Thought for the Day

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Originally Posted by trish

During NIxon’s Watergate fiasco Bork wrote that a sitting president can’t be indicted, for it would interfere with his ability to carry out the tasks of the office.
When Bill Clinton was being investigated for all manner of offenses (and finally for lying to Congress about receiving a blowjob from an intern) Kenneth Starr wrote that a sitting president can be indicted, for in America, no one - not even Clinton - is above the law.

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Trish, maybe -isn't the issue here not an indictment or even a trial and a verdict -but the fact that a President can issue an Official Pardon before or after those facts? Presidents have issued such Pardons before, before there was even a process of law -cf Ford's pardon of Nixon. Perhaps one day soon your President will stand on the steps outside the Lincoln Memorial and declare: I AM THE LAW. I AM ALPHA AND OMEGA... (etc).
What are you going to do about it? Email Kamala?

Is Scaramouche trying to upstage his boss as groper-in-chief? This was one creepy interview, as you can see from the link.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/pol...g-interviewer/

smoochie is really distraught his financial disclosure info leaked because it shows that rather than spend his money on those male vitality pills that donald trump swears by, he's instead investing $250k in teen comedies aimed at teen girls about forming girl groups to fight bullies?

and his handshake doesn't seem as strong as the donald's. not a good look for a guy who's supposedly to be helping #MAGA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekz-WVsRGSo

The latest from Scaramouche-

After telling Politico of his plans to fire Mr Short in advance, Mr Scaramucci then condemned the press for reporting on it.

“This is actually a terrible thing,” he told reporters outside the White House. “Let’s say I’m firing Michael Short today. The fact that you guys know about it before he does really upsets me as a human being and as a Roman Catholic.”

“I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own c***,” he said of Mr Trump’s chief strategist who is said to wield significant influence in the White House. “I’m not trying to build my own brand off the fucking strength of the President. I’m here to serve the country.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a7864001.html

Just when you thought the administration could not go lower...or raise even more laughs than Calamity Sean...

just had a good time going through various conservative timelines and replying to their anti-mccain comments


this type of schadenfreude isn't healthy, but i wish i could start EVERYDAY like this

Attachment 1020493

priebus resigns. and (supposedly) the smooch's wife has filed for divorce.

looks like someone’s gonna have to learn how to suck their own cock

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...s-divorce.html

Attachment 1020509

http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/31/politi...ter/index.html

Amusing read. Prankster got several important people to email him back by impersonating Priebus, Hunstman, Donald Jr. etc.

Edit: I'm not sure if I posted this in the right thread, but anyway it's late etc.

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Originally Posted by broncofan

http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/31/politi...ter/index.html

Amusing read. Prankster got several important people to email him back by impersonating Priebus, Hunstman, Donald Jr. etc.

Edit: I'm not sure if I posted this in the right thread, but anyway it's late etc.

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I love that the guy impersonating Eric Trump was able to say something that made him sound so feeble-minded and Huntsman did not think anything was amiss. Here's what imposter Eric Trump said:"Maybe we could have Dad sat (sic) on a horse, top off, giving the full Putin! He's in better shape than his suits suggest."

Scaramucci was fooled by both fake Priebus and fake Huntsman accounts. The same prankster accepted an apology from one of Scaramucci's PR friends Arthur Schwartz which is not in the article. They dodged a bullet getting rid of Scaramucci. He was going to lead them to disaster.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/01/u...e-iphone-share

I happen to support what is colloquially called affirmative action although I don't think disagreeing with the policy is evidence of racism. But I do question the motives of a justice department who sees it as a priority to target a program that is remedial in its objectives. I can't remember off the top of my head, but there is case law on the permissible scope of affirmative action policies. I think there is a ban on strict quotas but universities are allowed to consider diversity a priority and weigh it as one of many factors in admissions decisions.

Anyhow, my intention is not really to discuss affirmative action so much as to ask whether this seems like a suspect priority for the civil rights division of our justice department to have given the pernicious effect many of Sessions' policies will have on groups that have been historic victims of the most appalling racism.

I recall years ago reading about the case of Alan Bakke who sued the University of California in the 1970s -when it initially refused him entry to medical school- as a form of 'reverse discrimination' due to the fact that the medical school reserved 17 [in some accounts, 16] places for minorities even if they did not have the qualifications. The Supreme Court eventually ruled that Bakke had been discriminated against, but that the policy of the University of California was legal. There is a brief outline of the case in the link below. The eminent jurist Ronald Dworkin produced a thoughtful analysis of the case and the justification for Affirmative Action in the NYT in 1977 with this succinct assessment:
The tiny number of black doctors and professionals is both a consequence and a continuing cause of American racial consciousness, one link in a long and self-fueling chain reaction. Affirmative action programs use racially explicit criteria because their immediate goal is to increase the number of members of certain races in these professions. But their long-term goal is to reduce the degree to which American society is over-all a racially conscious society.
The whole of his article is here-
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1977...e-has-no-case/

http://teachers.dadeschools.net/jzoe...aeed90-36.html

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Originally Posted by Stavros

The Supreme Court eventually ruled that Bakke had been discriminated against, but that the policy of the University of California was legal.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1977...e-has-no-case/

http://teachers.dadeschools.net/jzoe...aeed90-36.html

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Thank you for the excellent article by Dworkin as well as providing the case I was thinking of. I kept this sentence of yours because this is the sticking point for some people. Affirmative action breaks the mold of other civil rights statutes in that it allows decision-makers to actively consider race. The closest thing to affirmative action occurs in the employment context, where there are cases called "disparate impact cases". These cases challenge hiring criteria when the criteria have the effect but not the intent to discriminate and are not justified by business necessity.

Affirmative action in some sense is in this spirit because it attempts to address the inter-generational effects of racism, even where those effects are no longer intentionally sought. But of course affirmative action is a more aggressive tack. And since it literally allows race to be considered a factor by decision-makers it has always been hotly debated and controversial, as positive discrimination unintentionally leads to exclusion in a finite pool of applicants.

The context of Sessions' decision to direct government resources towards ending affirmative action is that our civil rights laws have always been enforced with an eye to the many great injustices inflicted on African-Americans; including slavery, lynchings, and Jim Crow. To this day, there are inequities in the way drug laws have been enforced and there continues to be an attempt by legislators to suppress the votes of minorities. The Justice Department under Sessions has not shown any real zeal in addressing these issues and instead wants to focus on policies that have been implemented to help groups that are underrepresented in certain professions. I think it's highly suspect and confirms people's fears about Sessions.

Dworkin was a Professor of Law and as such gives an analytical argument based on the law, but as he is also at pains to point out, this is the law responding to discrimination that was not accidental but deliberate, just as the first gun control laws were introduced after the Civil War when some White Americans believed freed slaves who had acquired arms during the war would go on the rampage after it; and when the first law to restrict immigration in the late 19th century was directed specifically at the Chinese who were accused of being dope peddlers destroying the fabric of American society through the Opium Dens they owned and controlled-as if the Chinese in America did nothing else.

What I recall from the Bakke case at the time and after was a survey which claimed that Affirmative Action and 'reverse discrimination' policies that were introduced in higher education and employment had actually benefited women more than any other social group, the point being that the policies that acknowledged a deliberate obstruction of opportunity when reversed did create a more diverse workforce and student cohort, but the concept of 'diversity and inclusion' to the alt-right is code for the Communist Manifesto, and if there is one thing America has rejected it is Communism.

This policy has Bannon written all over it, probably Sessions too, a deep and abiding resentment that the USA has become 'too diverse' with Obama as the perfect symbol of decay rather than progress: White American mother, African father, Hawaii born, a trio of problems for those for whom America belongs to White Christians. There is a refusal to accept that discrimination has been deliberate, not accidental, an amazing proposition for Sessions, born in, of all places, Selma Alabama, unless one suspects he lives with a nostalgia for the South of his childhood when everyone knew their place and did not try to get above themselves, a bleak moment when atrophy rather than progress was the norm of everyday life, as if the Civil War had never changed a thing.

Once again it is not just resentment at Obama that shapes this Administration, but the festering rage at the Civil Rights achievements of the 1960s, to be first written off as Political Correctness and a 'left-wing conspiracy', and in the long term reversed. Voter suppression, strict limits to the availability of abortion and family planning, the gradual erosion of environmental regulations, the removal of transgendered from the armed services -one by one you can place a tick next to the achievements which the alt-right consider to be failures to be eliminated. The one issue that has worked its way into the alt-right psyche which has yet to be attacked, is welfare, a policy area as complex as health care, but one that the alt-right would like to take an axe to, soon.

Yet it also appears to be the case that across the USA states and services simply ignore what the President says -California continues with its own climate change strategy, the armed forces ignore the decision to dismiss the transgendered from the services, border officials do or do not comply with instructions to limit entry to the USA, and health care provision is broadly the same as it was on the 1st of January 2017. At some point I assume many of these reversals of policy must be debated in Congress, which suggests there is a lot left to play for, and more torment to follow, without knowing who will win, and who will lose.

According to a recent survey, a majority of Republican voters would support postponing the 2020 elections in response to claims about voter fraud. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...elections-poll

I'm not sure whether this is even legally possible, and there has been criticism that the wording of the question may have influenced the results, but it's still disturbing that so many people could be persuaded to support such a fundamentally undemocratic step based on completely unsubstantiated claims.

I agree, and one example of complex taxation that will probably be immune from reform, is provided by the real estate taxes that are far more generous to the owners of Casinos than to home owners, and are the tax breaks that reside in terms like 'depreciation', 'net operating loss', Chapter 11 Bankruptcy declarations -all of which and more, explain how someone can invest other people's money in casinos, lose nearly a billion $$ in a year, and walk away without any liabilities. A good perspective here from the NYT
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...ns-losses.html

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Originally Posted by filghy2

According to a recent survey, a majority of Republican voters would support postponing the 2020 elections in response to claims about voter fraud. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...elections-poll

I'm not sure whether this is even legally possible, and there has been criticism that the wording of the question may have influenced the results, but it's still disturbing that so many people could be persuaded to support such a fundamentally undemocratic step based on completely unsubstantiated claims.

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Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the southern rebellion, but he couldn't stop the 1864 election.

To gain the arbitrary power to suspend elections would require a Constitutional amendment. Good luck with that. Who gets the power? Congress? Which chamber gets to Initiate the process? The term-limited executive branch? Gonna institute a clause that would repeal and reinstate the amendment in accordance with which party is in power? Oh well... Let's just decide everything on Twitter.

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Originally Posted by Stavros

I agree, and one example of complex taxation that will probably be immune from reform, is provided by the real estate taxes that are far more generous to the owners of Casinos than to home owners, and are the tax breaks that reside in terms like 'depreciation', 'net operating loss', Chapter 11 Bankruptcy declarations -all of which and more, explain how someone can invest other people's money in casinos, lose nearly a billion $$ in a year, and walk away without any liabilities. A good perspective here from the NYT
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...ns-losses.html

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I think that is an example of what economists call "rent seeking" which I have been reading about in Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz's excellent book ;"The Price of Inequality:How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future".
Seeking to increase one's share of existing wealth without creating new wealth or contributing to society or the economy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

http://www.amazon.com/Price-Inequali.../dp/B007MKCQ30

More on Trump's "extractive economics"
http://alexandreafonso.me/2017/02/19...like-business/

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/ny...al-estate.html

A few of the provisions in that article would be tough to get rid of. For instance, depreciation is a real business expense and the reason a business owner should get to claim it and a homeowner shouldn't is because personal consumption is non-deductible. On the other hand, the amount that an asset wears out is a cost of doing business and the schedule on which it's deducted is at least related to diminution in value through use, though sometimes accelerated depreciation schedules are meant to provide a slight subsidy to property owners by allowing them to claim more depreciation in earlier years. Even though the amount of total depreciation ends up being the same over the life of the asset on an accelerated schedule, there is a time value of money benefit for getting to deduct more early.

On the other hand, the provision where real estate businesses can pay a capital gain tax when they profit but then get to claim ordinary loss for losses allows them to win in both directions. It's a concession to the industry that's probably related to lobbying. The like kind exchanges are also a concession to the industry as they violate the realization principle which says that when someone has liquidated an asset there's an accounting and they realize profits and are liable for taxes. The deferral of taxes through like kind exchanges is probably substantial.

The ability to avoid paying taxes on discharge of indebtedness is also a concession. If you borrow 200 million dollars and only pay back 100 million dollars, you have a gain of 100 million in discharge of indebtedness income. Sometimes forcing someone to recognize this as income provides a disincentive for them to renegotiate a debt with lenders. But I'm sure the subsidy is far greater than it has to be because the real estate industry has an effective lobby.

Carry forward of losses is probably important so that the annual accounting period does not distort the effects of transactions. If all of the expenses occur in one year and the revenue in another, the annual accounting period would not offset the gain by the loss. But to allow such losses to be carried forward as long as they are is also unreasonable.

As a final point I want to point out that when you hear Donald Trump say that he had a carry forward loss of 916 million dollars because of depreciation he is full of shit. There is no way to have a tax loss that large without at least some of it reflecting a real economic loss. Everyone who owns real estate as their business has depreciation expenses but they do not by themselves put someone in the red on paper unless they had some genuine business setbacks, as Trump famously did. He would rather seem like a manipulative genius than a mediocre businessman.

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Originally Posted by broncofan

A few of the provisions in that article would be tough to get rid of.

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Sorry I'm talking about nyt article. I think the best view is that for some of these deductions there's a nub of an idea there that is taken much further than it has to be...I don't want to suggest alternatives but there is a large middle ground.

Broncofan -to save space I have not quoted your longer post above.
From what you say, and I appreciate the quality of your argument, a businessman President who has benefited from tax breaks is not about to propose tax reforms that would make them harder to claim. Although I understand the principle of depreciation, it is a generous way of using one person's money to subsidize another's 'wear and tear' but I can think of people who fuss over their car to the extent that the vehicle is as good as new ten years after they bought it, including the engine; and I guess only the tyres will have been regularly changed. To claim depreciation on a building before any of its residents have boiled a kettle is aesthetic to say the least.

And, while I agree that lobbying skills may have been a key factor in the various sweetheart deals that were made, is it not also the case that New York City needed these tax breaks and incentives in order to revive its financial base following the slide into bankruptcy in the 1960s? I am not an expert on the city, that is obvious, but I recall the various tax issues which led residents and commercial enterprises to leave NYC for New Jersey and how that decline in city revenue meshed with street crime to give the city a feeling of decadence and decline that may also have given it that famous 'edge', but was not financially good for anyone who lived there. I just wonder if these various tax breaks and incentives helped to revive the financial base of NYC and that this was in the long term positive for the City.

On the one hand perhaps, because on the other hand I have read about the need to overhaul the subway system and city transportation generally that average consumer and commuters complain about, so that while in the general sense New York may have moved from near bankruptcy in 1967 to towers of gold in 2017, I wonder if this speaks to the 1% problem in that only a few have been genuine beneficiaries. Should money made from these spectacular real estate developments have been used to improve the infrastructure of the city? Or is it the case the money isn't there from these developments because the tax revenues to fund subway reform were surrendered in sweetheart real estate deals? The argument in favour of taxes is that the city authority uses them (or should be using them) for precisely those things like city transport, refuse collection, street lighting and so on, that a city needs regardless of cost and profit because they are a service.

what's up with all these people using vehicles to run over people? is it because of all the added security so guns and explosives can no longer be used so cars become the new weapon of choice.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...a-tourist-spot

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Originally Posted by bluesoul

what's up with all these people using vehicles to run over people? is it because of all the added security so guns and explosives can no longer be used so cars become the new weapon of choice.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...a-tourist-spot

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Its an effective (for the lack of a better word) way to inspire terror and confusion in a gathering of people. The vehicle can be the weapon itself or the prelude to another attack. Think of it as an artillery barrage before the infantry advances.

so i guess you can learn a few things from GTA albeit there are probably better lessons in that game rather than that one (?)

also, after the donald tweeted this:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...69407213645824

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...71544236687361

i wondered whether he'd be cool with a statue of ho chi minh being erected somewhere so we never forget the history of the vietnam war.

lastly: the guy that started the "pro trump journal" american affairs now regrets voting for trump. it's always interesting to see (or read as in this case) what finally breaks the camel's back for his supporters. like when trump said he could stand at a corner and shoot people and not loose votes, julius krein thought that's cool. but when the charlottesville rally happened and trump condemned both sides, he had reached his breaking point

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/o...t-it.html?_r=0

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Originally Posted by Stavros

And, while I agree that lobbying skills may have been a key factor in the various sweetheart deals that were made, is it not also the case that New York City needed these tax breaks and incentives in order to revive its financial base following the slide into bankruptcy in the 1960s?

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The standard principles of tax policy are that tax breaks should be provided according to transparent criteria and available equally to anyone who satisfies these criteria. Negotiating project-specific tax breaks opens the system to corruption and influence-peddling and unfairly favour some businesses and projects relative to others.

One of Trump's first big redevelopment projects in New York in the 1970s was the Commodore Hotel next to Grand Central station, which was closing due to losses. Tax breaks were justified on the basis that leaving the building vacant would lead to urban blight in the vicinity. According to Michael D'Antonio's book on Trump, however, there were other major projects nearby that commenced around that time without special tax breaks. Under the terms of the deal Trump was supposed to make up the lost tax revenue later on when the project became profitable, but he avoided most of this through various accounting tricks.

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Originally Posted by bluesoul

what's up with all these people using vehicles to run over people? is it because of all the added security so guns and explosives can no longer be used so cars become the new weapon of choice.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...a-tourist-spot

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Makes it easier to cry "lone wolf".

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Originally Posted by hippifried

Makes it easier to cry "lone wolf".

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and what do you cry when you fire your chief strategist?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/u...e.html?mcubz=3

does this break his camel's back? or do you continue supporting the GOP

Bannon's departure is just noise...their's only one person who's leaving would really matter

yeah, and then we get pence. and then we get

[everyone repeat after me] [a terrible leader because we fucked up!]

thank you

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Originally Posted by flabbybody

Bannon's departure is just noise...their's only one person who's leaving would really matter

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It should've happened earlier...as in 'Bannon should never have been part of the team to begin with'. Trump was a terrible choice for President - if it wasn't obvious at first, it should be as obvious as a solar eclipse by now. That being said though, I've always pictured Steve Bannon always lurking around, ready to hiss into Trump's ear whatever bile came to mind. I could totally be wrong on this, but I picture Bannon chuckling away with glee every time Trump strays from well balanced written words to his own petty, thin skinned, childishly defensive outbursts...because that's exactly the kind of stuff Breitbart editorializes as news. I don't even like the way he looks. I know this is wrong, but I can't help it when I see a pic (or worse..a video) of him, I see what would normally be a simple case of rosacea - as the inner corruption made physically evident.
It won't solve everything...not by a long shot.
But I'm glad he's fucking gone.

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Originally Posted by bluesoul

yeah, and then we get pence. and then we get

[everyone repeat after me] [a terrible leader because we fucked up!]

thank you

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Some of us didn't fuck up...but best believe I call out those that did.

I'm fucking glad to see him gone, but Bannon's ouster simply allows the rest of the GOP to breathe a little easier and pretend the inherent racism of the current White House has been taken care of.

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Originally Posted by trish

I'm fucking glad to see him gone, but Bannon's ouster simply allows the rest of the GOP to breathe a little easier and pretend the inherent racism of the current White House has been taken care of.

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A lot may depend on what Bannon does next, and whether or not he returns to Breitbart to carry on fighting for his cause there. I read somewhere that even though Paul Manafort resigned as director the Presidential campaign not long after it began, he maintained communications with the boss, and I think it is possible Bannon will still have the President's ear, if not his balls when the big man is in need of a pep talk or advice, and the other guy in the ideology double act, Stephen Miller is still there. Nor do I see the GOP breathing easier as the one problem that won't go away is the simple fact that the President will not change, and will continue to be provocative and insensitive in his public utterances and tweets, because that is what the Brand looks and sounds like, and he believes, is what his supporters want to hear, and they are the only people he is talking to.

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Originally Posted by Stavros

A lot may depend on what Bannon does next, and whether or not he returns to Breitbart to carry on fighting for his cause there...

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Didn't take long to get an answer to that:
http://nypost.com/2017/08/18/bannon-...dency-is-over/

I'm not a fan of Linda Stasi at all, but I like the way she wrote this:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/poli...icle-1.3423888

Attachment 1024476

Anyway, I know this is off-topic but I wanted to include this to provide a bit of closure on that documentary I posted. This is Cantwell on Friday night pepper-spraying what appears to be an unarmed man in the face at close range. I believe the assault charges he is sought for are related to this.

Now you will recall that he claimed he was maced by "Communists" on two occasions. I think it's highly likely he either accidentally got his own mace on himself, that he intentionally sprayed himself in the face with mace, or that neither happened but he pretended he was maced by "Communists". Now I don't rule out the possibility that he was maced, but I think this is too much of a coincidence. He claimed he was being "aggressed" against, but in this picture he is pepper-spraying some dude who does not appear to be "aggressing" against him. Nazis are the worst.

Last few days from alt=centrist.....

https://archive.org/details/youtube-gwSYhTWk6E8

I think the real significance of Bannon's departure is that he had little success in advancing most of his policy agenda. He did have influence in relation to white christian identity politics, where Trump's instincts coincided with Bannon's agenda. In relation to economic and foreign policy, however, where Bannon was pushing populist economic nationalism and reduced foreign intervention, he largely lost out to more conventional Republican approaches. It appears that Trump has largely been uninterested in pursuing these things, despite signals to the contrary during the campaign.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/sto...15506?lo=ap_c1
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...-fired-resigns

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Originally Posted by fred41

Didn't take long to get an answer to that:
http://nypost.com/2017/08/18/bannon-...dency-is-over/
I'm not a fan of Linda Stasi at all, but I like the way she wrote this:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/poli...icle-1.3423888

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It is reported that Bannon has said to the Weekly Standard:
“The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over.”
“I feel jacked up. Now I’m free. I’ve got my hands back on my weapons,” Bannon said. “Someone said, ‘it’s Bannon the Barbarian.’ I am definitely going to crush the opposition. There’s no doubt.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...ite-house-exit

What I find extraordinary about this, is that Bannon was in charge of strategy yet now declares, after 7 months that the Presidency he did so much to get elected 'is over'. He implies that he has been sidelined, yet the truth is that this is a damning indictment of his own incompetence, for this President entered office as a Republican, with the Republican Party in control of both the House and the Senate.

It is so basic a rule of American politics that high school students know the success and failure of a Presidency depends on the relationship he (or she) builds with Congress, because power in the USA is separated between the three branches of government. Surely, if the Presidency is to succeed, it is the job of the man in charge of strategy to develop the relations with Congress that gives them an idea of what the President wants to achieve, while listening to their major concerns and finding a means to work together. One asks: did Bannon ever go to Congress to sit down in a Senator's office and talk about policy issues with him/her and the staff, also with a Representative of the House? Bannon had something like a year to get down on paper a road-map of policy proposals identifying the people needed to make it happen. Even with the President heading off into his own fantasy world, the 'real business of politics' could have continued behind closed doors, and the road-map could plot a course over four years.

It seems that, just as the Republicans had 7 years to produce a new health care policy but did not, in 7 months Bannon failed to build even the semblance of an alliance between a Republican President and a Republican Congress. That must be judged a failure, either of will, or ability.

In an age of instant news, instant opinion, and instant covfeve, there seems to be a demand for instant change in politics, but it doesn't happen like that. A Presidency can last for 8 years and yes, it can be blown off course without warning, as happened to GW Bush in 2001, but to declare after 7 months 'its over' while promising to fight from the outside is frankly pathetic. Little has been lost to government by Bannon's exit, and for the news media, nothing has been gained.

Spot on , nailed that one.:pumped:

Bannon sees himself as a revolutionary in the mould of Lenin, who is going to overturn the existing system. Anyone not on board with the revolutionary program, including mainstream Republicans, is an enemy. The man clearly has delusions of grandeur. The idea of negotiating a compromise solution is anathema to such people. I think he saw his role as being essentially an ideological commissar.

What emerges from various reports since his departure is that Bannon was widely disliked because of his aggressive style, and that nobody knew what he actually did.

Another perspective from alt-centrist: Note , he gets a little shouty half way on.
I really like the ending, it's so calm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EvHpXPPu3c