Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

Second rate reporter says what?

A fool as well as an oath-breaker.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

If you’re gonna whine, it’s time to resign!

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

No one could have predicted…

Let there be snark.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Late Night Open Thread: It’s Hard Out There for A Grifting ‘Populist’

Late Night Open Thread: It’s Hard Out There for A Grifting ‘Populist’

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Just as he was looking for a headwind from Michael Wolff’s new book…

… Italy’s cultural heritage ministry announced on Friday (May 31) that it would revoke a lease granted to Bannon after reports of fraud in the competitive tender process. The former Breitbart chief and aide to US president Donald Trump was reportedly paying €100,000 ($110,000) per year to rent the 13th Century Carthusian monastery, but now will have to search for another spot.

The Italian state allowed the conservative Catholic organization Dignitatis Humanae Institute (DHI) to use the building early last year. Bannon happens to be a trustee of the institute, and planned to convert the space into a “gladiator school for cultural warriors,” where students would learn philosophy, theology, history, and economics, and receive political training from the former Trump aide himself.

But earlier this month, Italian newspaper Repubblica reported that a letter used to guarantee the lease was forged. The letter had the signature of an employee of Danish bank Jyske, but the bank said that employee hadn’t worked there for years, and called the letter fraudulent…

Reader Interactions

106Comments

  2. 2.

    plato

    Peeps complaining here about pron shouldn’t look at the first ‘it’s all in the family’ tweet.

  5. 5.

    Brachiator

    For some reason, I read this as…

    The former Breitbart chief and aide to US president Donald Trump was reportedly paying €100,000 ($110,000) per year to rent the 13th Century Cthulhu monastery, but now will have to search for another spot

  11. 11.

    ThresherK

    More details about the proposed “gladiator school for culture warriors”.

    How long before it would turn into Joey, do you…like movies about gladiators?

  12. 12.

    Raoul

    Bannon is an evil piece of shit, and utterly untrustworthy. And yet, he is probably (relatively) accurate in his assessment of Trump.

    Of course, the two were tight for quite some time, till it became obvious that two grifters couldn’t work the same patch of marks at the same time.

  14. 14.

    Mnemosyne

    Bannon realizes that gladiators were basically slaves who fought continuously until they were killed during a fight or executed, right?

    Also, was his pitch, “Do you like gladiator movies, Billy?”

  15. 15.

    Another Scott

    OT – Reuters:

    VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (Reuters) – A disgruntled public utility employee opened fire on co-workers at city offices in Virginia Beach, Virginia, on Friday afternoon, killing 12 people and wounding several others before he was fatally shot by police, authorities said.

    Virginia Beach Police Chief James Cervera said the mass shooting in the coastal resort city began as the gunman entered the public works and utilities building at the city municipal center and “immediately and indiscriminately fired upon all the victims”.

    The chief later said that the suspect engaged in a “long-term gun battle” with law enforcement officers as police confronted him inside the building. One police officer was wounded in the shootout, but his bullet-proof vest saved his life, Cervera said.

    The police chief said the suspect was armed with a .45-caliber handgun equipped with a “sound suppressor” device and was reloading his weapon with extended ammunition magazines as he moved through the building.

    Authorities said the gunman ultimately was shot by police and was pronounced dead at a hospital.

    Cervera said the suspect was a longtime public utilities employee, and described him as “disgruntled,” but declined to say more about what may have precipitated the attack.

    The shooting was believed to be the deadliest act of workplace gun violence in the United States since February, when a factory worker shot five colleagues to death in Aurora, Illinois, just after he was let go from his job.

    (Emphasis added.)

    Snarky comments about the Founding Fathers love for silencers and rapid-reloading muskets. And how the reporters had to go all the way back to February for a previous incident for comparison…

    :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  17. 17.

    West of the Rockies

    OT, but strange. Online Barr is listed as 5’9″ and 176 pounds.

    No FRIGGIN’ way that fat ass is 176!

  24. 24.

    Mike in NC

    Bannon is the son Fat Bastard wished he had, instead of those losers Shitbird Jr and Eric.

  28. 28.

    Another Scott

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    “But now, only one 83-year-old monk remains. A longtime chef-gardener still lives there, as well, along with several dozen feral cats.”

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  32. 32.

    Another Scott

    OT – RollCall:

    The Trump administration on Friday finalized at the 11th hour a rule that would allow expanded sales of higher ethanol gasoline, even as the oil industry prepares to challenge the change in court.

    The rule opening up year-round sales of gasoline containing 15 percent ethanol, or E15, would deliver a lifeline to soybean farmers hit hard by the president’s tariff war with China and by recent flooding in the Midwest that deluged farms.

    “We’re doing this because it’s a very important presidential priority,” EPA Assistant Administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation William Wherum told reporters in a telephone briefing. The finalized rule was rolled out just a day before E15 gasoline retailers are required by law to switch to lower ethanol blends for the busy summer driving season.

    The EPA has until now restricted the use of the higher ethanol fuel between June 1 and Sept. 15 because it has in past administrations found that E15 contributes more to summer smog than the more commonly sold gasoline with 10 percent ethanol.

    Friday’s rule was promised by the Trump administration to Midwestern farmers and their lawmakers, including Iowa GOP Sens. Charles E. Grassley and Joni Ernst, who pressed President Donald Trump for the changes, which had hit a roadblock in Congress.

    “By granting the sale of E15 year-round, we’ll see an economic ripple throughout farm country, rural communities, and the entire nation,” Ernst said in a news release following the EPA’s announcement.

    A bill introduced by Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., in 2017 to expand E15 sales never made it beyond a hearing at the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The panel’s Republican Chairman John Barrasso hails from the nation’s eighth-largest oil-producing state of Wyoming.

    “We estimate this one change will generate over a billion new gallons of ethanol demand in the next five years,” said Emily Skor, CEO of Growth Energy, an association of biofuel producers, which lobbied hard for the change. “We appreciate the EPA’s efforts to get this rule over the finish line in time for the summer driving season.”

    Oil’s opposition

    The EPA’s rule however is a blow to the oil industry that has for months described the move to lift E15 restrictions as illegal.

    “We repeatedly and consistently have said that EPA lacks authority to extend the E10 volatility waiver to E15,” said Chet Thompson, president and CEO of American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers. “We will review the rule and weigh our options accordingly — but certainly pursuing a legal challenge is very much on the table.”

    The American Petroleum Institute, which represents more than 600 oil and gas firms, has said it will sue the administration.

    API has argued that the renewable fuel standard, the nation’s policy that mandates minimum volumes of biofuels to be blended into the country’s motor oils each year, is broken and should be repealed or significantly overhauled. The group says higher ethanol blends damage some car and boat engines, an assertion the biofuel industry disputes, saying most cars on the road have newer engines that can run smoothly on E15.

    “In addition to being bad for consumers, this proposal goes beyond EPA’s statutory authority. This proposal conflicts with the clear language of the Clean Air Act,” Frank Macchiarola, a vice president at API told reporters in an April call. “Attempts to cherry pick certain aspects of the RFS for reform provide more evidence that the entire program is a failure.”

    The petroleum lobby is pushing for EPA to lower the so-called blend wall and cap ethanol-gasoline blends at 9.7 percent.

    So far, congressional action on overhauling the RFS has stalled, partly because it pits farm-state lawmakers against those from oil-producing states, regardless of party affiliation.

    The EPA’s rule would not only allow for year-round sales of E15, but also would define the higher ethanol fuel as “substantially similar” to the lower blends.

    The agency’s rule also makes changes that it says would bring transparency to the RFS compliance credits called renewable identification numbers, which the agency said would prevent market manipulation.

    The RINs are tradable like stocks and used by the biofuel blenders to prove compliance with the biofuels policy. Some refineries, including those with executives who have had close ties to Trump, such as CVR Energy Inc.’s Carl Icahn, have complained that the RIN system is expensive and unfair to them and vulnerable to market manipulation.

    Some have sought a cap on the price of RINs but the EPA did not make such a change.

    (Emphasis added.)

    It’s important to be able to see and chew one’s air in the summertime, as we know.

    Plus, an “important presidential priority” trumps (heh) science and the law. Everyone knows that.

    :-/

    Seriously, there’s no way this rule-making is by the books. Where’s the public comment period? Where’s the cost-benefit analysis? Where’s the studies of additional cases of asthma, death, etc., etc?

    One saving grace is that they’ve got their oil industry buddies on the other side fighting them.

    As usual, Donnie’s minions are continuing to try to destroy every part of the federal government that they touch. We have to fight them every single day.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  34. 34.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Another Scott:

    Seriously, there’s no way this rule-making is by the books. Where’s the public comment period? Where’s the cost-benefit analysis? Where’s the studies of additional cases of asthma, death, etc., etc?

    Oh, Scott, you are so quaint and adorable.

  35. 35.

    tobie

    @Another Scott: Isn’t the higher ethanol-content fuel also less efficient in terms of gas mileage? That’s what my mechanic told me when I asked why my Prius got fewer miles to the gallon in the winter than in the summer.

  36. 36.

    MisterForkbeard

    @NotMax: Oh man. Always happy when someone else has watched those. Just re-watched a bunch of highlights on youtube after seeing your link. :)

  37. 37.

    NobodySpecial

    Seriously, a building that large that’s empty except for two people? And the church does dick all with the rest?

    Must be nice to have a place like that tax free.

  38. 38.

    plato

    A national public inquiry into possibly thousands of missing and murdered indigenous women in Canada has called the deaths a “Canadian genocide”.

    The report was leaked to Canada’s national broadcaster CBC which published details on Friday.

    The 1,200-page document reportedly blames the disproportionate violence faced by indigenous women on deep-rooted colonialism and state inaction.

    The report is due to be formally released at a ceremony on Monday.

    The findings of the National Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls are long-awaited in Canada, where there are about 1.6m indigenous people.

    “It took 40 years to get to this present moment and only because indigenous women have been on the ground making noise about this,” Robyn Bourgeois, a campaigner on the issue, told the BBC.

  39. 39.

    lgerard

    Trump will be selecting the next Prime Minister

    On Johnson, Trump said: “I like him. I have always liked him. I don’t know that he is going to be chosen, but I think he is a very good guy, a very talented person. He has been very positive about me and our country.”

    Trump said other candidates had approached him in a bid to secure his endorsement: “Other people have asked me for an endorsement, too. I have been asked for endorsements.

    “I could help anybody if I endorse them. I mean, we’ve had endorsement where they have gone up for 40, 50 points at a shot.”

  40. 40.

    MoCA Ace

    Since it’s an open thread… I walked in the house the other day and the spousal unit had the TV tuned to one of the networks minor channels that plays non-stop reruns of Medium and Cold Case when I see Dana Fucking Loesch doing long-form commercials! WTF? Did I miss something? Did the NRA finally shitcan that that rancid mouthpiece? Did she take a cut in pay when the Russian dirty cash spigot stopped flowing? I know I could just Google it but I already typed her name once now and don’t want to risk her disgusting visage appearing on my screen. Anywho, it did my shriveled heart good to see the Mouthpiece of Sauron peddling fucking beet juice in between episodes of The Ghost Whisperer.

  41. 41.

    PsiFighter37

    @lgerard: The UK is screwed no matter what – they get BoJo or some other fool who will bend to the whims of old white folks living in Bumblefuck Shithole, England, or they humiliate themselves in front of the EU. They will either screw themselves right away, or they can stay in the EU and be given the finger anytime a serious matter comes up, since they can’t be trusted. Just like us! How fun

    PF37 +8

  43. 43.

    PsiFighter37

    @lgerard: Also, I have no idea who decides state visits, but May will just be shat on the whole time by Donnie Boy. She’s a huge loser. Sad!

  46. 46.

    lgerard

    @MoCA Ace:

    She did a half hour infomercial for Super Beets as well. She’s no actress, she doesn’t feign interest all that well

  47. 47.

    Mart

    The liberal MSNBC had a Sunday night profile of Bannon’s Nazi Monastery a couple weeks back. Why the fuck give airtime to the man, probably more so than Comey, responsible for Trump winning the EC? When he took over for Manafort with his fascist populist white man shit I felt a wave of terror.

  53. 53.

    Matt McIrvin

    @MoCA Ace: The NRA is running Facebook ads with a black spokesperson talking about Biden being anti-busing. We all know that the NRA does not give a shit about civil rights or busing. I guess they subscribe to the theory that Biden is the most electable Democrat.

    OR maybe they’re trying to super-double-reverse-troll me, a white liberal, into supporting Biden by making me think they’re trying to ratfuck Biden by pretending to be interested in civil rights. Unless that’s EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT ME TO THINK…

  55. 55.

    Jay

    @NobodySpecial:

    It’s a building complex, there’s a church, a library, a historic 18th Century Pharmacy, a Cisterian School,

    Bannon was trying to lease the clostered monestary residence, which has only two remaining residents, other than the feral cat colony.

  57. 57.

    patrick II

    A first-year course in cultural gladiator training is document forgery. Paul Manafort will be instructing from a remote site.

  60. 60.

    Jay

    National Observer
    @NatObserver
    ⚡️ “Wildfires force Kenney to cancel celebration of carbon tax repeal”

  61. 61.

    Jay

    Caroline Orr
    @RVAwonk
    ·
    8m
    Mark Zuckerberg’s personal head of security has been put on administrative leave after being accused of sexual harassment and making racist and homophobic comments by two former members of the Facebook CEO’s private staff, according to Business Insider.

  63. 63.

    Martin

    @Jay: No wonder they can’t police the content of 2 billion users. They can’t even manage the dude closest to Zuck.

  64. 64.

    JaySinWA

    @Martin: There’s always Supremacy Clause battles to be argued. And with the court stacking going on, who knows.

  66. 66.

    Martin

    @JaySinWA: Well CA has always won those given that CAs air quality rules predate the EPA and there’s a carveout in the federal legislation for CA. It allows us to exceed federal standards, not fall below them.

  67. 67.

    Jay

    @Martin:

    Try posting an anti Book of Faces post on the Book of Faces.

    They can autopolice just fine.

    Zucks Bodyguard is a perfect example of what the Book of Faces is filled with.

  68. 68.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Martin: Yeah, I could cite you chapter and verse on why state voter ID laws are unconstitutional, and yet here we are – and that was before Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.

  69. 69.

    Raven Onthill

    Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s response to Donald Trump’s tariff plan: t.co/5XdiY7hfeL. It’s two fairly florid pages, which I am told this is terse for Mexican political correspondence, but the short summary is, “Hell no!”

  71. 71.

    lol chikinburd

    Fuck everyone who’d set up shop in a medieval monastery anywhere but Belgium.

  72. 72.

    Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)

    @tobie:

    He’s correct.
    Alcohol has less energy than gasoline, so the more you blend in, the more you use for the same mileage.

  73. 73.

    Jay

    US news
    US cuts funds for ‘anti-propaganda’ Iran group that trolled activists
    The Iran Disinformation Project was funded by a state department group created to counter foreign propaganda
    Julian Borger in Washington
    Fri 31 May 2019 22.04 BST Last modified on Sat 1 Jun 2019 02.40 BST

    Shares
    106
    Men read headlines in front of a newspaper stand in the Iranian capital of Tehran.

    The US state department has cut off funding to a group that purported to combat Iranian propaganda, after it was found to be trolling US journalists, human rights activists and academics it deemed to be insufficiently hostile to the government in Tehran.

    The Iran Disinformation Project was funded by the state department’s global engagement centre which was created to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation. In recent weeks however, the group’s Twitter account @IranDisinfo targeted BBC journalists, thinktank experts and civil society advocates, denouncing them as being “mouthpieces” and supporters of the Iranian government.

    theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/31/us-cuts-funds-for-anti-propaganda-group-that-trolled-activists

  74. 74.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Martin: There is a whole chapter in the USMC manual on urban warfare about dealing with non-combatants. And another part of a chapter in the use of artillery in urban areas.. I wonder if Duncan read any of it. Source. Also, artillery has limited effectiveness in urban settings.

  78. 78.

    Jay

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Other than the School of the America’s Manual, there is a huge difference between how the US Military Manuals say the US conducts war, and how the US conducts war.

  80. 80.

    Martin

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Also, artillery has limited effectiveness in urban settings.

    Depends on what your goal is, no? I’m pretty sure Duncan Hunter’s goal wasn’t the same as the USMCs goal.

  81. 81.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Jay: And I am perfectly fine with people being prosecuted for violating the laws of war. If Hunter was knowingly or recklessly directing fire into civilian occupied areas, then the answer to the question he asked is “yes, he should be judged too.”

    And, fwiw, I doubt that you can find me a country that has completely clean hands on this sort of thing. Doesn’t make it right, but let’s not pretend that the US is the only culprit here.

  82. 82.

    Jay

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    “And I am perfectly fine with people being prosecuted for violating the laws of war. If Hunter was knowingly or recklessly directing fire into civilian occupied areas, then the answer to the question he asked is “yes, he should be judged too.”

    Almost never happens.

    en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somalia_affair

    Hunter was knowingly directing artillary fire into civillian areas, but orderz.

    There’s a reason 99% of civillian infrastructure in Iraq was destroyed in both the Iraq Wars, and it wasn’t grunts on the ground comitting war crimes.

  83. 83.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Martin: I don’t know that I would go that far. Despite his smugness, Jay isn’t necessarily wrong on this general topic. I could see a commander ordering the comparatively indiscriminate shelling of a city to try to lower resistance. Two problems with that though. One, it is illegal. Two, its effectiveness is debatable at best.

  84. 84.

    Jay

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    A). Not being smug, just pointing out the hipocracy between the manuals and actions,

    B). See also every one of Adam’s posts on blowing the “Hearts and Minds” thing since the start of the Korean War.

  86. 86.

    Ruckus

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    And, fwiw, I doubt that you can find me a country that has completely clean hands on this sort of thing. Doesn’t make it right, but let’s not pretend that the US is the only culprit here.

    Countries that wage war do so with young people, many of whom have not fully developed a sense of – propriety. And even those who have, sometimes don’t have the strength nor wherewithal to follow their inner core. Especially when trained and/or ordered to do different. This has nothing to do with the rational for war, for there are no good rationals for war, only those which are less bad. We are humans, we are animals who live in groups, of many types. Families, gangs, military units, racal, gender, trades, school and many others. Most of us will gather in groups and feel like a part of some group, at one or more times in our lives. And often we will take that group to be above other groups in one way or another and if we perceive a threat to the group, we will react, often with some sort of reaction or violence, sometimes deadly. It is something a lot of animals do. We just have managed to do it on a larger scale than many other animals.

  87. 87.

    Mnemosyne

    @Jay:

    Hunter was knowingly directing artillary fire into civillian areas, but orderz.

    It’s been established since 1945 that “I was just following orders” is not a valid defense for committing war crimes. And soldiers are told repeatedly that they are supposed to refuse illegal orders.

    So, no, I can’t go along with your apparent belief that Hunter should never be prosecuted for war crimes because all of the cool kids were doing it.

    There’s a reason 99% of civillian infrastructure in Iraq was destroyed in both the Iraq Wars, and it wasn’t grunts on the ground comitting war crimes.

    No, it was generals with PowerPoint presentations committing war crimes. But, again, that doesn’t absolve the soldiers who carried out the illegal orders. They are equally guilty.

  90. 90.

    Ruckus

    @Mnemosyne:
    In boot camp we attended lectures about lawful/unlawful orders and not following the unlawful ones. But it was made clear to us that it is in fact militarily illegal to follow an illegal order and we could be charged under the UCMJ if we did. After all these years I can not remember the code. But it was very clear what the code was and what the penalty could be. But on the ground, in the heat of it, it is sometimes difficult to tell which is a lawful order or not.
    I’ve only been shot at once, by someone trying to actually shoot me and it wasn’t a military situation. Your first response is to do whatever you can not to die. In my case I was unarmed, so I ran. It worked.

  92. 92.

    Jay

    @Mnemosyne:

    “So, no, I can’t go along with your apparent belief that Hunter should never be prosecuted for war crimes because all of the cool kids were doing it.”

    Never said that.

    What I am saying is that the Manuals direct the Armed Forces ( in most cases) to conduct war according to the Conventions,

    But that’s not how the US conducts war,

    Nor does it prosecute war crimes in accordance to the Conventions.

  93. 93.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Ruckus: Or how glad I was to get out before I made Major. Most of our stuff was still overhead projector transparencies and LTs in firing batteries didn’t have to deal with it very much.

  94. 94.

    Ruckus

    @Omnes Omnibus:
    I went as far as I could go without extending my enlistment. E5. I like my country and serving was, at best something I’m glad I did. And didn’t want to do for a minute longer than I had to.
    ETA My discharge was sent to the ship I was on, on a Tuesday. The order was (I saw the radiogram) to be honorably discharged by that Friday at noon. I walked off the gangplank of that ship on that Friday at 11:59am. They cut it about as close as possible.

  95. 95.

    Jay

    @Ruckus:

    Most of the US war crimes since WWII, were not committed by “boots on the ground”,

    Otherwise Iraq would have a functioning sewage treatment system.

    Raqqa and Monsul would still be cities, not wastelands,

    And Yemen would not be happening.

  96. 96.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Ruckus: I’ve had people ask me why I didn’t join the Guard or Reserve or why I didn’t seek to go back in after law school. The answer was that I had done my time.

  103. 103.

    Jay

    @Mnemosyne:

    Oh, and BTW, Noreen Tran, my 2nd girlfriend, was #37 on the list, one of Robert Picton’s victims,

    And despite being a white male, I couldn’t get the RCMP or VPD to do shit about her “disapperance”,

    Thanks for the memories,

  104. 104.

    J R in WV

    @Another Scott:

    The group says higher ethanol blends damage some car and boat engines, an assertion the biofuel industry disputes, saying most cars on the road have newer engines that can run smoothly on E15.

    I’ll say. My local hardware store won’t extend a warrantee to power tools fueled with gas blends containing ethanol at all. They also sell quarts of pre-mixed with lube oil gas with no ethanol at all. They have a chainsaw carb in the display all eaten up by the use of E10, let alone E15. Plus pollution.

    Ethanol is for drinkin’ not for power tools!!

  105. 105.

    J R in WV

    @Matt McIrvin:

    OR maybe they’re trying to super-double-reverse-troll me, a white liberal, into supporting Biden by making me think they’re trying to ratfuck Biden by pretending to be interested in civil rights. Unless that’s EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT ME TO THINK…

    Oh, no, an endless logic loop IN UR HEAD!!!!!

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