A modest proposal from Jim Wright

[Econoline]

Via Facebook:

• This morning Sean Spicer announced President Trump will donate his federal salary to charity at the end of the year.
  
  Trump asked the press to decide where the donations should go.
  
  “The president’s intention right now is to donate his salary at end of the year, and he has kindly asked you all determine where that goes,” Spicer said. “The way that we can avoid scrutiny is to let the press corps determine where it should go."
  
  The president makes $400,000 per year. He also gets a $50,000 annual expense account, a $100,000 nontaxable travel account, and $19,000 for "entertainment."
  
  That's half a million dollars.
  
  Which Trump will donate to a charity selected by the Press.
  
  I have a suggestion:
  
  Planned Parenthood.
  
  Let's make Trump donate his salary to Planned Parenthood.

YES!!!!!

I love this suggestion *SO* much!

[Burning Petard]

Or as an alternate, the ACLU, or perhaps a group that supports Syrian refugees.

Just what is his expense account? How many week-end trips to the 'winter white house' can he make?

What assurance do we have that this will actually happen? remember what a fight it was to get him to come across with any money at all for that fund raiser for military veterans he had during the campaign?

snailgate

[Lord Jim]

Since I've caught this guy lying so many times, naturally the first thing I did when I read the OP was check to see what Spicer had actually said.

This morning Sean Spicer announced President Trump will donate his federal salary to charity at the end of the year.

Trump asked the press to decide where the donations should go.

“The president’s intention right now is to donate his salary at end of the year, and he has kindly asked you all determine where that goes,” Spicer said. “The way that we can avoid scrutiny is to let the press corps determine where it should go."

Here's what was actually said:

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Monday that President Trump plans to donate his salary at the end of the year — and that Trump would like reporters to help him decide where to send that check to.

"He kindly asked that you all help determine where that goes," Spicer said during Monday's press briefing.

His announcement drew laughters from reporters.

"In all seriousness, I think his view is that he made a pledge to the American people," Spicer continued. "He wants to donate it to charity, and he'd love your help to determine where it should go."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/poli ... /99128930/

If dropping a word out of a quote that completely changes the meaning and context of what was said is what he needs for his narrative, good ol' Jim Wrong is certainly not above doing it...

This guy has about as much regard for honesty and factual accuracy as The Donald himself...

If Mr. Wrong told me the sun was shining, the first thing I'd do is grab my umbrella...

[Econoline]

It's still a great suggestion.

[Lord Jim]

One of the reporters at Spicer's briefing made a pretty good suggestion to Sean...

He suggested that the money be donated to the White House Correspondents Association journalism scholarship fund...

Here's the thing Spicer said at yesterday's briefing that he is most going to regret:

Sean Spicer: Americans can trust President Trump 'if he's not joking'

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said on Monday the American people can trust Donald Trump's words "if he's not joking."

NBC's Peter Alexander pressed Spicer on whether or not Americans can trust the president, citing last week's jobs report and Trump's reaction, asking, "Can you say affirmatively that whenever the president says something, we can trust it to be real?"

"If he's not joking, of course," Spicer replied.

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/0 ... /21884524/

Now every time Trump says or tweets something outrageous, bizarre, and/or patently false, Spicer can expect to be asked, "Sean, was the President just joking when he said...."

I suspect he's going to be answering that question a lot...

[Jarlaxle]

Split it evenly...1/3 to the ACLU, 1/3 to the Institute for Justice, and 1/3 to the NRA.

[Econoline]

Another suggestion...

(Well, actually 2 suggestions: one for the press, one for the Republican Party.)

---

"King doubles down on controversial 'babies' tweet"

This, this right here, is the goddamned problem with America.

This innocuous vague word, "controversial."

"King doubles down on controversial 'babies' tweet"

And the story's lede which begins "Washington (CNN) Rep. Steve King doubled down Monday on comments he made over the weekend in which he appeared to criticize foreigners and immigrants, drawing complaints of insensitivity on social media and from some of his Hill colleagues..."

This was CNN, but there are a hundred other headlines just like it.

Steve King's comment was not "controversial."

Steve King didn't "appear" to "criticize" foreigners and immigrants.

Steve King's comment didn't draw complaints of "insensitivity."

REPRESENTATIVE STEVE KING'S COMMENTS WERE OPENLY, BLATANTLY, AND DELIBERATELY RACIST IN THE MOST FOUL TRADITION OF LONG, LONG, LONG DISCREDITED NAZI EUGENICS.

THE WORD IS "RACIST."

STEVE KING'S COMMENT WAS RACIST.

STEVE KING IS A RACIST.

RACISM IS OBNOXIOUS, DISGUSTING, AND AGAINST EVERYTHING THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA STANDS FOR.

Racism is not "controversial," it's RACISM.

Racism is not "criticism," it's RACISM.

Racism is not "insensitive," it's fucking RACISM.

The press needs to stop this nonsense and start calling it what it is. RACISM. Right out in the open, no different than that practiced by the goddamned Nazis. This kind of racism, Eugenics, this master race bullshit, was the very core of Nazi ideology. And that is exactly what King is applauding here, that's exactly what his idol, Geert Wilders, is talking about. More pure white babies than brown babies, because white babies are superior, white babies are the only way to "restore" "our" "civilization."

What King said was RACISM with a pedigree directly traceable to The Fourteen Words (Also "14" or "The Fourteen") of White Supremacism and White Nationalism, to wit: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children." The Fourteen words are directly traceable to 88 words taken from Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, "What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduction of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the purity of our blood, the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may mature for the fulfillment of the mission allotted it by the creator of the universe. Every thought and every idea, every doctrine and all knowledge, must serve this purpose. And everything must be examined from this point of view and used or rejected according to its utility." Next time you see a Neo-Nazi, look for the tattoos, 14/88, THAT's what those symbols mean. 14 words. 88 words. Right there. [BTW, I think Wright is Wrong here: I've heard that "88" = "HH" = "Heil Hitler"..."H" is the 8th letter of the alphabet.]

That what King is saying. That's what he means by OUR babies, OUR civilization.

Don't take my word for it, read his comments for yourself.

The context of his comments, his support for Wilders' ideology, makes any coincidental similarity between his statement and The Fourteen unlikely in the extreme.

At every turn, at every opportunity, Republicans loudly claim they despise "political correctness."

Very well.

Time to put their money where their mouths are. Call it what it is. RACISM. The Republican Party needs to stand up, stand up right now, and loudly, bluntly, and officially condemn King's comments as what they are, RACISM.

Then the GOP needs to cut this guy off.

Throw him out of their party. Cut off his funding. Put up a decent conservative candidate to replace him. Get his ass out of office. Period. Terminate his political career with extreme prejudice.

And if the GOP doesn't do that, and do it right now, then they are complicit.

Now is the moment for the party of the supposed moral high ground to actually seize the moral high ground. Right now.

But they won't.

No. they won't.

And neither will the press.

[/size]

[rubato]

King is just parroting the ideas of Steve Bannon who got them from a '30 Fascist philosopher. Which I posted before.

9 out of 10 Republican voters should have the franchise revoked.


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/10/worl ... .html?_r=0

Steve Bannon Cited Italian Thinker Who Inspired Fascists

By JASON HOROWITZFEB. 10, 2017


Stephen K. Bannon referred to the Italian philosopher Julius Evola in a Vatican speech in 2014. Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times

ROME — Those trying to divine the roots of Stephen K. Bannon’s dark and at times apocalyptic worldview have repeatedly combed over a speech that Mr. Bannon, President Trump’s ideological guru, made in 2014 to a Vatican conference, where he expounded on Islam, populism and capitalism.

But for all the examination of those remarks, a passing reference by Mr. Bannon to an esoteric Italian philosopher has gone little noticed, except perhaps by scholars and followers of the deeply taboo, Nazi-affiliated thinker, Julius Evola.

“The fact that Bannon even knows Evola is significant,” said Mark Sedgwick, a leading scholar of Traditionalists at Aarhus University in Denmark.

Evola, who died in 1974, wrote on everything from Eastern religions to the metaphysics of sex to alchemy. But he is best known as a leading proponent of Traditionalism, a worldview popular in far-right and alternative religious circles that believes progress and equality are poisonous illusions.
Continue reading the main story

Evola became a darling of Italian Fascists, and Italy’s post-Fascist terrorists of the 1960s and 1970s looked to him as a spiritual and intellectual godfather.

They called themselves Children of the Sun after Evola’s vision of a bourgeoisie-smashing new order that he called the Solar Civilization. Today, the Greek neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn includes his works on its suggested reading list, and the leader of Jobbik, the Hungarian nationalist party, admires Evola and wrote an introduction to his works.

More important for the current American administration, Evola also caught on in the United States with leaders of the alt-right movement, which Mr. Bannon nurtured as the head of Breitbart News and then helped harness for Mr. Trump.

“Julius Evola is one of the most fascinating men of the 20th century,” said Richard Spencer, the white nationalist leader who is a top figure in the alt-right movement, which has attracted white supremacists, racists and anti-immigrant elements.

In the days after the election, Mr. Spencer led a Washington alt-right conference in chants of “Hail Trump!” But he also invoked Evola’s idea of a prehistoric and pre-Christian spirituality — referring to the awakening of whites, whom he called the Children of the Sun.
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Evola, who died in 1974, is best known as a leading light of Traditionalism.

Mr. Spencer said “it means a tremendous amount” that Mr. Bannon was aware of Evola and other Traditionalist thinkers.

“Even if he hasn’t fully imbibed them and been changed by them, he is at least open to them,” he said. “He at least recognizes that they are there. That is a stark difference to the American conservative movement that either was ignorant of them or attempted to suppress them.”

Mr. Bannon, who did not return a request for comment for this article, is an avid and wide-ranging reader. He has spoken enthusiastically about everything from Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” to “The Fourth Turning” by William Strauss and Neil Howe, which sees history in cycles of cataclysmic and order-obliterating change. His awareness of and reference to Evola in itself only reflects that reading. But some on the alt-right consider Mr. Bannon a door through which Evola’s ideas of a hierarchical society run by a spiritually superior caste can enter in a period of crisis.

“Evolists view his ship as coming in,” said Prof. Richard Drake at the University of Montana, who wrote about Evola in his book “The Revolutionary Mystique and Terrorism in Contemporary Italy.”

For some of them, it has been a long time coming.

“It’s the first time that an adviser to the American president knows Evola, or maybe has a Traditionalist formation,” said Gianfranco De Turris, an Evola biographer and apologist based in Rome who runs the Evola Foundation out of his apartment.

“If Bannon has these ideas, we have to see how he influences the politics of Trump,” he said.

A March article titled “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt-Right” in Breitbart, the website then run by Mr. Bannon, included Evola as one of the thinkers in whose writings the “origins of the alternative right” could be found.

The article was co-written by Milo Yiannopoulos, the right-wing provocateur who is wildly popular with conservatives on college campuses. Mr. Trump recently defended Mr. Yiannopoulos as a symbol of free speech after demonstrators violently protested his planned speech at the University of California, Berkeley.

The article celebrated the youthful internet trolls who give the alt-right movement its energy and who, motivated by a common and questionable sense of humor, use anti-Semitic and racially charged memes “in typically juvenile but undeniably hysterical fashion.”

“It’s hard to imagine them reading Evola,” the article continued. “They may be inclined to sympathize to those causes, but mainly because it annoys the right people.”

Evola, who has more than annoyed people for nearly a century, seems to be having a moment.

“When I started working on Evola, you had to plow through Italian,” said Mr. Sedgwick, who keeps track of Traditionalist movements and thought on his blog, Traditionalists. “Now he’s available in English, German, Russian, Serbian, Greek, Hungarian. First I saw Evola boom, and then I realized the number of people interested in that sort of idea was booming.”
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Stephen Bannon in 2014: We Are at War With Radical Islam

Born in 1898, Evola liked to call himself a baron and in later life sported a monocle in his left eye.

A brilliant student and talented artist, he came home after fighting in World War I and became a leading exponent in Italy of the Dada movement, which, like Evola, rejected the church and bourgeois institutions.

Evola’s early artistic endeavors gave way to his love of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and he developed a worldview with an overriding animosity toward the decadence of modernity. Influenced by mystical works and the occult, Evola began developing an idea of the individual’s ability to transcend his reality and “be unconditionally whatever one wants.”

yrs,
rubato

[ex-khobar Andy]

It's worth following up this whole Bannon - Evola connection. Evola wrote the foreword to an Italian edition of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion which was a hoax purporting to be a Jewish plan to take over the world. Probably Russian in origin, late 19th century, the Protocols formed the philosophical basis for most of the 20th century's anti-semitism. It was exposed as a fraud by the UK press n the twenties but those who wanted to believe it, continued to believe it.

Even in those days, and even in the absence of a first amendment to the UK constitution the press, not the politicians, exposed it for what it was.

Those who continued to believe and push the Protocols included Hitler; Evola; and Henry Ford who financed the US edition. I have a copy which I found in a used bookstore. Henry Ford was the archetype (very inventive in one area but totally fucking dumb in another) of which there are many subsequent examples.