Alt-Right’s Bannon Ousted From National Security Council

Far-Right culture warrior Steve Bannon was bounced off the National Security Council yesterday as national intelligence director Dan Coats and Joint Chiefs chair General Joseph Dunford were to rejoin the grownups on the NSC principals committee. One rumor says Mr. Bannon was only on the NSC to babysit fellow lunatic Michael Flynn, who has since resigned. This move probably means a cleansing apocalyptic nuclear war is less likely the top US security strategy.

General H.R. McMaster, who replaced Mr. Flynn as national security adviser, is said to be behind the change. In a more puzzling move, two former Republican governors with no defense or foreign relations experience, U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and Energy Secretary Rick Perry, were added to the principals committee. A sobering thought: Mr. Perry, who wanted to abolish the department he now heads, is in charge of the country’s nuclear arsenal.

Mr. Bannon still skulks through the corridors of power and may head a shady outfit called the Strategic Initiatives Group.

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Quick! Vote GOP Or Zombies Will Attack America!!!

The Republican Party that has paralyzed the federal government and the Nation has a clear message for midterm voters: Like how we didn’t pass any bills in the House? Give us the Senate too! Or else …. uh, or else Ebola-bearing ISIS Zombie terrorists will sneak across the Mexican border and … and brainwash your kids with Common Core standards and veggie school lunches, and force you to have good health insurance and higher wages and cheap gasoline! Vote now before it’s too late!

More:

“7 instances of blatant GOP fearmongering this election cycle,” Evan McMurray, Alternet via Salon

“Chicken Little Politics,” Ed Kilgore, Washington Monthly blog

“Why We Are So Easily Manipulated by the Politics of Fear,” David Ropeik, Huffington Post

“Republicans bank on fear in this election,” Rachel Maddow, Washington Post

“Fear of Ebola Could Make People More Likely to Vote Conservative,” Alice Robb, New Republic

“Republican ISIL fear-mongering amplifies extremists’ message, experts say,” Joshua Eaton, Al Jazeera America

“Midterm Anxieties,” Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker

Related: 

“America’s Long History of Immigrant Scaremongering,” Jamelle Bouie, Slate

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In the USA, the Real Plague Is Fear-Mongering.

The Ebola virus is deadly for those who catch it; i.e., most of them die. But it’s transmitted by contact with bodily fluids, so it’s not very contagious and spreads slowly. You’re very much more likely to catch and die from the Flu. Unlike the Flu, Ebola isn’t transmitted through the air, but that doesn’t stop American fear-mongers from poisoning the political and media atmosphere with Ebola panic:

“‘Fear-bola’ hits epidemic proportions,” Mel Robbins, CNN

‘Ebola Is Bringing Out The Worst In Cable News,” Joaquim Moreira Salles, Think Progress

“PBS science reporter: Fox’s Ebola coverage is ‘a level of ignorance we should not allow,'” David Edwards, Raw Story

“CBS Medical Correspondent Shuts Down Fear-Mongering On The Transmission Of Ebola,” Media Matters

“You’re more likely to die of a shark attack or bee sting than contract Ebola in the US,” German Lopez, Vox

“Some Fear Ebola Outbreak Could Make Nation Turn to Science,” Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker

Self-Defense

Illustrator Mark Fiore has summarized the recent National Rifle Association annual meeting:

Music for 12-21-12

Music for the Mayan Apocalypse by ancient Mayan songstress Skeeter Davis.

If universal extinction takes longer than two and a half minutes, there’s more music after the jump.

CEOs to Workers: ‘Vote for Romney or Get Fired’

Ex-financier Mitt Romney in a conference call to corporate CEOs in June:

“I hope you make it very clear to your employees what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise and therefore their job and their future in the upcoming elections. And whether you agree with me or you agree with President Obama, or whatever your political view, I hope — I hope you pass those along to your employees. Nothing illegal about you talking to your employees about what you believe is best for the business, because I think that will figure into their election decision, their voting decision and of course doing that with your family and your kids as well.”

Mitt Romney’s ‘Death Panel’ Nostalgia

“Obamacare ‘puts in place an unelected board that’s going to tell people ultimately what kind of treatments they can have.’ Romney is reviving Sarah Palin’s old death panels lie here. Obamacare does establish an Independent Payment Advisory Board to help constrain the growth of Medicare spending. The body has no authority to dictate the practices of the private insurance marketplace. And the law also makes explicit that this body is banned from rationing care or limiting medical benefits to seniors.”

— from “The First Debate: Mitt Romney’s Five Biggest Lies,” Tim Dickenson, Rolling Stone
“The truth behind that $5 trillion tax cut, pre-existing conditions and more”

Read more actual, reality-based facts here.

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Mitt Romney: ‘Death Panels! Death Panels!’

“Just what to do with the nation’s healthcare system has been argued time and again – but it always seems to come back to the ‘death panels.’

Such was the case at the debate in Denver on Wednesday night, when moderator Jim Lehrer asked the candidates whether Obamacare, one of the most contentious issues this election season, should be repealed.

Bachmann Eyes Muslim Spies

Noted religious persecutor and Tea Party Loon Rep. Michele “Crazy Eyes” Bachmann (R, MN-6) has called on government agencies to reveal how many Muslim Brotherhood spies have infiltrated their departments. She was joined by Rep. Trent “Better Under Slavery” Franks (R, AZ-2), Louie “Terrorist Babies! ” Gohmert (R, TX-1), Tom “Jail Alien Kids” Rooney (R, FL-16), and Lynn “Uppity” Westmoreland (R, GA-3). According to their trusted source, Muslim Brotherhood spies have infiltrated the highest levels of US government —  even Grover Norquist’s marriage bed!

If you needed proof that Islamophobia is the new McCarthyism, here it is.

So how many Muslim Brotherhood spies are there in the government? Um … 57. Yeah, that’s it. Exactly 57.

Washington, City of Bollards

“It used to be that D.C. architecture consisted of graceful Georgetown mansions, neoclassical federal buildings — and, of course, the monuments. When the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts was founded in 1910 to guide Washington’s architectural development, it reviewed designs such as those of the Lincoln Memorial and the Federal Triangle. Over the seven years I’ve served on the commission, however, an increasing amount of time is spent discussing security-improvement projects: screening facilities, hardened gatehouses, Delta barriers, perimeter fences, and seemingly endless rows of bollards. We used to mock an earlier generation that peppered the U.S. capital with Civil War generals on horseback; now I wonder what future generations will make of our architectural legacy of crash-resistant walls and blast-proof glass.”

— Wittold Rybczynski, Meyerson professor of urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania. Read more:

“The Blast-Proof City,” Wittold Rybczynski, Foreign Policy

“I Came, Eyesore, I Conquered,” Witold Rybczynski, Slate

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