Separate the lot into two separate piles. The Progressive Vertebrates and the Regressive Vertebrates
Return to Progressives to their original container.
With what is left, delicately fillet and carefully remove the bony spine from each Regressive.
After the Regressives have been processed, place them all into a large flat pan
Into this same pan, add sufficient finely ground detritus from pork barrel swill to cover all the Regressive matter, and then fold in the mixture of corporate lobbyists and false promises, and blend until tax loopholes are completely invisible.
Place the mix into a pan well greased with corruption and 1% grade greed.
Place processed mix into the oven.
Do not turn on the heat. Just leave it all in the oven and open and check every 2-year cycle or 6-year cycle, and make adjustments as needed when the ingredients change.
When the stench in the oven becomes unbearable, turn on the gas for the oven. Wait 10-minutes and then strike the match.
The ensuing explosion will then constitute a reason to revisit the original congressional menu items.
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—The Senate's confirmation of Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary means that immigrants will be the nation's only reliable source of educated people going forward, education experts said on Tuesday.
Under DeVos, according to Davis Logsdon, the dean of the University of Minnesota's School of Education, the U.S. will have to "drastically increase its inflow of immigrants" if it wants people capable of performing even the simplest tasks.
"Most of our industries require people who can read, write, and do arithmetic, even in a rudimentary way," he said. "The Senate just shot that to hell."
With DeVos running the Department of Education, Logsdon said, millions of American students "will graduate from high school each year without mastering any useful skills—in other words, much like DeVos herself."
The spectre of an economy plagued by workers "operating at a DeVos level of sub-proficiency" means that the United States will need to do everything in its power to attract educated immigrants to its shores, he said.
Logsdon did not offer a complete list of countries with people whom the U.S. should try to lure, but he said that a partial list would include Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, and Libya.
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**** Juan
"The Bannon-led White House 'new rules' commands that everybody now has their own way of interpreting whether a fact is true or not"
This contribution is just now hitting the Internet, and it sends an amazingly well-crafted response and message from a Mexican corporation to the White House. Coming from a family of airline careers, it brings a combination of emotions to our current situation. You must click on the weblink to see the ad itself. The written explanation stands for itself:
"Borders. Has anything good ever come of them?" asks a voiceover in the spot below, as gray-scale images of walls, fences and "No Trespassing" signs speed past.
"Separation? Limits? I've seen as many as mankind has been able to create. Invisible borders. Human ones. Between men and women. Between the thin and the fat. Between those who make decisions and those who abide by them."
At first, it feels like a social-issues PSA, with moody footage of traffic jams, military parades, riots and even a grade-school bathroom "swirly" tossed in for good measure. Actually, it's a commercial for a leading brand in Mexico, whose identity isn't revealed until the final seconds of the riveting minute-long ad:
While brands have leveraged the cultural zeitgeist in ads before, this Ogilvy spot for Aeromexico seems especially pointed in taking a stand against the arbitrary lines that keep people apart.
To their credit, the creative team doesn't go halfway. The copy even touches on issues of intolerance toward others' religions or sexual orientation, decrying the fact that we wall ourselves off from others—or worse, engage in abuse and discrimination—simply because "someone didn't want anything to do with someone next door."
And this is an airline ad, folks!
Of course, Donald Trump's threat to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico should he win the White House adds a degree of urgency.
The concluding message—"Borders. On land they can maintain distances. But in the sky … we show you it's different"—aims high. But it fits in context, as airlines can take us to new places, where we can experience different cultures, beliefs and ideas, hopefully raising our collective consciousness along the way.
CREDITS Client: Aeromexico Agency: Ogilvy & Mather México VP Creative: César Agost Carreño / Iván Carrasco Creative Director: Alejandro Gama Copy: Alejandro Gama / Carlos Cervantes / Gabriel Ouriques Art Directors: Uriel Sánchez / Jocelyn Contreras Producer: Juan Pablo Osio Account Director: Vannya Martínez Responsable Cliente: Anko Van der Werff, Andrés Castañeda, Emanuel Romero Production Company: Oxígeno Director: Javier Navarro y Alberto Mercado Editor: Raul Carmona Executive Producer: Olga Duarte Producer: Aitana Coca
**** Juan
"The Bannon-led White House 'new rules' commands that everybody now has their own way of interpreting whether a fact is true or not"
- Anonymous Administration Leaker
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Monday, February 6, 2017
Things must be getting pretty bad for someone like John Yoo to call out Trump for his lack of presidential skills or decorum. You may remember Mr. Yoo from his days as George W's legal adviser at the White House:
Executive Power Run Amok
By JOHN YOO
FEB. 6, 2017
Berkeley, Calif. — Faced with President Trump's executive orders suspending immigration from several Muslim nations and ordering the building of a border wall, and his threats to terminate the North American Free Trade Agreement, even Alexander Hamilton, our nation's most ardent proponent of executive power, would be worried by now.
Article II of the Constitution vests the president with "the executive power," but does not define it. Most of the Constitution instead limits that power, as with the president's duty "to take care that the laws are faithfully executed," or divides that power with Congress, as with making treaties or appointing Supreme Court justices.
Hamilton argued that good government and "energy in the executive" went hand in hand. In The Federalist No. 70, he wrote that the framers, to encourage "decision, activity, secrecy and dispatch," entrusted the executive power in a unified branch headed by a single person, the president.
Many of Hamilton's intellectual admirers today endorse the theory of the unitary executive, which holds that the Constitution grants the president all of the remaining executive powers that existed at the time of the founding. These include the powers to conduct foreign affairs, protect the national security, interpret and execute the law and manage all lower-level federal officers.
As an official in the Justice Department, I followed in Hamilton's footsteps, advising that President George W. Bush could take vigorous, perhaps extreme, measures to protect the nation after the Sept. 11 attacks, including invading Afghanistan, opening the Guantánamo detention center and conducting military trials and enhanced interrogation of terrorist leaders. Likewise, I supported President Barack Obama when he drew on this source of constitutional power for drone attacks and foreign electronic surveillance.
During the campaign, Mr. Trump gave little sign that he understood the constitutional roles of the three branches, as when he promised to appoint justices to the Supreme Court who would investigate Hillary Clinton. (Judge Neil M. Gorsuch will not see this as part of his job description.) In his Inaugural Address, Mr. Trump did not acknowledge that his highest responsibility, as demanded by his oath of office, is to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution." Instead, he declared his duty to represent the wishes of the people and end "American carnage," seemingly without any constitutional restraint.
While my robust vision of the presidency supports some of Mr. Trump's early executive acts — presidents have the power to terminate international agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, for example — others are more dubious. Take his order to build a wall along the border with Mexico, and his suggestion that he will tax Mexican imports or currency transfers to pay for it. The president has no constitutional authority over border control, which the Supreme Court has long found rests in the hands of Congress. Under Article I of the Constitution, only Congress can fund the construction of a wall, a fence or even a walking path along the border. And the president cannot slap a tax or tariff on Mexican imports without Congress.
Nor can Mr. Trump pull the United States out of Nafta, because Congress made the deal with Mexico and Canada by statute. Presidents have no authority to cancel tariff and trade laws unilaterally.
Immigration has driven Mr. Trump even deeper into the constitutional thickets. Even though his executive order halting immigration from seven Muslim nations makes for bad policy, I believe it falls within the law. But after the order was issued, his adviser Rudolph Giuliani disclosed that Mr. Trump had initially asked for "a Muslim ban," which would most likely violate the Constitution's protection for freedom of religion or its prohibition on the state establishment of religion, or both — no mean feat. Had Mr. Trump taken advantage of the resources of the executive branch as a whole, not just a few White House advisers, he would not have rushed out an ill-conceived policy made vulnerable to judicial challenge.
Mr. Trump's firing of the acting attorney general, Sally Yates, for her stated intention not to defend his immigration policy, also raises concerns. Even though the constitutional text is silent on the issue, long historical practice and Supreme Court precedent have recognized a presidential power of removal. Mr. Trump was thus on solid footing, because attorneys general have a duty to defend laws and executive orders, so long as they have a plausible legal grounding. But the White House undermined its valid use of the removal power by accusing Ms. Yates of being "weak on borders and very weak on illegal immigration." Such irrelevant ad hominem accusations suggest a misconception of the president's authority of removal.
A successful president need not have a degree in constitutional law. But he should understand the Constitution's grant of executive power. He should share Hamilton's vision of an energetic president leading the executive branch in a unified direction, rather than viewing the government as the enemy. He should realize that the Constitution channels the president toward protecting the nation from foreign threats, while cooperating with Congress on matters at home.
Otherwise, our new president will spend his days overreacting to the latest events, dissipating his political capital and haphazardly wasting the executive's powers.
John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of "Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power From George Washington to George W. Bush."
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**** Juan
"The Bannon-led White House 'new rules' commands that everybody now has their own way of interpreting whether a fact is true or not"
Today's contribution is more practical than the ideological bombast of the Bannon Shocks that were sent yesterday. This more practical and relevant. It concerns the swindling and deceptive practises of financial institutions who prey upon the young and defenseless student clients. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in its brief history has exposed so much flimflam and predatory corruption by the likes of Bank of America, Wells Fargo, credit card companies, and many other institutions who preyed upon unknowing users of financial systems. It is one of the targets of the Bannon White House, through tRump, for defunding and extinction. House Republicans want to bury this agency because the donor lobby is tired of being called out. And, why we are thinking about this......why has tRump failed to follow through on his promise to reign in drug costs and have the ability to negotiate drug prices? (Bait and Switch?): so sad, believe me.
Unfairly Squeezing Student Borrowers
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
FEB. 4, 2017
Federal student loan borrowers will be at risk if the Trump administration cripples the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Credit Spencer Platt/Getty Image
Companies that are paid by the government to collect payments for federal student loans and to guide borrowers through the process are eager to see the Trump administration cripple the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has primary authority over the industry.
That would leave more than 42 million federal student loans borrowers at the mercy of loan servicing companies that are already driving up repayment costs and pushing people toward default — which destroys their financial lives — by steering them away from affordable payment plans the government created.
These practices are aggravating the student debt crisis, which is already dragging on the economy by making homes or cars unaffordable for many people. Increasingly, student debt is even dogging Americans into retirement, when they are more financially vulnerable.
The scope of the problem is outlined in new lawsuits that the consumer protection bureau and the attorneys general of Washington and Illinois have filed against the largest student loan servicer, Navient. It handles $300 billion in private and federal loans for 12 million people — roughly one in four student borrowers. The bureau said Navient systematically and illegally failed borrowers "at every stage of repayment" by opting for shortcuts that saved on its operating expenses but cost borrowers money.
The federal lawsuit is particularly critical of how Navient handles a federal program that allows most federal student loan borrowers to enroll in income-based payment plans in which monthly payments can fall all the way to zero. Many enrollees are entitled to have the government pay part of the interest charges. Many are also eligible to have their loans forgiven after 20 to 25 years of monthly payments.
Borrowers have a right under the law to apply for enrollment in these plans, but, according to the lawsuit, Navient steers people into a costlier option called forbearance, in which they can take a break from payments but interest keeps building. Between 2010 and 2015, the bureau estimates that Navient added up to $4 billion in interest charges to the balances of borrowers it steered into forbearance.
Borrowers in affordable plans have to recertify every year. But according to the lawsuit, Navient fails to explain recertification or to notify people of deadlines. And not recertifying on time can make monthly payments jump by hundreds or even thousands of dollars. People can then also lose other benefits, like interest subsidies.
The suit also charges that Navient told credit reporting agencies that borrowers had defaulted when they had not; deceived people with private loans about the process for getting co-signers released; and made the same payment processing errors month after month, even after borrowers had flagged the mistakes.
Navient has denied wrongdoing and says it will fight the suit. But given the large number of complaints that customers have filed against Navient at the bureau, the charges have the ring of truth. They also provide a glimpse of the disaster that awaits if the Trump administration lets loan servicers escape federal oversight.
****
Juan
"The Bannon-led White House 'new rules' commands that everybody now has their own way of interpreting whether a fact is true or not"
Sometimes it is necessary to send out more than one posting in a day. This is one of those daysIn my earlier contribution, I wrote that the article was from Ryan Lizza of the NY Times -which should be corrected to the New Yorker. From the same publication, we need to read the following which concerns all matters of immigrants working in this country, It is a compelling read:
The Trump Administration's approach to immigration does not seem to be about terrorism or jobs. In stages this week, a veil has dropped.PHOTOGRAPH BY EVAN VUCCI / AP
"I feel strongly about this," Donald Trump said a year before his election, on Steve Bannon's radio show. "When someone's going to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Stanford, all the greats, and they graduate, and not only graduate but do great, and we throw them out of the country and they can't get back in, I think that's terrible. We've got to be able to keep great people in the country. We've got to create job creators."
Trump told a story he had heard, about a young man who went to Harvard and wanted to stay in the United States but couldn't, so he returned to India, where he started a "very successful company." Trump said, "He wanted to do that here. We have to be careful of that, Steve. We have to keep our talented people in this country." The candidate seemed interested in how his interviewer would respond: "I think you agree with that. Do you agree with that, Steve?"
Bannon did not agree. He volunteered an invented fact—that two-thirds to three-quarters of Silicon Valley C.E.O.s are from "South Asia or from Asia." (They are not.) "A country's more than an economy. We're a civic society," Bannon said. There was a back-and-forth. "You gotta remember we're Breitbart. We're the know-nothing vulgarians, so we're always going to be to the right of you on this," Bannon reminded Trump.
This was an early exchange between the man who would become President of the United States and the one who would be named his chief strategist. Trump and Bannon were trying out their theories on each other; the candidate was measuring the nationalist right, which he knows only by intuition, and the know-nothing vulgarian was measuring the man who would be his champion. Many of Trump's commitments were already plain: he was by far the most nationalist Republican in the race, the one who had built his candidacy on hostility to "illegal immigrants." Even so, a real distance separated Trump's position from Bannon's. Trump described a person he considered a desirable immigrant, one the country needs—the young Indian-American entrepreneur who graduated from Harvard with a strong G.P.A. For Bannon, the question was not whether immigrants were making contributions but whether their presence altered "civic society." Part of what is in question now, in the fallout from the travel ban, is whether the gap between their views still exists at all.
The executive order that Trump issued on Friday—which barred all refugees and people who hold passports from seven Muslim-majority countries—was said to be about terrorism, but that never was persuasive. The list, it was widely noted, omitted Saudi Arabia, the home of most of the 9/11 attackers; meanwhile, no one from the seven countries included in the order has committed a deadly act of terrorism in the U.S. since 2001. The list includes both Shiite and Sunni countries, those whose governments work in concert with the United States and those that are our avowed enemies. The departments that might have helped to weigh the risk of nationals from different countries, including Homeland Security and State, were not consulted. The order was reportedly written by a young policy adviser to the President, Stephen Miller, and Bannon.
On Tuesday, the Washington Postreported that a draft of another executive order on immigration was circulating at the White House. We do not know whether the President will sign it, but it makes the new Administration's view of immigrants plainer. The circulating draft order, according to the Post, would revoke work visas for foreign nationals whose jobs are deemed to be not in "the national interest." It would task the Department of Homeland Security with exploring deportation for legal immigrants who had received public assistance within five years of their arrival. The order would further require that D.H.S. produce reports twice a year on the number of workers who are foreign-born, whether they are here legally or not.
One especially outrageous element of the first immigration ban was that it applied not just to new immigrants, students, and travellers from those seven mostly Muslim countries but also to people who hold American green cards—permanent legal residents of the United States—who originally came from those places. Some of these green-card holders have been legally in the U.S. for decades. Over the weekend, the White House pulled back, and said that the ban would no longer apply to people with green cards. For a moment, it seemed possible that the targeting of legal immigrants had not really been thought through or intended, just part of the chaos of the early days of the Trump Administration.
The draft order makes that much harder to believe. Like the initial inclusion of green-card holders, its philosophy seems to be to smudge out the old distinction that governed conservative immigration policy, between those who are here legally and those who are not, and replace it with a far uglier distinction, between those who were born here and those who were not. The Administration's approach to immigration does not seem to be about terrorism or jobs. In stages this week, a veil has dropped.
On Monday afternoon, some two thousand employees of Google around the world staged a coördinated walkout to protest Trump's executive order. The main scene was at the company's headquarters, in Mountain View, where several of the company's lead executives spoke: Marwan Fawaz, an immigrant from Lebanon, who leads the company's Nest subsidiary; Sundar Pichai, an immigrant from India, who is Google's C.E.O.; and Sergey Brin, an immigrant from Russia, who is one of its two founders. It was a bright California day; Pichai and Brin, dressed casually, were wearing sunglasses. Their presence made the protests especially affecting: they not only came from a hub of economic power but spoke in slightly accented English.
Brin, who had been at the earlier protests at San Francisco International Airport, said that he was personally outraged, as a refugee. "I came here to the U.S. with my family, at age six, from the Soviet Union, which was, at that time, the greatest enemy the U.S. had—maybe it still is in some form," Brin said. "The risks of, at the time, letting in these foreigners from a land that might spy on you, learn the nuclear secrets, and send them back—and there were many cases of espionage—those risks were far greater than the terrorism risks we face today. And, nevertheless, this country was brave and welcoming." If the United States "was not a brave country that really stood out and spoke for liberty," Brin said, "I wouldn't be where I am today or have any kind of the life that I have today." And, he did not need to say, his audience would not have an employer, and the rest of us would not have Google.
That is part of Brin's account of the relationship between Google and the United States, in which it pays to be a place where talented people feel safe and wanted. It makes you wonder, What is Bannon's theory, or Trump's?
The protests against Trump's travel ban have been furious, and have come from many different angles. One prominent strain, from university and tech-industry leaders like Brin, has been that the country is risking a brain drain: in the short term, the ban may cost us talent and innovation; in the long term, jobs and preëminence. Many people reminded one another that Steve Jobs's biological father is a Syrian immigrant. At VentureBeat, Adam Ghahramani listed the tech businesses that owed their existence to Iranian-Americans: eBay, for sure, and Tinder, and arguably Oracle and Twitter. University presidents worried that the foreign-born science talents who help fill their graduate schools and lead research and innovation would start to go elsewhere. Some Republicans worried out loud about what would happen to our health-care system if foreign-born doctors, nurses, and researchers were excluded or alienated. The C.E.O. of Ford protested, and so did the C.E.O. of Goldman Sachs. There are parallel anxieties about less élite settings. "Cities in Midwest, Rust Belt Say They Need Immigrants," a headline in the Wall Street Journal read. An economy as large as America's is constantly reinventing itself, at all levels. It needs new influxes of people.
But if the White House is interested in deporting legal immigrants who may need public assistance, or in tracking the number of foreign-born workers regardless of their immigration status, it isn't obvious that the arguments coming from Silicon Valley will move them. If talented engineers and scientists begin to leave for other places, will that bother the White House?
Tim Cook, the C.E.O. of Apple, who is reportedly considering legal actionagainst the Trump Administration over the order, has said that he is speaking to "very, very senior people" in the Administration about the immigrants' importance to Apple and to the country. What he will want to know, from those conversations, is whether the President still believes, as he did fifteen months ago, that the benefits that immigrants bring to America are an essential part of his calculations, or whether there has been a change.
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**** Juan
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
It's been two weeks; 14 days, 206 weeks to go. A strange string of events driven by a swirl of pre-casted and drafted orders, and other agenda items. One would think with all of the preparation time available, that he roll out of the new administration would have been better executed and more professional, but it has not been. In the short time that has elapsed, it is becoming apparent that the new president will only be performing when he reaches into his bag of of executive orders and nominees. Mr. Trump is finding himself over his head. He sees that he is inept, incurious, and unprepared for the job. The only reason he is where he is is because of his need for revenge; to be accepted as a person of power and to be adored by crowds of people. Well the crowds are not that great, and the only crowds seem to be protesting his presence. He is a lonely person....all by himself in that big house. He really does not seem to be concerned about what the job requires, only about the prestige of the job. He has no close friends, and the only thing that keeps him going his his brand name and his narcissistic ego. He did not even seem to see any need to be in the Situation Room down stairs in the basement to observe HIS botched Yemeni raid. He was up in tweeting after watching Arnold on TV. Because of the lack of presidential character, and the void created by his insecurity, his need for acceptance and being loved has been filled by a manipulator like Vladimir Putin (who may also have some old KGB tricks over Donald's head). Steve Bannon is the guy down at the end of WH hallway who fills Trump's ego tank as needed. Truth be told, Trump is Bannon's Boy Toy. As such, Bannon's agenda becomes Trump's story line, and the teleprompter, executive orders, and nominees are of Bannon's creation. The White House is being run by Steve Bannon. To get a more genteel version of what I just wrote, here is Ryan Lissa of the NY Times:
STEVE BANNON AND REINCE PRIEBUS'S WAR FOR THE WHITE HOUSE
By Ryan Lizza February 3, 2017
President Donald Trump's first two weeks in office have produced what seems like a year's worth of drama, but he has made essentially two consequential decisions. He issued a ban on immigrants from seven majority-Muslim countries and he nominated Neil Gorsuch, a federal appeals-court judge, to fill the Supreme Court seat left vacant after Antonin Scalia's death, last year.
The immigration ban, a dubious policy that no serious counterterrorism expert believes is necessary, threw the Trump Administration into chaos, alienated large swaths of the federal government, offended international allies, and divided the Republican Party. The announcement of Gorsuch, who, whatever one thinks of his legal views, is clearly qualified to serve on the Court, was executed professionally and united the G.O.P. behind Trump.
The two decisions reflect the two strands of Trumpism vying for control of the new Administration—and the Republican Party—and may be harbingers of coming fights inside the White House.
The immigration ban was a catastrophe from start to finish. It was written in secret by a small group of White House aides, led by Steve Bannon, the President's chief strategist and the former chairman of Breitbart, the right-wing news site dedicated to white identity politics. Bannon worked closely with Stephen Miller, a former aide to Senator Jeff Sessions, whose formative years on Capitol Hill were spent fighting, in alliance with Breitbart, against the G.O.P.'s immigration reformers.
In 2013, during the last Senate debate about immigration, several Republicans joined Democrats in passing legislation championed by President Barack Obama and a coalition of business, labor, and Latino groups. Sessions, Miller, and Bannon were seen as representing a dying movement of right-wing holdouts who failed to see the political wisdom of the Republican Party's embrace of comprehensive immigration reform. Now they are running the government. (Or, in the case of Sessions, who has still not been confirmed as Attorney General, soon will be.)
The Bannonites' executive order prompted widespread protests and multiple crises in the federal government. At the State Department, it triggered a revolt of career diplomats, some thousand of whom signed an official statement of dissent arguing that the policy would do more harm than good. At the Justice Department, the acting Attorney General, Sally Yates, decided that the order was discriminatory and took the unprecedented step of ordering the department's lawyers not to defend it in court, causing Trump to fire her. Abroad, the ban set off a series of diplomatic crises. In Iraq, America's most important ally in fighting isis, the parliament reportedly responded by voting to ban Americans from the country. In Germany, America's most important European ally, Chancellor Angela Merkel, said, via a spokesperson, that defeating terrorism "does not justify putting people of a specific background or faith under general suspicion." In a phone call with Trump, she explained the details of the United Nations' 1951 Refugee Convention, an international treaty that requires states to protect those fleeing war and persecution.
The first significant policy of the Bannon wing of the Trump White House was executed in a way that insured maximum chaos and confusion. In contrast, Trump's successful rollout of his Supreme Court nominee was largely run by the White House counsel's office, an island in the White House that is relatively free from Bannon's control and has been shaped more by Reince Priebus, the former chairman of the Republican Party and Trump's current chief of staff. A true populist aiming to shake up the establishment in Washington might have found someone outside of the legal monastery, perhaps someone who wasn't even a judge, to put on the Court. Instead, Trump chose a leading conservative appellate judge with Ivy League credentials. The most frequent Republican critics of Trump, such as Senators Ben Sasse and Lindsey Graham, cheered the decision. Even Democrats have had to admit that Gorsuch is perfectly qualified.
It's too simple to describe these episodes as purely emblematic of the two warring camps. Priebus has been a steadfast defender of the immigration ban, and as White House chief of staff it's his responsibility to make sure there is a process set up to vet and smoothly implement an executive order. Meanwhile, there's no indication that Bannon had any qualms about Gorsuch.
But the general divide is unmistakable. In conversations I had with people close to Priebus and those close to Bannon, the two sides talk about each other as leaders of a zero-sum fight for control of the West Wing. "It is impossible to draw a line of accountability for the things that went wrong on that executive order to Reince," a source close to Priebus said. "Because he's not the one who wrote it. He's not the one who put it together. Reince has never gone in there and said, 'I'm a serious policy expert and I'm going to know on page forty-five of this thing how green cards are handled.' "
The person added, "Their M.O. is they are not going to go, 'Yeah, we screwed up. We're going to get better.' It's to be, like, 'Well, these establishment guys are too weak, and they don't like our policies.' That's their leak; that's their criticism; that's their way of trying to deflect from themselves. The shit that he's doing is actually the part of this place that's functioning correctly. The more that that happens and the more successful he is, the more they are going to bitch about it because they don't like that. They would rather be in charge and do things unfettered."
Most modern White Houses have had a strong chief of staff who could limit the influence of other senior advisers by controlling their access to the President and insisting they use a formal process to set policy. But Trump has created a top-heavy staff in which Bannon, Priebus, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and several others all seem to have easy access to a President who, especially on issues that he is unfamiliar with, is famously susceptible to persuasion. Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter both used this structure, known as "spokes of the wheel," which proved to be disastrous, because it created warring factions that fought for turf.
Despite the fallout over the immigration ban, the early signs are that Bannon's influence is growing. He recently brought two former Breitbart staffers to the White House, and more Bannon people are on the way. His New York-based spokeswoman, Alexandra Preate, is expected to come to the White House and serve him in both a communications role and as his own chief of staff, a move that underscores his effort to build his own fiefdom outside of Priebus's control.
When I asked a person close to Bannon about the friction with Priebus, the person downplayed the competition: "Steve said last week he wouldn't want Reince's job."
The truth is that he probably doesn't need it.
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**** Juan
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
WORLD LEADERS RECEIVE CRANK CALLS FROM SOMEONE CLAIMING TO BE PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES
By Andy Borowitz February 2, 2017
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a spate of annoying telephone pranks that has lasted nearly two weeks, heads of state from around the world have been receiving crank calls from someone claiming to be the President of the United States, the United Nations reported on Thursday.
According to the U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who has fielded complaints about the crank calls, the caller has tormented leaders from Mexico, Australia, and many other countries.
"The pattern is always the same," Gutteres said. "The caller is identified as the President of the United States, so naturally he is put right through. Once he is connected with the head of state, he begins to speak in a threatening and harassing manner."
"Then, as his threats reach a crescendo, he hangs up," Gutteres said. "Clearly, it's someone's idea of a sick joke."
The Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, became a victim of the crank caller over the weekend, an experience that he called "highly irritating."
"I'm a very busy man, and I don't have time to be the butt of some deranged person's joke," Turnbull said. "I've blocked the phone number, and I understand other heads of state have done the same."
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**** Juan
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
TRUMP SAYS HE HEARD FREDERICK DOUGLASS WAS ALIVE FROM BETSY DEVOS
By Andy Borowitz 10:43 A.M.
Photograph by GL Archive / Alamy
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—After raising eyebrows by suggesting that he believed that Frederick Douglass was still alive, Donald Trump revealed on Wednesday that everything he knew about Douglass had come from his Education Secretary nominee, Betsy DeVos.
"Betsy told me all about Frederick Douglass," Trump told reporters. "I think she's going to be a fantastic Education Secretary. She really made Frederick Douglass come alive."
Before his breakfast meeting to mark Black History Month, Trump told DeVos, "Betsy, write down everything you know about black history so I can read it at the meeting. She took out a pen and did it in, like, three minutes. She's fantastic."
Impressed by the one-sentence summary that DeVos wrote about Frederick Douglass, Trump said that he was now considering Douglass for a top White House post.
"Based on what Betsy said about him, we could really use Fred's energy around here," Trump said.
He lashed out at the press for reporting that Frederick Douglass was dead, calling those reports "very unfair."
"That's a nasty thing to say about someone who is alive and doing a great job," he said. "This is why the press is failing and it's failing very, very badly."
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**** Juan
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
