to throw up.”
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““I can’t believe Melania is our first lady. I want to throw up.”
Proof positive that perspective has been lost. Of all the things Melania might be said to make one want to do, throwing up is the bottom of the list.
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” but as it goes on and on, it becomes kind of enjoyable”
Waldman trying to unskew the exit polls is impossible to parody.
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Brent:
Schadenfreude special
Just got a chance to watch that. Fantastic. I really got some ghoulish pleasure from that.
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I would succumb to schadenfreude about this:
but it is bad for the country so I restrain myself. I expect turnover in the DJT Cabinet to be regular and rapid compared with previous administrations.
Again, I wonder if either self-dealing or a national security breach will be an excuse for Congress to give us President Pence [a result I think most of Congress would prefer].
I didn’t know that Chris Christie as USAtty had put Kushner’s dad in prison.
George, early on, when most of the neocons and all of Bush 41’s advisors publicly abandoned DJT you said to me why would DJT want the support of folks who got us into a dumb land war in Asia, or something like that. Well, the remaining neocons who did not embrace HRC; Bolton, Rudy G., and Gaffney seem to all be at the top of his list of advisers. Considering war is bad for DJT’s personal business, I can only assume that outside his chosen huckster field the con man can be conned.
Speaking of cons, has Curiel ruled on Trump’s Motion for Continuance?
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Same paper that had HRC with a 90% chance of winning at 7 PM on 11/8/2016.
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I did not pick your favored source but do you think the story is fiction?
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I think Trump prefers chaotic, antagonistic environments. I’m having a hard time believing that a family member or Bannon would leak anything other than as misdirection. So,not until the picks are named by Trump will I believe them.
Do you believe the story, and if so, why do you believe it given their track record both in the long and short term?
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I give the story credence because it would be difficult to misreport comings and goings – e.g.; Christie was managing, but now Pence, Rogers was handling national security issues, now gone.
Also, Christie put Kushner’s dad away for tax evasion and other stuff.
Now, I put far less credence on the conclusion that Kushner purged Christie because Christie put his dad away. That is a plausible inference. But there are other, to me, more plausible inferences. 1] Pence knows the players better than Christie. 2] Shit about the GW Bridge splattered on Christie last week.
I also rate the bitching and moaning from folks passed over as low value for truthiness or accuracy, without far more corroboration.
Make sense?
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No really, you seem to be saying that you believe the sore losers who seem to be leaking to the press?
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mark:
I give the story credence because it would be difficult to misreport comings and goings…Now, I put far less credence on the conclusion that Kushner purged Christie because Christie put his dad away. But there are other, to me, more plausible inferences.
The inferences are the very point of the story, though. The very first sentence provides the assumed context which gives meaning to all of the uncontested facts provided: the transition team is in disarray. The fact that you alluded to feeling some sense of schadenfreude over it suggests to me that you give credence not just to the factual comings and goings, but to the meaning of those comings and goings that the NYT wants you to take from them.
Given the history of the NYT’s coverage of politicians it doesn’t approve of, and especially given the fact that the NYT has already explicitly and openly disregarded traditional journalistic practices in an attempt to prevent Trump from getting elected, I don’t give any credence at all to the framing that the NYT gives to the facts it is reporting. Literally, I give it zero credence. When it comes to the narrative that the NYT wishes to tell, it has no credibility left, as far as I am concerned.
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Mark:
You may be interested in this article from a recently former NYT reporter:
http://deadline.com/2016/11/shocked-by-trump-new-york-times-finds-time-for-soul-searching-1201852490/
Historically, the Los Angeles Times, where I worked twice, for instance, was a reporter-driven, bottom-up newspaper. Most editors wanted to know, every day, before the first morning meeting: “What are you hearing? What have you got?”
It was a shock on arriving at the New York Times in 2004, as the paper’s movie editor, to realize that its editorial dynamic was essentially the reverse. By and large, talented reporters scrambled to match stories with what internally was often called “the narrative.” We were occasionally asked to map a narrative for our various beats a year in advance, square the plan with editors, then generate stories that fit the pre-designated line.
Reality usually had a way of intervening. But I knew one senior reporter who would play solitaire on his computer in the mornings, waiting for his editors to come through with marching orders. Once, in the Los Angeles bureau, I listened to a visiting National staff reporter tell a contact, more or less: “My editor needs someone to say such-and-such, could you say that?”
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You may be interested in this article from a recently former NYT reporter:
Assuming he is not merely a disgruntled former employee, that would be a cogent criticism.
As for my potential schadenfreude at the comings and goings of team Trump, it is based on the rapid turnstile itself, not the implied reasons for it. I have had to suppress giggling during previous handoffs, too, but usually later in the cycle – remember all the Democrats who had undoc maids they paid in cash? I recall Inman, but I think there were others. How about the Treasury Secretary who owed back taxes [Geithner?]. This is just earlier and seemingly more pervasive,but not based on specific wrongdoing. George may be correct that DJT likes to live in turmoil.
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Mark:
Assuming he is not merely a disgruntled former employee…
Certainly a possibility.
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KW:
The left generally tends to view those who disagree with them as incompetents and boobs and idiots and morons.
Or evil, when the incompetent label is manifestly ridiculous. Exhibit A: Dick Cheney.
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The dark lord behind the incompetent boob, Dubya. Indeed. Although it seems there is never an evil genius Republican without some hapless moron doing the evil genius’s bidding.
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“I’m amazed at how vulnerable that makes them politically, and that they cannot get that.”
For now. See Molly Ball:
“I know we have 4 years to go, but I’m already comfortable in predicting a Trump win 4 years from now, unless he decides not to run”
I wouldn’t go that far at all. Intervening events matter a lot. But if Trump can continue to make the Republican party pay attention to the actual people who are voting for them, then you are right.
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They do, especially as we near election. My prediction is predicated on whether or not there’s a strong libertarian 3rd part campaign (the MSM may decide it’s in their best interest to give the 3rd party libertarian a lot of positive coverage this time around) and whether or not there’s a serious primary challenge to Trump.
Generally, presidents tend to win re-election if they are incumbent and they’ve taken the Whitehouse from the previous party when they win. The exception in my lifetime is Jimmy Carter—and he had a serious primary challenge from Ted Kennedy, and Jon Anderson was a serious 3rd party candidate that CNN even shoehorned in to their version to the presidential debates.
Even with all that, it would help a lot of the Democrats and their advocates and the anti-Trump forces get some idea of why they lost, and there is very little sign of it.
I think they generally have enough sense not to rail on Hispanics for voting for Trump. Maybe.
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Like jnc, I am enjoying the progressive meltdown. Schadenfreude is a real thing, for sure.
But I am not sure I am ready to buy in to the notion that, in reacting as they have, the left just “doesn’t get it”. From a cultural perspective, it seems to me that the tactics being used by the left in the wake of Trump’s election, ie trying to demonize opposing views out of the realm of respectable opinion, have actually been pretty successful in the past. They are just following the same script now. To think that the election of Trump shows that “the people” have finally had enough of it is probably reading too much into it. For some people that may be true, but probably not enough to be the defining reason for Trump’s success.
I am sure lots of things contributed to Trump’s success but I suspect that HRC’s limitations as a candidate were at least as responsible for her loss as the left’s contempt for non-elite America, and that a more attractive candidate (like, say, Obama) would have won, despite being sympathetic to, if not actually embracing, the broader lefts view of nearly half the nation as backwards moral and intellectual reprobates.
I don’t expect Trump’s election to change the ad hominem tactics of the left, nor do I expect those ad hominems to suddenly cease being as effective as they have been in the past in limiting the public debate to ground most amenable to the progressive project.
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Sure, but they’ve also gone and activated white people as an identity group in the process. Picking a perpetual cultural fight with the majority culture in a democracy is a problematic approach.
Their strategy relies on minorities (and for purposes of this approach women are viewed as a minority) voting their identity and white people voting their ideology. That’s ending.
The Atlantic has been great on this:
I’m a libertarian and individualist in large part because I think it’s the only coherent long term strategy for a functioning pluralistic society. I don’t think that the alternative to colorblindness is some sort of social justice utopia, but rather Yugoslavia, Iraq & Lebanon.
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jnc:
Their strategy relies on minorities (and for purposes of this approach women are viewed as a minority) voting their identity and white people voting their ideology. That’s ending.
That’s a fair point.
I’m a libertarian and individualist in large part because I think it’s the only coherent long term strategy for a functioning pluralistic society. I don’t think that the alternative to colorblindness is some sort of social justice utopia, but rather Yugoslavia, Iraq & Lebanon.
I am with you.
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“I don’t expect Trump’s election to change the ad hominem tactics of the left, nor do I expect those ad hominems to suddenly cease being as effective as they have been in the past in limiting the public debate to ground most amenable to the progressive project.”
I think Breitbart has been more effective here than is generally acknowledged. They seem to see the issue clearly:
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I wonder how much of this was the cumulative impact of things like the Gruber “stupidity of the American voters” approach to policy making?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelcannon/2014/11/30/grubergate-part-1-the-stupidity-of-the-american-voter/#437f1bd42e6a
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This captures the arrogance & disdain perfectly:
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Yup. It’s not just the ad hominem attacks I am critical of, BTW. It’s the entire mentality that produces them, that goes with them, and the blindspots they entail.
I’m not saying the Democratic party is doomed, either. I fully expect them to make strides everywhere they’ve lost ground in the coming decades. Whether or not they get past their “we alone are smart, you’re an ignorant bigot” mentality. But not 4 years from now. And presumably they’d like to unseat Trump.
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Actual elected Democrats are smarter than the PL crowd.
Or at least more attuned to their own survival.
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jnc:
Actual elected Democrats are smarter than the PL crowd.
A good distinction.
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You got that right. Ultimately, most of them aren’t the problem. It’s the “advocates” for the Democrats in the media, the punditry, and the general population. The vast majority of elected Democrats know better than to call the voters they are courting idiots, although I’m not sure they know they need to—or perhaps Hillary was just not up to—still visit states with large caucasian populations and stump for votes.
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KW:
Whether or not they get past their “we alone are smart, you’re an ignorant bigot” mentality.
I don’t think they will ever get past it. If they did they wouldn’t be leftists. The notion that they know better than the hoi polloi is pretty much fundamental to their ideology and world view. They might get better at masking their contempt as compassion, but that contempt will remain a part of their world view.
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Ultimately. But any incentive they might have to open their minds is going to be gone as their “demographics as destiny” mantra finally comes to fruition.
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Normally I like Charles Pierce, but this is how the left lies and gets it into the mainstream consciousness:
“Speaker Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin and unsuccessful aspirant to a national office soon to be held by Mike Freaking Pence, seems to be growing impatient with this pestilential delay in his plans to knuckle all the takers, shred the country’s safety net, and reward the folks with whom he shares $3,000 glasses of wine.”
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a50706/paul-ryan-terrified/
No, it wasn’t a $3,000 glass of wine. It was a $350 bottle of wine.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/07/paul-ryans-350-bottle-of-wine/241642/
But apparently that’s not bad enough to make the point, so why not make something up ala Harry Reid?
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jnc:
But apparently that’s not bad enough to make the point, so why not make something up ala Harry Reid?
He lost me at “zombie-eyed granny starver”.
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Really? I thought that was extremely even-handed.
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Hmmmm….
Another EPA staffer said, “I don’t actually know anybody here that was supporting Trump.” That person said people are “worried” that their work over the last eight years will be unraveled. “It’s always a time of uncertainty” when a new administration comes in, the employee said, and there were fears when the George W. Bush administration came into office, too. But “people are more worried this time,” the person added.
Call me crazy, but when career employees of the federal bureaucracy are driven to tears and despondency over an election and the prospect “that their work over the last eight years will be unraveled”, it is a pretty clear indication that 1) the agency has been politicized beyond redemption and its ranks need to be purged and 2) the pretense that the agency is just enforcing legitimately passed laws rather then making up laws themselves is no longer even remotely viable.
http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060045642
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which unfortunately is the left’s ultimate trump card…
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Brent:
which unfortunately is the left’s ultimate trump card…
The courts, the federal bureaucracy…you have to sort of admire the way in which the left has managed to insulate its project from the vagaries of the the democratic process.
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For good reason. They haven’t been able to do it with governors, state legislatures, or presidents yet . . . and look what happens! All their beautiful Utopian work! It’s ruined! Ruined!
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Some things are simply too important to have the masses involved..
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Trump could be the luckiest SOB out there:
“U.S. Economic Confidence Surges After Election”
http://www.gallup.com/poll/197474/economic-confidence-surges-election.aspx
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He could be indeed. I wonder what that says. That Democrats went from mildly positive to very negative, maybe, and Republicans and Independents went from deeply negative to super positive? Given the the split nature of the vote, you would think the attitudes on the economy would simply flip.
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From a facebook thread today…
I guess some of the Lewisboro parents are up in arms that some of the middle schoolers were chanting “Build that Wall” during a school-organized “protest” over “bigotry and bullying”. (ha ha, right) Supposedly, the kids were disciplined.
The women in the thread then go and pat themselves on the back for having compassion and empathy and their commitment to free speech…
The left has such a blind spot it isn’t funny…
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Yup. Reports of violent assaults by Trump supporters (alleged) were part of a list included that “build that wall” moment. Kids advocating for a protected border are just the same as adults robbing and assaulting people because of their race (and because they support Trump, supposedly).
Which is another thing. When most crimes are reported, we may or may not find out physical characteristics, like race and whatnot. Now, we’re being told the alleged criminal’s political views! And I’m not sure all these Trump-inspired “hate crimes” have any clear connection to Trump. And, when they do, they tend to sound fake: “He hit me and stole my purse then said he could do whatever he wanted now because Trump was president and he was going to kill all the Muslims!” I mean, I know humanity is capable of anything, but that sort of stuff sounds super-made-up.
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In an age where “fuck” and “shit” are pedestrian, anti-PC talk has become the new forbidden fruit..
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Which is exactly what Milo gets.
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I really would like to see Milo for press secretary. The Washington press corps would have a collective brain hemorrhage.
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Milo is first and foremost a performance artist, IMO
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Are they wearing their safety pins?
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I missed this. Safety pins?
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apparently wearing a safety pin is the post-election method of virtue signalling..
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It’s performance art by white liberals masquerading as activism.
What’s funny is that they are being called out by the actual activists.
“Dear White People, Your Safety Pins Are Embarrassing
We don’t get to make ourselves feel better by putting on safety pins and self-designating ourselves as allies.
11/12/2016 04:46 pm ET | Updated 2 days ago ”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dear-white-people-your-safety-pins-are-embarassing_us_58278b9de4b02b1f5257a36a
If you change “white people” to “white liberals” then I agree with a good 80% of the piece.
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Dear White People, Your Safety Pins Are Embarrassing
Perhaps so, but not as embarrassing as the content of that piece.
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Watching the Jon Oliver monologue on Trump’s victory. Interesting to observe that when he said “It’s important to remember some people are happy about Trump’s victory”, he mentioned people who think he’ll bring jobs back, people who didn’t like Hillary Clinton, and Vladmir Putin and Scott Baio (punchline). I gotta admit, I was sure the punchline would feature some KKK members or Nazis, and it didn’t.
Still plenty of show to go, but maybe everyone in the pundit-advocacy-comedian class isn’t a complete idiot. He’s calling Trump out as bigoted, but that’s to be expected.
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I have never watched him in my life.. Is he any good? Or is it just leftist wanking?
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He’s good and mostly a leftist wanking. But he’s the best thing to come out of the Jon Stewart show that isn’t Jon Stewart, and he’s got programs I thought were very solid. One about TV preachers, where he starts his own religion, and the one about police confiscation of property for minor drug infractions, among others. Monologue is what you would expect from a serious, educated, and funny lefty. Kind of stuff that makes college kids go gaga.
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I should add he’s a propagandist. And, by some accounts, the main source of news for millenials now that Jon Stewart is gone from the Daily Show.
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He’s seriously embarrassed over his previous calls for Trump to run.
http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2016/11/07/john-oliver-2013-donald-trump-joke-regret-bpb-orig.cnn
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Somehow this doesn’t shock me. I was waiting for it come up up in this show.
“I’m an idiot” . . . way better than anything the Young Turks have to say on anything, I’ll say that much.
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@scottc1: “I don’t think they will ever get past it. If they did they wouldn’t be leftists. The notion that they know better than the hoi polloi is pretty much fundamental to their ideology and world view.”
There’s a few out there.
http://www.vox.com/identities/2016/11/15/13595508/racism-trump-research-study
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That’s not really a rebuttal of Scott’s point. More like a corollary that the hoi polloi can’t handle the truth about themselves.
Still just as elitist.
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jnc:
That’s not really a rebuttal of Scott’s point. More like a corollary that the hoi polloi can’t handle the truth about themselves.
Exactly.
“One of the things we know from social psychology is when people feel threatened, they can’t change, they can’t listen.”
The underlying assumption being that those people should listen to us and change as a result, because we have something to teach them. The notion that we should listen to them and change as a result, because they have something to teach us, never crosses their mind.
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Same song, different verse.
You are quite correct. There’s no “we should actually engage in two-way communication where we actually listen in learn”, but some points on empathy where they should listen, in order to be perceived as listening and showing empathy.
Which is not great, but is better that “you’re all f**king losers, white people. Racist, sexist, bigot, homophobes!” I mean, dude. Baby steps.
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I love how the left imagines they are making us feel “threatened” when in reality we are just annoyed and don’t want to deal with them.
They really like that word for some reason. Must make them feel empowered.
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It’s an orientation where the primary motivator is not desire or ambition or attraction or even greed, but fear. They are cognizant of resentment as a motivator as well, however. Which may say something.
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So I don’t know anything about Steve Bannon, Obama’s chief political adviser, but I keep reading that he is a racist and a “white nationalist”. For example, this morning I read this article, about how Bannon has a piece of the Seinfeld franchise, which straight up calls up him “a racist man”. I have no idea whether this is true or not, but I was (and remain) curious, and the article helpfully links the words “a racist man” to another article which ostensibly will provide the evidence for the characterization.
Unfortunately, the link simply goes to another article, by the same outfit, making the same charges about Bannon, but still without anything real to substantiate the characterization. However, again, the claim that Bannon has “built a media empire around white nationalism, anti-Semitism, and rank misogyny” helpfully provides another link that, presumably, will provide evidence for the charge.
This one goes to a WaPo article which avoids the direct charge, choosing instead to suggest more vaguely that unnamed “political strategists” see Bannon as a “controversial figure” who is “associated with the “alt-right” movement, which white nationalists have embraced.”
OK, so we have already moved from Bannon actually being a white nationalist to Bannon being “associated” with a movement which is not itself a white nationalist movement, but which has been “embraced” by white nationalists. The article then goes on to clarify exactly what this association is, pointing out that Bannon was the executive Chairman of Breitbart News, which itself has a “close association” with the “alt-right”, a “fringe conservative movement saturated with racially insensitive rhetoric and elements of outright white nationalism.”
And how has this “association” between Breitbart and white nationalism manifested itself? The only example that the WaPo provides is a Breitbart article (not written by Bannon, but someone else) decrying efforts to ban the Confederate flag as attempts to “disinherit and eradicate the historical memory and distinctive culture” of the south.
So, to sum up: If you are the chairman of a media organization that prints an article by someone objecting to attempts to ban the Confederate flag, objections which are (presumably) shared by white nationalists, it makes you “a racist man”.
I don’t know the first thing about Bannon, and maybe he really is a stone cold racist. I’m certainly happy to see any info anyone else here has on him. But unless they can come up with something more substantive, I’m going to take all this talk about Bannon to be nothing more than the typical media attempts to demonize a person whose politics don’t match its own.
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Try this:
“This Man Is the Most Dangerous Political Operative in America
Steve Bannon runs the new vast right-wing conspiracy—and he wants to take down both Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush.
By Joshua Green | October 8, 2015”
https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2015-steve-bannon/
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What about the ZOG though?
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jnc::
Try this:
Thanks for that. Very interesting, and not a single indication that he is the white national racist of liberal wet dreams.
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